Attachments
General Assembly
Official Records
Seventy-eighth Session
Supplement No. 13
Letters of transmittal Letter dated 18 August 2023 from the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East addressed to the President of the General Assembly
I am pleased to transmit to the General Assembly the annual report on the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) for 2022. It is submitted in compliance with the requests made in paragraph 21 of General Assembly resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December 1949, as modified by paragraph 11 of General Assembly resolution 1018 (XI), and in paragraph 8 of General Assembly resolution 1315 (XIII) of 12 December 1958.
Despite its complex operational environment and financial challenges, UNRWA continued to provide critical human development and humanitarian services to millions of Palestine refugees in 2022. In doing so, the Agency has contributed to the well-being of and offered hope to one of the most destitute communities in the Middle East and promoted regional stability and the quest for peace.
As attested in the report, more than 500,000 Palestine refugees girls and boys received education in UNRWA schools, nearly 2 million patients received primary health care, more than 300,000 of the poorest were supported through the Agency’s social safety net programme and almost 30,000 microfinance loans helped allevi ate poverty and sustain and create jobs and economic empowerment, including for women and young persons. UNRWA also contributes to addressing the most urgent humanitarian needs of almost 2 million refugees through food and/or cash assistance.
Throughout 2022, the Agency made progress in its modernization efforts and overall digital transformation, improving the quality and accessibility of its services, broadening opportunities for Palestine refugees and reinforcing its status as a highly cost-efficient organization. It completed a multi-year set of management reform initiatives with the aim of strengthening accountability, enhancing transparency, making management more inclusive and improving organizational culture.
Those positive developments notwithstanding, I must alert the General Assembly that the situation for millions of Palestine refugees in the region is further deteriorating. At the same time, the Agency’s ability to meet their rising needs and implement its mandate is increasingly being challenged by its chronic underfunding.
Since 2022, Palestine refugees living in the West Bank have been facing recordbreaking violence, significantly affecting refugee children. The Gaza Strip saw two major escalations, which have compounded the severe duress caused by years of a crippling blockade. Currently, three out of four persons in Gaza rely on emergency food assistance. The earthquakes that struck the Syrian Arab Republic in February 2023 increased the suffering of those already living through the worst humanitarian crisis that the country has experienced since the conflict started. In Lebanon, the economic meltdown is severely affecting the most vulnerable, including Palestine refugees, who were already systematically marginalized. In Jordan, around 180,000 Palestine refugees remain with limited opportunities for earning a livelihood to meet their basic needs, pushing them further into debt.
All of these developments have pushed many Palestine refugees further into poverty, reaching close to universal levels in Gaza, Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic. There has been a marked rise in negative coping mechanisms, including child labour, early marriage and migration along dangerous routes. Refugees’ despair and hopelessness is further compounded by the lack of progress on the political track and the feeling that a just and lasting solution to their plight, in line with United Nations resolutions and international law, has never been further away. In this context, UNRWA often remains the only lifeline for millions of Palestine refugees.
While UNRWA is one of the most successful examples of multilateral cooperation and United Nations operations in the region, the gap between the growing needs of Palestine refugees and the rising costs of operations, on the one hand, and the services that the Agency can deliver with the available funds, on the other, is becoming unbearable. This gap undermines not only the quality of the Agency’s core services, but also the ability of UNRWA to provide humanitarian assistance and respond to new challenges, such as post-coronavirus disease (COVID-19) learning loss among its students.
UNRWA has also experienced an estimated 30 labour strikes over the past 20 years, including its longest strike in recent history, which occurred in the first half of 2023 in the West Bank. That strike deprived 45,000 children of education and thousands of Palestine refugees from having access to health care for more 100 days. The unusual duration of the strike is partly attributable to a management decision to break with past practice and adhere to UNRWA rules and regulations, including those related to its pay policy, in order to protect the Agency, its staff and Palestine refugees.
The Agency’s dire financial situation reached a new and dangerously critical level in 2022, when UNRWA carried over an unprecedented amount of debt, representing approximately 45 days of operational costs, into 2023. The financial situation has become even more critical, as some of the Agency’s most committed donors have indicated that they will substantially decrease their contributions to UNRWA in 2023 and beyond.
At the time of writing, UNRWA lacks the funds that it needs to sustain all core services and pay salaries until the end of 2023 and end the vicious cycle of indebtment. The Agency’s emergency appeals also remain severely underfunded. In the past six months alone, UNRWA responded to four emergencies, which further increased the needs of Palestine refugees and their dependency on the Agency.
The Palestine refugee community and the Agency are sincerely grateful for the generous support of host countries and donors. The exceptional value for money that UNRWA represents in terms of service delivery has been acknowledged by many. However, the reality is that the Agency’s model of providing public-sector-like services based on voluntary funding can no longer be sustained.
UNRWA has now reached the limits of its ability to use a combination of costcontrol, austerity measures and incurring debt to manage the chronic underfunding of its core programme budget. The fact that the Agency provides public-sector-like services means that it has no ability to adjust its programming to match available resources. The Agency’s fundraising efforts, supported by many Member States, continue unabated. Over the past 18 months, I engaged with hosts and donors in order to find innovative and sustainable solutions to the Agency’s financial challenges. Regretfully, none of those solutions have yet proven to be the “game changer” that is needed in order to build a sustainable and predictable UNRWA.
The Agency is locked into a status quo that has become its major existential threat. If UNRWA continues along the current path, it simply will not be able to carry out its mandate anymore. An interruption of services would have severe humanitarian, political and security implications for refugees and host countries, as well as for the region and beyond.
This simply cannot be allowed to happen. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to overcome tensions between the mandate, the needs of Palestine refugees, the resources made available to UNRWA and relations among unions, the management and host countries, and the perception of the refugee community that any transformation of the service delivery model, in the absence of a political horizon, would be an abandonment of their rights.
As we approach the seventy-fifth anniversary of the establishment of an agency that was meant to be temporary, and at a time when a political solution is further out of reach, we have a collective responsibility to find pathways to uphold our duty and commitment to protect the rights of Palestine refugees, in line with the relevant General Assembly and Security Council resolutions. I strongly believe th at we need to elevate the level of the discussion and shift it from a discussion of the Agency’s ability to continue delivering services on a daily basis to a discussion of the future role that a sustainable UNRWA can play. Undoubtedly, that discussion needs to be accompanied by a renewed and tangible commitment from the international community to work towards a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
(Signed) Philippe Lazzarini
Commissioner-General
Letter dated 21 June 2023 from the Chair of the Advisory Commission of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East addressed to the Commissioner-General of the Agency
At its regular session, held in Beirut on 20 and 21 June 2023, the Advisory Commission of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) considered your annual report on UNRWA activities and operations covering the period from 1 January to 31 December 2022, to be submitted to the General Assembly at its forthcoming session.
The Commission warmly welcomes the decision taken by the Secretary-General to renew your mandate as Commissioner-General of the Agency for a further three years, commencing on 1 April 2023. The Commission will continue to support you and cooperate closely with you and your team in support of Palestine refugees.
The Commission strongly commends UNRWA for the vital role it plays in the region through its efforts in continuously delivering services and humanitarian assistance to Palestine refugees despite tremendous challenges. In this regard, the Commission welcomes the renewal of the UNRWA mandate by the General Assembly in December 2022 as a clear manifestation of the Agency’s importance as a key pillar of stability in the region until a just and lasting solution is reached in accordance with the relevant United Nations resolutions (General Assembly resolutions 194 (III) and 302 (IV)). The Commission notes that the number of Palestine refugees under the UNRWA mandate is 5.9 million, and it accordingly recognizes the enduring hardship of Palestine refugees, who have been forcibly displaced from their homes for 75 years and face the dire effects of the failure to resolve the many politically rooted crises in the region, including the occupation of the Palestinian territory, the blockade on Gaza, the economic crisis in Lebanon and the conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic. In common acknowledgement of the severity and continued deterioration of the complex financial and contextual realities the Agency is facing, for which the financial status quo is no longer viable, the Commission stresses the need to intensify po litical dialogue and processes involving Member States in a collective determination to protect the international consensus regarding the Agency’s essential role in the past, the present and, most importantly, the future of Palestine refugees and the Near East.
The Commission is gravely concerned about the deterioration of the protection environment and the increasing levels of insecurity and violence in several fields of operation, causing multiple negative effects on children and alarming levels of trauma and psychological distress, as well as interruption and disruption of core services. In particular, the Commission expresses serious concern regarding the escalation of violence against civilians, as 2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians, includin g refugees in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since systematic data collection began in 2005.1 2022 saw an unprecedented number of armed Israeli operations in Palestine refugee camps occurring increasingly during daylight and school hours, as well as a sharp increase in settler violence. The Commission further expresses grave concern regarding the destruction and death endured by Palestine refugees as hostilities resumed in Gaza from 5 to 7 August, causing the death of Palestinian civilians, including 17 children, and the injury of more than 360 others, including 151 children, as well as the destruction of housing units affecting over 8,500 residents, with some internally displaced persons seeking refuge in UNRWA schools.
The Commission is also deeply concerned about the considerably worsening socioeconomic conditions of Palestine refugees, including the deepening of poverty rates to a near-universal level in Gaza, Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic. The Commission is equally concerned about the continued access restrictions imposed on the Gaza Strip by Israel, which have persisted for more than 16 years and resulted in deepening dependence on UNRWA and humanitarian actor assistance, the alarmingly rapid deterioration of the situation of Palestine refugees in Lebanon facing one of the worst economic crises in recent history and the unprecedented levels of humanitarian needs in the Syrian Arab Republic since the beginning of the conflict. The Commission is further concerned about evidence pointing to a learning loss of more than 50 per cent among UNRWA students induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the deterioration of learning conditions in UNRWA schools as a result of austerity measures, both of which undermine field-specific response plans developed by the Agency in 2022 and human development prospects. Fundamentally, the Commission is alarmed by the restricted ability of the Agency, as the main provider of services, aid and assistance to Palestine refugees, to respond to increasing needs related to compounding crises in a situation of chronic underfunding.
The Commission is seriously concerned about the precarious financial situation of UNRWA, which is executing its programmes with no operational reserve and a widening gap between expenditure and income, despite a zero-growth budget plan. The financial deficit and the carrying forward of increasing amounts of liabilities over the years profoundly undermine the Agency’s financial sustainability, suppress its ability to adequately fulfil its mandate by having to constantly function in perpetual crisis management mode to deliver indispensable relief and services, and increase uncertainty and despair among UNRWA staff and the communities they serve. The Commission furthermore acknowledges that the daunting challenges faced by the Agency to adapt to financial realities, manoeuvre in the political environment in which it operates and meet the imperative to safeguard its crucial mandate and the rights of Palestine refugees. In that regard, the Commission commends the efforts undertaken during 2022 by the Governments of Jordan and Sweden, as well as Norway, to garner support for more sustainable funding avenues, including by increasing United Nations regular budget allocations for UNRWA. Also, the Commission welcomes the efforts of the Agency to diversify its funding sources by reaching out to the private sector and emerging Asian donors, highlighting its 70-year partnership with Japan. The Commission hereby urges the Commissioner-General to strengthen efforts with Member States and the international community to promote and nurture such efforts to protect the mandate of UNRWA, and to explore further access to assessed contributions in support of the Agency’s programmes.
The Commission remains concerned about the restrictions on movement of persons and goods imposed by Israel and other detrimental practices directed at UNRWA staff and property, including any breaches of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, resulting in lost working hours and additional transit and logistical expenditure, and calls upon all parties to respect their obligations under international law.
The Commission commends the efforts of UNRWA to rise to the challenge by improving its operations in difficult contexts, the development of the new strategic plan, the implementation of management initiatives and efforts to improve the Agency’s governance, the progress made in modernization, such as increasing digitalization, and the development of forward-looking programmes investing in youth, such as the technical and vocational education and training offered at the Gaza information technology hub, and the Commission encourages the Agency to further initiatives towards this end.
The Commission expresses its sincere gratitude to hosts and donors for supporting the Agency’s essential activities and service delivery to promote Palestine refugees’ rights, as well as their human development, in the fields of health, education, relief and social services, infrastructure and camp improvement, microfinance, protection and humanitarian assistance. The Commission welcomes the Commissioner-General’s efforts to engage hosts and donors through the Advisory Commission to seek strategic advice, strengthen trust and forge common understandings on the way forward for the Agency. The Commission encourages further progress in this direction, in view of the potential held by such a platform in building consensus on improved strategic avenues and prospects for the future.
The Commission urges the Commissioner-General to continue working with Member States to sustain and reinforce their financial and political support and commitments to the Agency in the wake of the aforementioned crises commensurate with the support expressed by the large majority of nations that voted in the General Assembly to extend the UNRWA mandate in 2022 and support its vital role for millions of Palestine refugees and their rights as a priority for the international community pending a just and lasting political solution.
(Signed) Bassel El Hassan