The United Nations on Thursday received pledges of nearly $100 million in new funding for its relief agency for Palestinians after the U.S. slashed its aid, but says it is still facing a nearly $350 million shortfall this year.
Among the countries that offered to increase their donations to UNRWA were France, Qatar, Canada, Switzerland, Turkey, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Mexico, South Korea, Slovakia and India, a U.N. official said, without giving any further details.
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres called the pledges "an important first step" at the Rome conference. He said "a long way is in front of us" to fully fund the agency, which went into the conference facing a $446 million gap in financing this year after the U.S., formerly UNRWA'S largest donor, providing a third of the agency's budget, announced it was withholding aid.
In announcing the cuts in January, the U.S. State Department said it wanted reforms at the agency.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has voiced measured support for the U.S. cuts but also appeared to acknowledge it could leave Israel – which maintains tight restrictions on the movement of people and goods across the Gaza border – facing a potential humanitarian crisis on its doorstep.
"If UNRWA would not exist, if these services were not provided, the security of region would be severely undermined," Guterres told reporters. "Now it is very clear, it is absolutely essential, that the extraordinary unanimity in political support to UNRWA and its activities translates itself into cash."
The agency, the oldest and largest U.N. relief program in the Middle East, provides health care, education and social services to an estimated 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
Guterres cautioned that cutting sanitation, health care and medical services in already poverty-wracked and conflict-ridden areas "would have [a] severe impact – a cascade of problems that could push the suffering in disastrous and unpredictable directions."
The Trump administration announced in January it was withholding $65 million of a planned $125 million funding installment. It released $60 million so the agency wouldn't shut down but made clear that additional U.S. donations would be contingent on major reforms at the agency.
Agency spokesman Christopher Gunness said the actual cut was around $300 million because the U.S. had led the agency to believe it would provide $365 million in 2018. He said the agency went into 2018 with a $146 million shortfall that ballooned to $446 million without the anticipated U.S. funds.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who co-hosted the meeting with Jordan and Sweden, was hopeful the U.S. would continue to support the agency and the creation of a viable Palestinian state that could care for its own people.
"We recognize the important contributions of the United States in the past and look forward that it continues to play its fundamental role in support of UNRWA and in also support of the peace process to enable the establishment of the Palestinian state," he said.
Shoukry said the agency had already streamlined some of its activities but that there was a limit to what it could do "given the enormous needs faced by 5 million people."
He told reporters it was "vital and it is necessary to address these very basic services, but also to provide dignity for multitudes of Palestinians and to [protect] many of them from the potential threats of radicalization and terrorism," he told reporters.
Also on Thursday, dozens of Palestinians held a demonstration outside UNRWA's field office in Gaza, calling on donors to keep supporting the relief agency.
In Gaza's Shati refugee camp, Hatem Abu Sultan has depended on U.N. aid to support his seven-member family but recently grew terrified that food packages, free education and medical treatment might soon dry up.
In the Baqaa refugee camp in Jordan, some Palestinians said public services had already been affected by the funding cuts, with UNRWA laying off garbage collectors and teachers on strike.
For most dwellers in Baqaa and other camps, UNRWA is a potent symbol of refugee identity and they fear that if it is scrapped, any hope of return to their original homes will be dashed forever.
A diplomat in Rome, who declined to be named, warned that UNRWA's woes could persuade hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to try to come to Europe, possibly exacerbating the EU immigration crisis.
