International support for UNRWA is widely questioned… Including by Paris. This Sunday, January 28, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that “France has not planned a new payment in the first quarter of 2024” to this United Nations agency dedicated to supporting Palestinian refugees.
At issue: the “exceptionally serious” accusations expressed two days earlier. On January 26, UNRWA announced that it had dismissed twelve people following information communicated to the agency by Israel “on the supposed involvement of several of its employees” in the Hamas attack of October 7, specifies a press release from its general commissioner, Philippe Lazzarini. A situation which made the head of Israeli diplomacy, Israel Katz, say that “UNRWA will not be part” of the solution in Gaza after the war.
After these revelations, several countries which until now supported the UN agency reconsidered their financial aid – at least temporarily. This was particularly the case of Washington, main donor to UNRWA in 2022. The United States’ decision has been followed by eight other countries since Friday: Germany (2nd highest support), the United Kingdom (6th), Canada (10th), Italy (16th), Finland (19th) and Australia (22nd).
Switzerland (7th) for its part indicated that it was waiting for more information before making a decision, and “Norway has decided to continue its financing”, announced its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Espen Barth Eide, in a press release. France (9th), for its part, made the return of its aid conditional on the results of “surveys launched in recent days”. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris paid 60 million euros to UNRWA in 2023.
The United Nations and the head of the Palestinian refugee agency Philippe Lazzarini deplored these decisions, the latter deeming it “shocking to see the suspension of funds in reaction to allegations against a small group of employees”. For his part, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres recalled that “two million civilians” depend on UNRWA on a daily basis and asked the countries concerned to “at least guarantee” the continuation of the agency’s operations in Gaza.