More than a dozen Western countries have decided to withdraw their financial support for the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA) after Israel denounced that a group of its workers collaborated with Hamas in the terrorist attacks of October 7.
The operation of UNRWA, created in 1949, depends entirely on financial contributions. According to Reuters, more than 85% of its funding comes from UN member states, regional governments and the European Union.
In 2022, the main contributors to UNRWA were the United States, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Norway, France, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Turkey and the European Union.
Taking into account that the decision to freeze its funds has been adopted by the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, Canada and Australia, it is easy to understand the blow that this represents for the agency.
A UNRWA spokesperson, in fact, declared this Monday the 29th that if contributions were not resumed the agency would only be able to continue its operations until the end of February.
Trade spoke with international analyst Francisco Belaunde Matossian about the effect the decision will have on UNRWA, how it will impact the UN’s work in the Middle East and what it represents for the future in relations between Israel and the United Nations.
– How much will this freezing of funds impact UNRWA operations?
The suspension of funds by these countries undoubtedly represents a very serious problem for this UN agency, it will affect it, its officials have already said that they only have money left to fulfill their functions for another month and a half. Finally, a good part of the humanitarian aid that arrives in Gaza is handled by this agency because a large part of the Gazan population still lived in neighborhoods considered refugee camps. As a result of the war, many had to leave their homes. The effect can be dramatic because there is no other agency with the installed capacity to address this humanitarian crisis.
– Is it a measure proportional to the accusation?
That there are people involved in terrorist acts undoubtedly has to be investigated and UNRWA itself has admitted that such cases could exist. But from there to cutting off financial support there is a quite complicated path.
– How serious is it that the UN agency is accused of having members who collaborated with Hamas in the attacks? How impactful is your work in the Middle East?
In every organization, in general, there can be bad apples. It is something common in every organization. But this issue is more complicated because it has to do with terrorism, the brutality of the October 7 attacks and it also has to do with the fact that Israel maintains a discourse against the UN. They consider that the United Nations has an anti-Semitic or, in any case, anti-Israel stance. This case complicates the issue because it gives them arguments to say that they were right in their accusations that UNRWA supports Hamas. Given this, Western countries that support Israel feel that they must take measures against this organization.
– Israel and the UN had already exchanged statements in previous months, everything indicates that this relationship will continue to worsen…
Yes of course. It’s going to continue to get worse. Furthermore, with the issue that the Hague Tribunal (the International Court of Justice – ICJ), even though they did not order a ceasefire and has not yet determined whether there is a genocide or not in Gaza, the fact that it said that there are possible indications of genocide and dictated measures makes Israel not happy with that court either.
– With the decision of much of the West towards UNRWA, what will be the role of the Middle East powers towards the UN or Gaza in general?
I have not yet seen those countries say that they are going to increase their contributions or not. At least until now I haven’t seen it. But on other occasions when support for similar bodies or even financing the Palestinian National Authority has been restricted, they have partly covered the gap. At some point I think they will have to reach into their pockets. But for that we have to wait for what UNRWA says or does, they have said that they have money left for a month and a half, perhaps in that time one of the Western countries will restore the flow of money as what is discovered.
