The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is appealing for US$1.21 billion to address the unprecedented humanitarian emergency in the Gaza Strip and to respond to the growing needs in the West Bank as violence there intensifies. Meanwhile, Israeli bombardment from the air, land and sea continues across much of Gaza, resulting in further civilian deaths, displacement and destruction of the civilian infrastructure on which Palestinians depend.
Half of Gaza's population - some 1.1 million people - face catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation, with famine now imminent or already occurring in northern Gaza. The entire population of the Gaza Strip - some 2.3 million people - suffers from high levels of acute food insecurity.
The Agency's emergency appeal, released on Wednesday, covers UNRWA's humanitarian response until the end of the year. It aims to meet the most urgent needs of 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza as a result of the ongoing war. The UNRWA appeal is part of an overall US$2.8 billion UN appeal for the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) launched last week.
The appeal also covers more than 200,000 Palestine refugees in need in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, where UNRWA provides relief and other services to 1.1 million people.
“The scars of war are seen on a massive scale in Gaza. Meanwhile violence is increasing in the West Bank. It is critical to support UNRWA in providing lifesaving humanitarian assistance and development services in health and education. The past months proved that there is no replacement or alternative to UNRWA,” said UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini in a statement.
As the largest humanitarian organization in the Gaza Strip, UNRWA is at the heart of the relief effort there, managing shelters for more than 1 million people, distributing food, providing primary health care and coordinating the logistics of humanitarian deliveries.
When the war began, UNRWA scaled up its response to 1.8 million people in the Gaza Strip. Within weeks, more than 1 million people were sheltering in and around UNRWA facilities and continue to rely on the Agency for their survival. The appeal aims to sustain the relief effort in the face of spiraling needs.
UNRWA's priority is to get urgently needed supplies, including food, into Gaza, where the population has become almost entirely dependent on handouts and emergency relief.
“This war should not become the new norm as we get into another sad milestone: 200 long days of brutality, loss, despair and anxiety. All efforts must be exerted to reach a long overdue ceasefire. Until then, much more support must come to UNRWA to allow us to respond to vast and growing humanitarian needs,” said Lazzarini.
UNRWA has been described by top UN officials as pivotal in the delivery of life-saving humanitarian aid and essential social services, and as the backbone of relief efforts in the Gaza Strip, where 2.3 million people - the entire population - are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.
Humanitarian organizations and UN officials say UNRWA is irreplaceable and indispensable as a humanitarian lifeline and must be allowed to fulfill its mandate.
The General Assembly established the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in 1949 to assist some 700,000 Palestinian refugees displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which broke out after Israel became a state in May of that year.
Today, it operates not only in Gaza and the West Bank, but also in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, where there are large Palestinian refugee communities. Nearly 6 million Palestinians are eligible for UNRWA services, which include education and health care.
Two-thirds of the population of the Gaza Strip, 1.6 million people, are Palestine refugees registered with UNRWA. The Agency employs more than 13,000 staff in Gaza, including more than 3,500 in emergency operations. In the West Bank, UNRWA serves 1.1 million Palestine refugees and other registered persons, including 890,000 refugees.
An external review of the neutrality of the UN agency responsible for Palestine refugees concluded that the organization has a number of procedures and mechanisms in place to ensure its neutrality.
“There is always room for improvement and some issues related to neutrality persist; this is why this mission was created,” Catherine Colonna, the commission’s chair, told reporters at a briefing at the United Nations in New York this week.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres asked the former French foreign minister to lead an external review of UNRWA in early February after Israeli officials accused a dozen of the agency's staff of involvement in the deadly October 7 terror attacks in Israel.
Nine of the staffers were immediately fired, one was confirmed dead, and officials were in the process of clarifying the identities of two others.
The commission also said that while Israel has since made allegations that a "significant number" of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations, it "has yet to provide any supporting evidence."
The commission noted that while Israel verbally informed UNRWA leadership of the allegations against the 12 employees, the UN agency shares the names of its employees with Israel, but Israel has not shared any concerns about employees with UNRWA since 2011.
Last week, the UNRWA's Commissioner-General told the UN Security Council that the Agency was facing an Israeli campaign to drive it out of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and prevent it from carrying out its humanitarian mission as famine gripped Gaza.
Lazzarini said that in the north, infants and young children had begun to die from malnutrition and dehydration. Food and clean water were waiting across the border, he added, but UNRWA had been denied permission to deliver that aid and save lives.
"In Gaza, the government of Israel seeks to end UNRWA's activities," Lazzarini told the Council. "The agency's requests to deliver aid to the north are repeatedly denied. Our staff are barred from coordination meetings between Israel and humanitarian actors."
Lazzarini said Israeli accusations against UNRWA are politically motivated because Israel wants to end the refugee status of millions of Palestinians.
Colonna worked with experts from three Scandinavian research groups - the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Christian Michelsen Institute in Norway and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
The commission concluded that while the Agency has made changes and improvements since 2017, more could be done, including strengthening its internal oversight capacity, better vetting of staff, building trust with donors, and improving neutrality in its education system.
Lazzarini welcomed the report's findings and said he was working on an action plan to implement its recommendations.
"Safeguarding the neutrality of the agency is central to our ability to continue saving lives and contributing to the human development of Palestine refugees in the Gaza Strip as it faces an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Syria, Lebanon and Jordan," he said in a statement.
Colonna was clear that her team's mandate did not include the allegations against the dozen staff members - those are being handled by a separate internal UN investigation.
Following the charges against the staff, 16 donors, including the United States and Germany, suspended contributions totaling some US$450 million, despite the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.
The countries suspended funding regardless of UNRWA's immediate response and Israel's failure to provide any evidence to support its allegations. Since then, some have resumed, and some new donors have contributed. Last week, the Agency's chief said they had funds to cover operations through June.
“The Secretary-General accepts the recommendations contained in Ms. Colonna's report,” Guterres’ spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said on Monday.
“He has agreed with Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini that UNRWA, with the Secretary-General’s support, will establish an action plan to implement the recommendations contained in the Final Report.”
Guterres urged donors, staff and UNRWA host countries to fully cooperate in the implementation of the recommendations.
“Moving forward, the Secretary-General appeals to all stakeholders to actively support UNRWA, as it is a lifeline for Palestine refugees in the region,” Dujarric said.
In a separate development, the rights group Amnesty International said in its annual report, released Wednesday, that there is a breakdown in the international rule of law that risks a surge in human rights abuses.
“The international rules-based order is on the brink of collapse. The violations of international law have been multiple and have increased, in fact, largely because of the increasing number of armed conflicts,“ said Amnesty’s Secretary-General, Agnes Callamard.
“Perpetrators not only violate international law but seek to justify those violations in the name of self-defense, national security, or counterterrorism.”
Amnesty International highlights Israel's war on Gaza, where more than 34,300 people, most of them women and children, have been killed and more than 77,000 others wounded by Israeli security forces since October 7 last year.
The fatalities include at least 14,685 children and 9,670 women. Observers say most civilians have been killed in indiscriminate or disproportionate killings or even targeted attacks against civilians, all of which amount to war crimes.
More than 70 percent of Gaza's population, some 1.7 million people, have been forcibly displaced.
“In a conflict that defined 2023 and shows no sign of abating, evidence of war crimes continues to mount as the Israeli government makes a mockery of international law in Gaza,” the annual report said.
“Following the horrific attacks by Hamas and other armed groups on 7 October, Israeli authorities responded with unrelenting air strikes on populated civilian areas often wiping out entire families, forcibly displacing nearly 1.9 million Palestinians and restricting the access of desperately needed humanitarian aid despite growing famine in Gaza.”
Callamard said the Gaza conflict had seen “the greatest number of journalists killed, and the greatest number of humanitarian actors killed.”
Among those killed are at least 251 aid workers, 183 UN staff, 490 health workers and 140 journalists.
Israel is systematically violating the Geneva Conventions - the backbone of international humanitarian law - and targeting civilians on a massive scale. Israeli government and military officials have blocked humanitarian aid from entering Gaza for more than six months, leading to an imminent famine in the territory. Dozens of people have already died of starvation.
Amnesty International's report says Israel's Western allies have failed to stop the bloodshed, citing “the US’s brazen use of its veto to paralyses the UN Security Council for months on a much-needed resolution for a ceasefire, as it continues to arm Israel with munitions that have been used to commit what likely amounts to war crimes.”
On April 5, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) adopted a resolution to cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel. In its resolution, the Council also overwhelmingly called for Israel to be held accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Meanwhile, the United States and Germany - Israel's largest arms suppliers and closest allies - continue to provide political and military support for a war against civilians characterized by serious war crimes and other grave violations of international humanitarian law by Israeli forces.
These include the collective punishment of civilians, the use of starvation as a method of warfare, the denial of humanitarian aid, indiscriminate killings of civilians, disproportionate attacks, forced displacement, torture, enforced disappearances and other atrocity crimes.
The UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) reported this week the discovery of mass graves at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, central Gaza, and Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Hundreds of bodies were found at the sites.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on Tuesday he was horrified by the destruction of the An Nasser and Al Shifa medical complexes and the reported discovery of mass graves in and around those sites. He called for independent, effective and transparent investigations into the deaths.
“Given the prevailing climate of impunity, this should include international investigators,” he said. “Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law. And the intentional killing of civilians, detainees, and others who are hors de combat is a war crime.”
On January 26, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its first set of interim measures, including an order to the Israeli authorities to take "effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence" related to allegations of genocide. This includes not denying or otherwise restricting access to Gaza by fact-finding missions, international mandates and other bodies to assist in the preservation of evidence.
Türk also condemned a series of Israeli attacks on the southern town of Rafah in the past few days, killing mostly children and women, and reiterated his warning against a full-scale incursion into an area where 1.2 million civilians have been forcibly trapped.
Such an operation would lead to further breaches of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, he said. It would risk more deaths, injuries and large-scale displacement - even more atrocity crimes for which those responsible would be held accountable.
Some information for this report provided by VOA.