Belgium defends UN agency for Palestinian refugees: ‘There is no alternative’
“There is no alternative to UNRWA,” whose work is “more important than ever”, Belgium said at a meeting on the UN agency for Palestinian refugees on the margins of the UN Security Council General Assembly in New York.
“UNRWA is an essential factor for regional stability,” said Theodora Gentzis of the Belgian Foreign Affairs ministry. She expressed Belgium’s concern about the problems the agency faces on the ground and the Israeli parliament’s labelling of UNRWA as a “terrorist organisation”.
Israel has accused 19 agency staff of being involved in the large-scale attack by Hamas on 7 October that led to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. According to a UN internal investigation, nine of the thousands of UNRWA staff may have been involved.
Founded in 1949, UNRWA provides aid to Palestinian refugees and runs several hundred schools. It provides vital aid to millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which is in ruins after almost a year of war.
"UNRWA is an essential factor for regional stability"
Since the start of the Israeli offensive in October, in response to the attack by Hamas, 222 UNRWA staff have been killed in the Gaza Strip. Guterres called it “the heaviest human toll in UN history”. In total, more than 41,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip in one year.
Belgium has reaffirmed its political and financial support to the agency in recent months, providing 16.5 million euros in aid this year.
Following Belgium’s lead at Thursday's meeting, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, individual countries and the European Union stressed UNRWA’s vital role in Gaza and denounced attempts to discredit the agency.
“We must tell our Israeli friends that we all consider labelling UNRWA a terror organisation as an attack on the UN. That is totally unacceptable,” Norwegian Foreign minister Espen Barth Eide said.
A member of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the courtyard of a school after an Israeli airstrike hit the site, in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, 11 September 2024 © PHOTO EYAD BABA / AFP
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