UNRWA a ‘lifeline of hope’ for Palestinians

What is UNRWA?

UNRWA stands for UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East.
It was founded in 1949 by an U.N. resolution to provide aid to about 700,000 Palestinians who were forced to leave their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
The UN agency operates in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as well as Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan — countries where the refugees took shelter after their expulsion.
UNRWA runs education, health, relief and social services, microfinance and emergency assistance programmes inside and outside refugee camps based in the aforementioned areas.
Currently, around 5.9 million Palestine refugees — most of them are descendants of original refugees — access the agency’s services.
UNRWA is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions by donor states like the US. It also gets a limited subsidy from the UN.
UNRWA was initially created as a temporary agency. However, in the absence of a solution to the Palestine refugee problem, the General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA’s mandate.

Why in News?

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres defended the UN agency for Palestinian refugees as a “lifeline of hope and dignity” and called for a surge of aid into Gaza.
His remarks come as the agency faces a financing crisis after some key donor countries cut off funding following Israeli accusations that several UNRWA staff in Gaza were involved in the October 7 Hamas attack.

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