BICOM

A senior US official said yesterday that the Trump administration believes the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), “has perpetuated and exacerbated the refugee crisis”.

“The US policy regarding UNRWA has been under frequent evaluation and internal discussion. The administration will announce its policy on UNRWA in due course,” the administration official said.

The US remains one of the largest funders of UNRWA, despite the State Department cutting the first $125 million instalment of its annual payment by more than half, to $60 million. The official said: “UNRWA’s financial situation has been unsustainable for a long time, and for years we have voiced the need for UNRWA to seek out new voluntary funding streams, increase financial burden sharing among donors and find ways to reduce expenditures.” Past proposals to reform UNWRA have also highlighted its high staff numbers of more than 30,000 employees, compared to 11,000 employed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Much of the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan remains a closely-guarded secret, but emails recently leaked to Foreign Policy reveal that Jared Kushner, US President Trump’s top envoy for Israeli-Palestinian talks, pressed fellow officials to engage in “an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA”.

Kushner also reportedly pressured Jordan to strip the refugee status of the two million Palestinians residing in the country. However, the senior administration official declined to confirm how the administration would like to see UNRWA’s mandate change and declined to say whether the Trump administration believes Palestinians living in other countries should maintain their refugee status.

UNRWA provides services for more than 5 million registered Palestinian refugees, offering educational, health and social services across the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The agency educates 500,000 children in 700 schools and UNRWA doctors see more than 9 million patients in nearly 150 primary health clinics every year. Critics of UNRWA say it perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem by allowing refugee status to be inherited within families.

The UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, told the UN Security Council two weeks ago that UNRWA needs $217 million to sustain its work for this year.