No
international institution has done as much for children’s schooling on
the ground for as long as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). And yet, no international
organisation has suffered an overnight funding cut as devastating as the
one UNRWA now faces, after 70 years of serving the displaced and the
desolate.
Today, some 60% of elementary- and middle-school children
in Gaza attend UNRWA schools, their only schooling alternative being
madrassas. Since Palestinian refugees do not enjoy legal protections or
access to basic services under the Refugee Convention of 1951, those
living elsewhere also rely on UNRWA schools. More than half of the
525,000 Palestinian refugees UNRWA supports live in Lebanon, Syria, and
Jordan.
Yet the United States has now decided to withhold more than
half of its planned funding for UNRWA – $65mn of $125mn, which is
already far less than the $364mn delivered last year. The move will deal
a powerful blow to efforts to confront the education emergency the
world currently faces.
Already, there are some 75mn children in
conflict and emergency zones who have had their education disrupted.
Another 30mn children – 10mn of whom are refugees – have been displaced,
with most of them denied education. Add to that the 260mn school-age
children who are not in school for other reasons, and the scale of the
problem is massive. Cutting UNRWA’s funding deepens this global
education crisis.
And it is not just education that is at stake. When
it was established in 1949, UNRWA offered a range of additional
services, from food to healthcare, to some 750,000 Palestinians who had
been expelled from their homes and lands when Israel was established the
previous year. Over the last seven decades, the agency has helped more
than 5mn people, by running schools, staffing clinics, leading
sanitation efforts, and providing shelter for men, women, and children
scattered across Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the occupied West Bank, and the
Gaza Strip.
Even today, while schools account for more than half of
UNRWA’s programme budget, the agency provides other important services
for children and families, including humanitarian assistance and
healthcare, which accounts for 17% of its total budget. In 2016, its
clinics had 9mn patient visits.
Thus, emergency assistance for 1.5mn
Palestinians in Gaza and Syria is also at risk, as a result of the
funding cut. So, too, are the livelihoods of 60,000 Palestinians
currently participating in UNRWA’s “Cash for Work” programme in the West
Bank.
Those who receive loans through the agency’s microfinance
department, which supports small local businesses, will also suffer, as
will the Palestinian refugees who comprise more than 95% of UNRWA’s
roughly 30,000 employees, many of whom work to the limits of their
endurance. No one should take for granted the sacrifice UNRWA staff
make. In Syria, for example, 20 employees have lost their lives, and
some 25 others have gone (and remain) missing since the beginning of the
war in 2011.
UNRWA now faces the gravest financial crisis in its
70-year history, with a potential deficit this year as high as $446mn.
While the agency receives contributions from more than 100 donors, 80%
of UNRWA’s funding – a total income of nearly $1.25bn in 2016 – comes
from just ten donors, with the US having long been the largest
contributor. The European Union is the second largest, contributing
$143mn, and Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom are next, each
contributing more than $60mn. But it would be difficult for these
countries to fill the multi-million-dollar gap that the US cut creates.
Allowing
up to a half-million schoolchildren to be relegated to the streets
would mean creating a lost generation of children and exacerbating
instability in the region. After all, beyond providing knowledge, UNRWA
schools encourage civic engagement among young people, while helping to
prevent child marriage, child labour, and child trafficking. More
fundamentally, they give children hope.
Hope dies when boats capsize
at sea, when families freeze to death on hazardous mountain journeys
into exile, or when food convoys fail to make it to beleaguered towns
and villages. But hope also dies when children find school gates locked,
denying them the chance they deserve to plan and prepare for a future.
Worst
hit, both financially and in terms of service provision, would be the
refugee community in Gaza, where the agency provides aid to nearly 75%
of the population and accounts for one-sixth of gross domestic
expenditure. But in Syria, too, a half-million Palestinian refugees will
lose some of the help on which they relied.
To be sure, some
countries have already stepped up to the plate. Denmark, Finland,
Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia,
Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK have all agreed to front-load their
annual contributions. Several other countries are considering doing the
same. And, in order to maintain quality education for Palestinian
refugees, the Education Cannot Wait fund, established in 2016 to help
children displaced in emergencies, will seek to deepen its co-operation
with UNRWA.
Yet measures like frontloading can take us only so far.
If UNRWA does not receive additional bridge funding, it will run out of
money in the next few months.
Pierre Krahenbuhl, UNRWA’s
commissioner-general, is determined to continue UNRWA’s life-saving
work. Under the banner “Dignity is Priceless,” he is now asking all with
the means to provide the additional funding. One hopes that his call
will be heeded at this month’s planned ministerial roundtable in Rome,
with countries advancing next year’s contributions, as we await a change
of heart by the US. Failure to bridge the funding gap would have
serious consequences not just for the Palestinian children who depend on
UNRWA, but also for peace and stability in the region. – Project
Syndicate
* Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister and Chancellor of
the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, is United Nations Special Envoy for
Global Education and Chair of the International Commission on Financing
Global Education Opportunity. He chairs the Advisory Board of the
Catalyst Foundation.
Palestinian students protest against UNRWA cuts in Sidon, on March 1, 2018.