A potential collapse of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, which would upend health care, education, and relief for millions in Gaza and the West Bank, is becoming an increasing prospect, according to current and former agency officials.
Created as a temporary agency more than 75 years ago in the wake of the creation of Israel and its forced displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, is facing a particularly dire situation amid a funding crisis, Israeli restrictions, and in the context of U.N. reform.
The agency’s commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, has stepped up his pleas for financial and political support to the international community in the last months, describing the existence of the agency responsible for nearly 6 million registered Palestinian refugees as shaky and its financial situation as “disastrous.”
About the author
Clothilde Goujard
Clothilde Goujard is a journalist based in Jordan, where she reports on humanitarian issues, regional and national politics, the environment, and technology. She previously covered Europe’s regulation of online platforms and artificial intelligence as a senior reporter with POLITICO in Brussels, Belgium. Prior to that, she worked for several years in Canada as a video journalist for Agence France-Presse and CBC.
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