Qatar has reiterated its continuous support for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), to enable the agency fulfil its mandate, which is indispensable in light of the challenges facing the Palestinian cause.
Qatar also underlined the need for the international community and donors to provide sufficient financial support, and ensuring the creation of the necessary conditions for the agency to implement its mandate, and the importance of implementing the recent General Assembly resolution, on ‘Protection of Civilians and Upholding Legal and Humanitarian Obligations’.
This came in a statement delivered by Third Secretary of the Permanent Delegation of Qatar to the UN, Sheikh Jassim al-Thani, before the Fourth Committee of the UN General Assembly, regarding Item 49: The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, at the UN headquarters in New York.
Sheikh Jassim thanked the director of the New York Office of UNRWA, and the commissioner-general of UNRWA, for their comprehensive briefing that reflected the catastrophic humanitarian conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, especially in the Gaza Strip, praising the efforts made by the agency.
Since its establishment, the agency has been providing basic services and vital needs to more than 5mn Palestinian refugees, he explained pointing that UNRWA’s responsibilities have significantly increased, due to the current catastrophic humanitarian situation that the innocent civilian population in the Gaza Strip is going through, as a result of the Israeli bombardment of civilian instalments, including hospitals, schools, population centres, and IDPs shelters, which is a dangerous escalation in the course of confrontations.
He added that Qatar has strongly condemned the Israeli occupation’s bombing of the Jabalia camp in Gaza, which resulted in the death and injury of hundreds of innocent people, which calls for urgent action by the international community to stop the killing and destruction. In this regard, the statement said that Qatar renews its call to stop the escalation, prevent the expansion of Israeli attacks, and stop the policy of collective punishment and forced displacement carried out by the Israeli occupation, whereas, according to reports of relevant international organisations, the death toll has exceeded 9,000 Palestinian civilians, nearly 70% of whom are women and children, in addition to 72 UNRWA employees who have lost their lives while carrying out their humanitarian duty.
There is no doubt that UNRWA faces an existential challenge, as it suffers from a chronic lack of sufficient voluntary funding from member states, which has made the agency unable to forecast its needed funding, the statement said adding that in the context of facing the agency’s existential challenges and the hardships suffered by the brotherly Palestinian people, especially in light of the siege and the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip, Qatar has assumed its responsibility within the framework of the principle of burden-sharing, and in response to the call of the General Assembly contained in its resolutions related to UNRWA, and doubled the its pledges for the Agency’s core resources in recent years.
Qatar was the first Arab country to sign a multi-year agreement with UNRWA to support its core resources in 2018, and in June this year Qatar pledged a total of $18mn in support for UNRWA’s core resources for the period 2023-2024, the statement said.
Qatar has joined the UNRWA Advisory Committee since 2018, moved by its keenness to contribute effectively to providing various types of support to the Palestinian people and to support UNRWA, the statement said pointing to Qatar’s participation in the ministerial meeting of the main partners to support the agency, which was held in September, on the sidelines of the 78th General Assembly.
The statement, further, renewed Qatar’s firm stance, which is based on the just of the Palestinian cause, the legitimate rights of the brotherly Palestinian people, and the establishment of independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.