Greater than 100 immigrant, refugee, human rights and humanitarian organizations despatched a letter Monday demanding Congress and President Joe Biden reinstate funding to the United Nations Reduction and Works Company.
The letter, first seen by HuffPost, was addressed to President Biden, Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) every week after Congress handed a overseas help bundle that finalized the Biden administration’s suspension of U.S. funding for the UNRWA, which was offering important help in Gaza.
For greater than 75 years, the aid company has supplied direct aid to almost 6 million Palestinians in Gaza, the West Financial institution and neighboring Arab states. In Gaza, almost the complete inhabitants depends on the help group for fundamental requirements, together with meals, water and hygiene provides, as different help organizations suspended companies after being focused and killed by Israeli bombs which have rained on Gaza since October.
In February, Israeli officers made an explosive allegation: that quite a lot of UNRWA staff in Gaza took half within the Oct. 7 Hamas assault that killed roughly 1200 individuals and noticed 250 taken hostage.
However final week, an unbiased United Nations report concluded that Israeli forces didn’t present proof to help that accusation. Regardless of this, the backlash towards UNRWA was swift. Greater than a dozen worldwide donors, together with the U.S., suspended about $450 million of help. U.S. monetary help for the aid company is suspended till a minimum of March 2025.
Germany, UNRWA’s second-biggest donor after the U.S., nevertheless, not too long ago introduced that it could resume funding for the help group.
“Slicing off funding to UNRWA utterly erodes the worldwide group’s capacity to answer one of many worst humanitarian crises of our time,” the letter mentioned. “Worldwide NGOs and different UN organizations have repeatedly acknowledged that they don’t have the personnel, sources, or infrastructure to answer the humanitarian wants in Gaza appropriately.”
The Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve the overseas help bundle final Tuesday night time in a 79-18 vote after a monthslong delay. It consists of billions of {dollars} slotted for Ukraine and Israel, in addition to humanitarian help for civilians in Gaza and the Indo-Pacific area.
“Prohibiting help for a corporation that would present life-saving meals, drugs and shelter for greater than 2 million individuals is horrific, and it’s a part of a sample of policymaking that’s typically rooted in racism and Islamophobia,” mentioned Sunil Varghese, the coverage director on the Worldwide Refugee Help Undertaking, one of many letter’s signatories.
“It’s a matter of undeniable fact that nobody can present the form of needed help that UNRWA can,” Varghese added.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini mentioned final week that the help group presently has sufficient funding to pay for operations till June. However it’s doubtless not sufficient, with reviews of famine and hunger spreading throughout Gaza. No less than 32 individuals, together with 28 kids, have died of hunger in Gaza for the reason that Israeli authorities started utilizing hunger as a conflict tactic.
Yumna Rizvi, the senior coverage analyst on the Heart for Victims of Torture, a nonprofit group, instructed HuffPost that UNRWA’s companies are important for short-term wants and treating the long-term psychological well being impression of the conflict on Palestinians.
“What persons are experiencing is just not post-traumatic, in any sense of the time period. That is an ongoing and steady traumatic risk as a result of it isn’t ending, and the survival expertise that they’re utilizing to remain alive, the longer they use them, the longer the detrimental impression it’s going to have on their our bodies,” Rizvi mentioned.
“We’re going to see the impression of this for a lifetime, and it’s going to be extremely detrimental to see how we simply selected to show our backs towards this inhabitants,” she added.
The letter’s signatories, which embrace the Nationwide Immigrant Justice Heart, Human Rights Watch and Palestine Authorized, warned of “grave penalties” if the administration doesn’t reverse course instantly.
“The US ought to uphold its dedication to the human rights of the Palestinian individuals and resume its function as a powerful supporter of UNRWA by passing laws to reinstate funding to the humanitarian company instantly,” the letter acknowledged. “Failing to take action could be an ethical stain on this Administration and Congress’s legacy.”