Arab League Head Says US Aid Cut for UNRWA Puts Regional Stability at Risk

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Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit speaks during a joint news conference with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in Amman, Jan. 6, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Muhammad Hamed.

Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Thursday that a cut in US funding for a UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees will put the stability and security of the region at risk.

The United States, by far the largest contributor to UNRWA, announced on Jan. 16 that Washington would withhold $65 million of $125 million it had planned for the agency this year. UNRWA is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions from UN member states.

US President Donald Trump has questioned the value of such funding, and the State Department said the agency needed to make unspecified reforms.

“It is no secret that this trend poses a threat to the refugee issue … as well as the negative consequences that will not only affect the receiving countries of refugees, but also the stability and security of the region,” Aboul Gheit said at an Arab League meeting.

More than half of the two million people in Gaza are dependent on support from UNRWA and other humanitarian agencies. Palestinians say the funding decision could deepen hardship in the Gaza Strip, where the unemployment rate is 46 percent.

UNRWA was established by the UN General Assembly in 1949 after hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in the 1948 war that followed Israel’s creation.

 by Reuters and Algemeiner Staff

{Matzav.com}


3 COMMENTS

  1. The Arab League? Most of its members are floating on oil, with their citizens born millionaires. Let THEM support their benighted brethren, whom they continuously refuse to absorb, or allow to become citizens. What’s few billion between such loving relatives?

  2. Let the arabs pay for their own family members. We’re tired of giving money to those that hate us. We finally have a President with saichel.

  3. Bravo! Time for agencies to realize that ” you can’t have your cake and eat it too”. Why should the US contribute anything to these unappreciative takers , if they constantly criticize and spit in their (USA) face??? As pointed out by previous commenter- Let the Arab brothers take over this funding.

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