Sweden ends funding for UN Palestinian aid agency UNRWA
World
Sweden ends funding for UN Palestinian aid agency UNRWA
(Reuters) - Sweden will no longer fund the UN refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide increased overall humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Nordic country said on Friday.
Israel, which says it will ban UNRWA operations in the country from late January, accuses the agency of being involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel that triggered the 14-month-old war in Gaza.
Sweden's decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channelling aid via the agency more difficult, the country's aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
"Large parts of UNRWA's operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible," Dousa told Reuters. "For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through."
Dousa said Sweden "in no way" supported Israel's law and had repeatedly expressed its criticism. "Israel must do much more to ensure humanitarian access to Gaza," he said.
The new Israeli law does not directly ban UNRWA's operations in the West Bank and Gaza but it will have a severe impact on UNRWA's ability to work. Top U.N. officials describe UNRWA as the backbone of Gaza's aid response.
Sweden plans to lift its overall humanitarian aid to Gaza next year to 800 million Swedish crowns ($72.44 million) from 451 million spent this year, the foreign ministry said.
Aid will flow via several organisations including the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), the U.N. Populations Fund (UNFPA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Ministry added.
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The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: "We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees." The refugee population relies on UNRWA healthcare, education, emergency relief, and humanitarian assistance, it said.
The U.N. General Assembly threw its support behind UNRWA this month, demanding Israel respect the agency's mandate and "enable its operations to proceed without impediment or restriction".
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on X: "Defunding UNRWA now will undermine decades of Sweden’s investment in human development including by denying access to education for hundreds of thousands of girls and boys across the region."
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden's decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
"There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach," she said.
The U.N. has said nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and had been fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon - killed by Israel - was also found to have had a UNRWA job.
