Cutting support has left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in peril – Nandy
Lisa Nandy, the UK’s shadow minister for international development, has called for support for the UN relief agency, Unrwa, warning “time has run out for hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians in Gaza.
Nandy is in Washington this week attending the spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund with a message of how Britain’s humanitarian and development policy will change if Labour, as expected, form the next government by the end of this year.
However, she accepted that she would have to address widespread perceptions across the global south of Britain’s unreliability as a partner and its double standards on the world stage, an image exacerbated by the Gaza war and the consequent famine rolling over the Gaza Strip.
“We are getting a very strong message that people feel there are different rules for different countries, which is problematic and something that we’ll have to deal with if we’re fortunate enough to be in government,” Nandy said.
She vowed more consistent support for the international criminal court (ICC) and the international court of justice (ICJ) and said Israel should be held accountable before both over the war in Gaza.
Nandy outlined ways in which Labour policy on Israel and Gaza would differ from the government’s, and address famine, which experts have said has already begun.
Britain, along with the US, has yet to resume funding of Unrwa after it was originally cut off in January because of Israeli allegations of links between some Unrwa staff and Hamas, which remain unproven.
Nandy said British funding continued to be withheld “despite the fact that the government is aware that if Unrwa can’t continue its operations, the whole humanitarian system in Gaza collapses”.
“So there’s no urgency to this now. Time has run out for hundreds of thousands of people across Gaza and the world has to act,” Nandy said.
All of Gaza’s 2.3 million population suffer food insecurity and nearly half face famine, experts have said.
The Israeli authorities are refusing to deal with Unrwa although it is by far the biggest aid agency in Gaza and has helped support Palestinian refugees across the region for more than seven decades. The Israeli government is pressing for Unrwa’s functions, staff and resources to be transferred instead to a new agency.
“It is just completely unrealistic to suggest that there can be a humanitarian response in Gaza without Unrwa and the critical role that it plays,” Nandy said. “All the agencies … that work in Gaza rely on its infrastructure, and staff and expertise in order to deliver aid.”
In contrast to the government, Labour fully supports the ICC, which investigates potential war crimes in Gaza, and the ICJ, which is weighing accusations of genocide against Israel and examining the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
The Conservative government has backed the ICC and ICJ scrutiny of Russian actions in Ukraine, but not of Israeli conduct in Gaza.
Nandy said a critical difference between her party and the Tories is “we are crystal clear that unless international law is upheld, there can be no accountability.”
Labour has called for Israel to implement measures ordered by the ICJ in late January that are intended to mitigate the risk of genocide.
The Conservative government is threatening to ignore international law in its effort to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda and has threatened to repeal the Human Rights Act and exit the European convention on human rights, policies Labour has pledged it would overturn. “I think the biggest problem is the suspicion from many countries that Britain, this government in particular, doesn’t respect international law and international norms,” Nandy said.