UN Secretary-General António Guterres has described the Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, which has come under criticism, as essential for delivering supplies to people in the Gaza Strip. “UNRWA is the backbone of all humanitarian aid in Gaza,” Guterres told a UN committee on Palestinian rights in New York on Wednesday.
After some donor countries cut their funding, he met with representatives of these countries to listen to their concerns and “outline the steps we are taking to address them,” Guterres said.
Devastating reports about aid organizations
Twelve UNRWA employees are suspected of involvement in the unprecedented attack on Israel by the radical Islamic Palestinian organization Hamas on October 7. The Wall Street Journal, citing an Israeli intelligence document, reported that about 10 percent of all U.N. aid agency employees in the Gaza Strip had ties to Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
In response to the allegations, countries including Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Canada, New Zealand and the US announced that they would temporarily stop their payments to the aid organization.
Uncertain future for UNRWA
Several UN organizations warned against suspending funding. This will have “catastrophic consequences for the people of Gaza,” the heads of a number of UN agencies said in a joint statement. A World Health Organization (WHO) official said in Geneva that the population in the Palestinian territory is “dying of hunger.”
Israel calls for a halt to the work of the UN aid agency after the end of the war in the Gaza Strip. Government spokesman Eylon Levy accused the aid agency of “employing terrorists on a large scale, enabling the use of infrastructure for Hamas military activities and relying on Hamas to distribute aid in the Gaza Strip.”
15 countries stop payments
UNRWA itself said an independent investigation into Israel’s allegations was “extremely important.” The aid agency compared the 12 names given by Israel with data on 13,000 workers in the Gaza Strip, UNRWA spokeswoman Tamara Alrifaï said. “We were able to match eight of these names.”
According to Alrifaï, fifteen donor countries have so far announced that they are suspending their payments to the UN aid agency. “If they stick to their decision, the consequences for the people of Gaza would be catastrophic,” she said.
Source: Krone
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