Norway to boost funding for UN’s Palestinian refugee agency

LONDON

Norway on Monday reiterated its support for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), accusing Israel of continuously attacking the organization and withholding funds from major donors.

The authorities pledged to further increase the funds to 100 million Norwegian kroner ($9.3 million) in addition to the 275 million kroner ($25.8 million) Norway contributed earlier this year.

The announcement was made during UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini’s visit to Norway.

“UNRWA is the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza. The war, accusations made by Israel, continuous attacks on the organization and funds withheld by major donors have put UNRWA in an extremely difficult financial situation,” said Minister of International development Anne Beathe Kristiansen Tvinnereim in a statement.

Since Israel launched the war on Gaza on Oct. 7 last year, nearly 200 UNRWA staff members have been killed, according to Norwegian authorities.

“The organization’s staff, schools and hospitals are under daily attacks. UNRWA’s headquarters in East Jerusalem has been attacked multiple times. Furthermore, administrative impediments are placed on the organization, making it increasingly difficult for UNRWA to operate in Palestine,” the statement said.

UNRWA and other UN organizations’ ability to deliver much needed humanitarian aid, including health care and education, to people living amid war and conflict, “is fundamental in a world order based on international law,” Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in the statement.

“UNRWA represents the international community’s commitment to Palestine refugees until a political solution is found. Therefore, Norway and other countries must guard and support the organization,” he added.

UNRWA was created by the UN General Assembly more than 70 years ago to assist Palestinians who were forcibly displaced from their land leading up to Israel’s creation in 1948.

The agency provides crucial support to millions of Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and other areas where large numbers of registered Palestinians live.

UNRWA’s ability to carry out its mandate relies on predictable funding and is crucial on an individual level, but also to “the stability in the entire Middle East,” the statement said.

Lazzarini earlier this year accused Tel Aviv of having a “long-term political goal” of “destroying” the UN aid agency, together with the idea that Palestinians are refugees who have a right to return home one day, the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger reported.

“At the moment, we are dealing with an expanded, concentrated Israeli campaign, which is aimed at destroying UNRWA,” said Lazzarini.

Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7, 2023 attack by the Palestinian group Hamas.

More than 37,300 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 85,000 others injured, according to local health authorities.

Over eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its operation in the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.