Speaking before the General Assembly’s Ad Hoc Committee on Contributions to UNRWA, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres noted that “the UN agency is chronically underfunded. Over the past 10 years, the needs of the Palestinian refugees have continued to grow despite funding stagnation.” He urged UN Member States to “commit to reducing UNRWA’s funding gap to zero this year and to put the Agency on a permanent financial footing.”

“The second call requires a long-term plan to stabilize UNRWA funding and share access to adequate, predictable and sustainable funding,” Guterres explained, stressing that “millions of Palestinian refugees depend on us to ease their suffering and help them build a better future. We can’t let them down.”

He urged “not to marginalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the plight of Palestinian refugees against the backdrop of world attention to the crisis in Ukraine.”

The Secretary General described support for UNRWA as “not only a matter of fairness, but also an obstacle to the spread of extremism, terrorism and other threats” and considered that “investing in UNRWA means investing in the stability of the region and what it means to invest in the future through education” and respecting the commitment international community to Palestine refugees and their rights until a just and lasting political solution is found.

UNRWA, which currently provides assistance to some 5.6 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as the West Bank and Gaza, is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions from UN member states.