The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) is “irreplaceable” and “indispensable” – not just for Gaza and the occupied West Bank but for the entire region.
That was the message several top diplomats stressed on Thursday at the UN General Assembly as they pleaded for political and financial support for the agency.
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“UNRWA is a force for stability in the most unstable region of the world,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at a meeting held on the sidelines of the summit.
“UNRWA is vital to any prospects of peace and stability in the region. I urge you to do all you can to support its work.”
The agency’s role has been under the microscope since the outbreak of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023.
As bombing campaigns and a ground invasion displaced thousands of Palestinians, UNRWA became one of the main distributors of aid in the territory.
But with the United States – once UNRWA’s largest donor – cutting off funding, the UN agency is now facing a major financial crisis with a budget deficit of $200m.
On Thursday, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi warned that “UNRWA is collapsing”.
“I do not have to make the case for UNRWA. The starving children of Gaza so painfully make that case,” Safadi said.
“The mothers who are watching their infants fade before their eyes make the case for UNRWA. The 600,000 or more students in Gaza, who have not gone to school for two years, make the case for UNRWA.”
The UN organisation provides healthcare, education, humanitarian aid and cash assistance to millions of Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory and across the Middle East.
The agency was founded in 1949 to look after the needs of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who were ethnically cleansed from their towns during the establishment of the state of Israel a year earlier.
Since then, UNRWA has been providing services to displaced Palestinians and their descendants, who remain stateless refugees.
For years, successive Israeli governments have pushed to delegitimise UNRWA, accusing it of distributing anti-Semitic materials and having ties to armed groups.
But critics have argued that efforts to undermine UNRWA are designed to erase the plight of Palestinian refugees who seek to return to their homes in modern-day Israel.
In the wake of the Hamas-led attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, pressure on UNRWA increased.
Israel falsely claimed that a significant number of UNRWA employees participated in t