OPINION: UN aid lifeline to suffering Palestinians in Gaza is at extreme risk

Editor’s note: Michael Boshurkiw (@tokyo_official) is a world affairs analyst and former UNICEF spokesperson for Gaza and the West Bank. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.read more CNN Opinion.

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As we drove up and down the dusty roads of the Gaza Strip, our partner, the United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees, was faced with an impossible task. It soon became clear why they were considered the poorer cousins.

At UNICEF, where I was Spokesperson for Gaza and the West Bank from 2004 to 2006, we had a top-of-the-line Toyota Land Cruiser, a nicer office, and our interventions included hygiene, camp management, and more. It barely covered the core business. This was under the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

We had the luxury of being able to rely on millions of dollars in additional funding raised through UNICEF national committees in developed countries around the world. We had the power, both in terms of resources and reputation, to attract top media outlets onto our dusty roads and enthusiastically cover flashy flagship projects such as Children’s City Council.

However, UNRWA differs from other United Nations agencies such as UNICEF in that its funding relies primarily on government funding. That’s why for countries to suspend funding, as was done last week, is a potentially fatal blow to their operations.

Its future is at stake after Israel alleges that 13 UNRWA staff were involved in the October 7 Hamas attack and countries withdrew funding. The big question is whether it can be filled. (UNRWA fired several staff and ordered an investigation following the allegations.)

Some Israeli politicians and officials have called for its dismantling, saying the agency is nothing more than a “big business” that “perpetuates the Palestinian issue.”

But the last thing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) wants is to assume responsibility for UNRWA, and that responsibility is enormous.

UNRWA is unique within the United Nations ecosystem

Since 1949, UNRWA has existed as the international community’s answer to how to deal with the hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. As we at UNICEF have seen up close, it plays a unique role in the United Nations world.

I liken this to the international community creating vast and expensive foster homes to care for Palestinians forcibly displaced by Israel, but with labels that come with expiration dates. Not listed.

With over 30,000 employees, UNRWA employs more people than the City of Philadelphia. About 13,000 people work in Gaza alone.

Furthermore, its mandate would need to be renewed every three years and would be subject to the whims of powerful member states and the unpredictability of electoral cycles in the Western democracies that primarily support it ( Last updated in December 2022, a majority of UN General Assembly member states will have until June 2026, with the United States and Israel voting against it.

Some UN monitoring agencies and NGOs claim that UNRWA school teachers spread hatred and teach inflammatory material to Palestinian children.

However imperfect as it may be, UNRWA is caught up in the existential crisis it currently faces in the Gaza Strip, with at least nine of its major donors withdrawing funding indefinitely due to Israeli claims. We never dreamed it would stop.

essential services

Don’t get me wrong. UNRWA’s services are vital to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Think of UNRWA as a ubiquitous municipal service provider. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the agency has distributed approximately 100,000 mattresses, 19 million liters of water, 3.1 million diapers, approximately 4.7 million cans of food, and $6.2 million worth of medical supplies. According to the latest situation report, approximately 1.9 million people, more than the population of the City of Brotherly Love, are currently sheltering in or near UNRWA facilities.

Even as the situation on the ground in Gaza worsens toward mass starvation and amid accusations of condoning collective punishment, major donors are withholding funds or, in the case of Canada and Germany, is temporarily withholding funds, which in my opinion is wrong. — Transfer some of the donations to other agencies working on the ground in Gaza. However, it is unlikely that other UN agencies or NGOs will be able to even partially fill the void left by UNRWA’s financial paralysis. No one has the capacity for UNRWA to reach the affected people.

The Palestinian Authority, which had urged donors to reconsider their decisions, said the number of countries that had announced they would suspend funding for UNRWA amounted to a whopping 70% of their annual budgets.

looking for the answer

If the right-wing elements of Israel’s fractured political ecosystem actually succeed in their hopes of expelling the Palestinians from Gaza, Israel’s influential allies in the West have largely ignored this dire possibility. The Arab world will have to respond. And I’m not talking military.

Don’t look to neighboring Jordan or Egypt to pick up the slack. Both warned that sending Palestinians to their own countries should be considered a red line that should not be crossed. Tiny Jordan is already home to at least 2 million Palestinians, including some who arrived from Gaza decades ago.

One option could be for wealthy Gulf states to take on more of the burden. – First, by accepting that UNRWA’s lease on life is coming to an end, and second, by funding the expansion of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which is responsible for Palestinian refugees.

Second, countries like Qatar should rethink their support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip through long-term, sustainable economic support, rather than funneling unaccountable hundreds of millions of dollars to the Hamas government in the Strip. Should. During our countless visits there, we believe that Gaza could perform an economic miracle if it were open and safe for tourists and real estate developers, and if export routes were reopened. I often guessed that it wasn’t.

Given the seriousness of the allegations, this would require a much higher level of intervention and the UN should not investigate on its own. The UN Secretary-General should appoint a special high-level envoy to investigate. After all, the entire UN brand is at risk if these allegations are not properly addressed, and the implications will be felt by other UN agencies such as the World Health Organization and UNICEF, which are doing excellent lifesaving work on the Strip. There is also a possibility that it will spread.

But time is of the essence.

Given the heavy burdens imposed, coupled with an incomplete mission and disdain for its existence within Israel, UNRWA probably did not have much time left.

A day of reckoning appears to be drawing near, with the huge death toll in the Gaza Strip likely to rise and regional instability to worsen unless the international community and neighboring countries come up with a swift and sustainable solution. is very realistic.

And the parent country that gave birth to UNRWA will only have themselves to blame.

Note: This editorial has been updated to reflect the latest number of UNRWA personnel whom Israel alleges was linked to Hamas’s October 7 attack.