February 1, 2024
Human Rights Watch – (New York) –
Governments should continue funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), given its vital role in
averting a humanitarian catastrophe and the risk of famine in the Gaza Strip,
while the agency investigates allegations that 12 of its staff were involved in
the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks in southern Israel, Human Rights Watch
said today.
UNRWA, the largest relief
organization in Gaza, has cautioned that, unless funding is resumed, it “will
not be able to continue” operations in Gaza, the West Bank, or the three other
countries in the region it operates in “beyond the end of February.” After
Israeli authorities provided UNRWA with information about the alleged
involvement of several of its employees in the October 7 attacks, UNRWA
announced that it had “immediately terminated” the contracts of the employees
identified and opened an investigation to “establish the truth without delay.”
The UN Secretary-General later confirmed the independence of the UN inquiry
into the allegations, noting that the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services
(OIOS) was immediately activated.
“The allegations against UNRWA staff
are serious and the UN appears to be addressing them seriously. But withholding
funds from the UN agency most able to provide immediate lifesaving food, water,
and medicine to the more than 2.3 million people of Gaza shows callous
indifference to what the world’s leading experts have warned is the looming
risk of famine,” said Akshaya Kumar, crisis advocacy director at Human Rights
Watch. “Palestinian civilians in Gaza, including children, people with
disabilities, and those who are pregnant, rely heavily on UNRWA services and
have nothing to do with the allegations against individual employees.”
As of January 31, 2024, 18
governments, whose contributions have historically accounted for over three
quarters of the agency budget, had frozen their contributions in response to
the allegations. Over 1 million displaced Palestinians in Gaza are taking shelter
in or around the agency’s shelters amid the current hostilities, and a large
number rely on the agency for vital humanitarian aid.
Australia, Austria, Canada, Estonia,
Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, New
Zealand, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United
States announced that they are indefinitely pausing payments to UNRWA in
response to the allegations that a dozen agency staff members were involved in
the October 7 attacks. By contrast, the governments of Belgium, Ireland,
Luxembourg, Slovenia, Spain, and Norway rightly issued statements confirming
their continued financial support to UNRWA, while also underlining the
importance of an investigation into the allegations.
Instead of withholding critical
funds, the European Union and France issued statements clarifying that they
intend to “review the matter in light of the outcome of the investigation
announced by the UN and the actions it will take” and “decide when the time
comes.” Contributions by governments to UNRWA are voluntary and discretionary,
Human Rights Watch said.
On October 7, Hamas-led gunmen from
the Gaza Strip carried out an attack in southern Israel, deliberately killing
civilians, firing into crowds, gunning people down in their homes, and taking
hostages back to Gaza, including older people and children, acts that amount to
war crimes. According to Israeli authorities, more than 1,200 people, most of
them civilians, have been killed since October 7, and 136 remained hostages as
of January 30.
Shortly after the October 7 attack,
Israeli authorities cut off essential services, including water and
electricity, to Gaza’s population and blocked the entry of all but a trickle of fuel and critical humanitarian aid,
acts of collective punishment that amount to war crimes. Human Rights Watch has also
found that Israeli authorities are using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.
They are doing so by deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and
fuel, willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing
agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects
indispensable to their survival under a policy set out by Israeli officials and
carried out by Israeli forces.
Israeli air strikes have incessantly
pounded Gaza, hitting schools and hospitals, reducing large parts of
neighborhoods to rubble, leaving 60 percent of Gaza’s housing units destroyed or
damaged, including in attacks that were apparently unlawful. Israeli authorities also ordered everyone in northern Gaza to leave the area, which has displaced 1.7 million people, the vast
majority of Gaza’s population, as of
January 30. According to the agency, 152 UNRWA
employees have been killed since October 7 and 141 UNRWA facilities damaged in
252 “incidents” related to the conduct of hostilities.
Human Rights Watch has urged
Israel’s key allies—including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada,
and Germany—to suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel so long as
its forces commit, with impunity, widespread and serious abuses amounting to
war crimes against Palestinian civilians. In contrast to their swift suspension
of funding to UNRWA even as an investigation is ongoing, although serious
allegations of likely war crimes have been brought to their attention, the US,
UK, Canada, and Germany continue to provide arms and military assistance to
Israel amid mounting evidence of grave abuses, Human Rights Watch said.
Aid groups have highlighted the
vital need for and value of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza. In a joint statement,
21 humanitarian organizations said they were “shocked by the reckless decision
to cut a lifeline for an entire population by some of the very countries that
had called for aid in Gaza to be stepped up and for humanitarians to be
protected while doing their job.” The director-general of the World Health
Organization and Doctors Without Borders also echoed calls to donors not to
suspend their UNRWA funding.
The Integrated Food Security Phase
Classification (IPC), a multi-partner initiative that
regularly publishes information on the scale and severity of food insecurity
and malnutrition globally, issued a report published at the end
of December concluding that the entire population of Gaza is at crisis level of
acute food insecurity or worse. The IPC said that virtually all Palestinians in
Gaza are skipping meals every day while many adults go hungry so children can
eat, and that the population faced famine if current conditions persisted. It
added: “this is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food
insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or
country.”
UNRWA was created by the UN General
Assembly in 1949 to serve Palestinian refugees. It has 30,000 employees and
provides direct humanitarian assistance, human development, and protection
programming for more than 5.9 million Palestinian refugees registered with the
agency and living in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,
as well as Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. More than half of the agency’s regular
budget is devoted to education. The agency is also sheltering over 1 million
displaced Palestinians in 150 facilities within Gaza, including its schools. At
least 357 people sheltering within the agency’s premises have been killed and
1,255 have been injured since October 7.
Some Israeli officials and members
of the US Congress have referenced the recent allegations in order to further a
longstanding campaign against UNRWA. In the wake of the most recent allegations
being made public, Israel’s Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, highlighted on
January 27 his government’s longstanding opposition to UNRWA, claiming among
other things that the UN agency “perpetuates the refugee issue,” and disclosed
that “under his leadership,” the Israeli government intends to “work to garner
bipartisan support in the US, the European Union, and other nations globally
for this policy aimed at halting UNRWA’s activities in Gaza.”
According to the Principals of the
Inter-Agency Standing Committee, “no other entity has the capacity to deliver
the scale and breadth of assistance that 2.2 million people in Gaza urgently
need.” Janti Soeripto, president and CEO of Save the Children, called it
“magical thinking” for governments to think other aid groups can replace UNRWA
in Gaza. The head of the Norwegian Refugee Council has said that other
humanitarian groups combined “are not even close to being what UNRWA is for the
people of Gaza.”
As the occupying power, Israel is
obliged to ensure that the humanitarian needs of the population of Gaza are
met. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered provisional measures on
January 26 as part of South Africa’s case against Israel alleging violations of
the Genocide Convention. The court adopted binding orders that include
requiring Israel to take immediate and effective measures to enable the
provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to
address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The court ordered Israel to report back on its compliance with the orders in
one month.
“Despite mounting risks of famine
and a binding order by the World Court in a case about genocide, Israel’s
foreign minister has now announced that he will lead a brazen effort to shut
down the UN agency most responsible for delivering lifesaving aid,” Kumar said.
“Unless governments reverse their decisions to suspend aid to UNRWA, the main
humanitarian channel into Gaza, they risk contributing to the current
catastrophe.”
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