United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established to provide assistance to Palestinian refugees. The UNRWA defined a Palestinian refugee as someone who was normally resident in Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, and who lost their home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. All Palestinian refugees who are registered with UNRWA and are in need of assistance are eligible for help from UNRWA. In 2004, there were 4 million registered Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA. [1] UNRWA provides facilities in 59 recognized refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Together these camps house approximately one-third of all registered Palestinian refugees. It also provides facilities in other areas where large numbers of registered Palestinian refugees live outside of recognized camps. In order for a camp to be recognized by UNRWA, there must be an agreement between the host government and UNRWA governing use of the camp. UNRWA does not itself run the camp, but provides services to the camp. Services provided by UNRWA include health care, schools, and distribution of food and clothing aid. The largest expenditure, amounting to almost half, is on education. 99% of UNRWA's 23,000 employees are locally-recruited Palestinians. Annual funding for UNRWA is in the order of several hundred million US dollars, of which the majority comes from donor countries. A smaller amount comes directly from the United Nations. The major contributors (based on 2002 figures not counting emergency funds) are the United States, the European Commission, the United Kingdom and Sweden.

UNRWA and Israel

Israel and UNRWA have found themselves in conflict many times since the agency's establishment. UNRWA have often accused Israel of interfering with its humanitarian work. In April 2004, UNRWA Commissioner Hansen claimed that Israel had imposed restrictions on the movement of agency staff, forcing them to temporarily suspend emergency food deliveries in the Gaza strip. He also raised concerns about UNRWA being charged fees for transporting goods through Israeli checkpoints. In addition, UNRWA have accused Israel several times of shooting at ambulances. In some cases, Israel has denied these, in others claimed that the measures were necessary for reasons of security. On the other hand, Israeli officials have often alleged that, whether knowingly or not, UNRWA have aided Palestinian terrorist organizations, such as Hamas. Accordingly, Israel claims that UNRWA facilities, such as schools and ambulances are used by terrorists for the purposes of training and shelter. They have claimed that this provides justification for their restrictions on UNRWA. While there have been documented incidences of ambulances being used by militants [1], there has been no evidence that this was condoned by UNRWA, implicitly or otherwise, and UNRWA have called the claims "baseless" [1]. In 2003, United States "Operations Support Officers" made random and unannounced inspections of 76% of UNRWA's West Bank facilities and 85% of UNWRA's Gaza Strip facilities to investigate claims of terrorist use of the facilities. They reported that no such uses had been detected. Nevertheless there is a continuing disagreement between the United States and UNRWA over whether UNRWA is doing enough to prevent relief being given to persons involved in terrorism.

External links

\n* http://www.un.org/unrwa/ - Official UNRWA homepage\n* 2004 Report on UNRWA by journalist Pearl Herman (pdf)\n* Collection of revelant documents\n* United States GAO report on UNRWA (pdf)\n* map showing all camps serviced by UNRWA \nCategory:United Nations specialized agencies\nCategory:Israeli history\ncategory:Palestine