JERUSALEM, Saturday, December 25, 2021 (WAFA) – Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), has warned that chronic and drastic funding shortfalls could even lead to its collapse.
“Today, austerity has reached its limit and is impacting the quality of our services”, he said, highlighting that despite “rampant” poverty, the agency can no longer increase the number of refugees that it supports.
He added that "austerity reaches its limit when we put 50 children in a classroom or leave the most deprived children without transportation or stationery...when a doctor can only spend three minutes with a patient...[and] when many teachers and sanitation laborers are daily paid workers. These are frontline staff and it really pains me that UNRWA cannot yet give them more stable jobs”.
In an open letter to Palestine refugees, Lazzarini wrote that he was “painfully aware” that further uncertainty about UNRWA’s “dire” financial situation added another layer of distress to their lives.
“When everything around you falls apart, being able to send your children to school, receive health care and be part of a social safety net are a lifeline”, he added.
The UNRWA Commissioner-General spoke of his many meetings with Palestine refugees throughout the year, including children in Gaza who were mentally scarred in May by 10 days of rocket fire and airstrike exchanges between Israeli forces and armed groups in the enclave.
He also recalled encountering refugee families in the West Bank “living with the daily threat of forced displacement; young graduates in Burj Baranjeh camp in Lebanon whose only hope for a better future was to emigrate through dangerous migration routes; and refugees in Jordan who faced immense financial hardships under COVID-19”.
To date, over five million Palestinians are registered with UNRWA as refugees in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
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