ReliefWeb

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established in 1949 to provide much-needed relief and emergency aid to the Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. Since then, UNRWA’s operations have expanded to provide essential relief and human development services to 5 million registered Palestine refugees in the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.

UNRWA’s largest programme is education. The Agency has been the main provider of primary education to Palestine refugees for over 60 years, and currently operates nearly 700 schools for almost half a million refugee pupils. UNRWA also delivers basic health services through 137 health centres. The Agency’s network of primary healthcare facilities and mobile clinics provides the foundation of its health services, offering preventive care, general medicine and specialized services. The third of UNRWA’s main programmes is relief and social services. Through this programme, the Agency provides essential food and cash assistance to the poorest refugee families to enable them to meet their most basic needs. In addition to these three main programmes, UNRWA also operates a microfinance programme, to promote economic and sustainable development, infrastructure and camp improvement programme to ameliorate the physical and social environment of UNRWA’s refugee camps and an emergency programme to mitigate the negative effects of sudden crises.