Senior UN official calls for stopping attempts to sideline UNWRA
"No other agency has the same reach, experience or community trust needed to do the job," Martin Griffiths emphasized
UNITED NATIONS, March 31. /TASS/. UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths has called for stopping attempts to remove the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from the Gaza Strip as aid distribution without them is impossible.
"Attempts to sideline UNRWA must stop," he wrote on his X page. "UNRWA is the backbone of the humanitarian operation in Gaza. Any effort to distribute aid without them is simply doomed to fail."
"No other agency has the same reach, experience or community trust needed to do the job," he emphasized.
The Guardian said earlier, citing its sources, that suggested the United Nations dissolve the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and transfer its employees to another agency, for instance the World Food Program or a new organization that would be established to distribute food aid in Gaza.
In late January, a number of countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Germany, announced their decision to suspend financing for the UNRWA following reports about some of the agency’s employees possibly being linked with Hamas. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini ordered the dismissal of several agency employees due to their alleged connection to the Hamas attack on Israel last year. Later, the agency accused Israel of torturing its employees who had been taken prisoner to force them "confess" of having ties with the radical movement.
Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 240 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank.