UNRWA determined not to scale back amid crippling funding crisis

By Dalila Mahdawi
Daily Star staff
Saturday, December 05, 2009

BEIRUT: The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees is struggling with a “dire” financial crisis but will not cut back on its provision of services, its head of operations in Lebanon said Friday. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on Wednesday it was facing its worst budget deficit in history. According to a recent document posted on the agency’s website concerning UNRWA’s financial situation, a shortfall of $79.6 million for 2009 and $125.7 million for 2010 has been projected. It said a continuing lack of funds since 2005 had “resulted in the complete depletion of UNRWA’s working capital.

“UNRWA is faced with a dire financial crisis,” Salvatore Lombardo, director of UNRWA Affairs in Lebanon, told The Daily Star. He said the agency’s operations in Lebanon were facing a $9 million deficit for 2010. “We have been operating with approximately the same budgets for the last [several] years whilst the needs are growing considerably and the cost of services is increasing,” he said. “Our expected budget is 14 percent less than what UNRWA needs to cover the most basic requirements of Palestine refugees.” 

The UN official added that although the agency would continue to provide health care, education and relief and social services, the standards of those services would drop. “Whilst UNRWA strives to ensure services are not cut, the overall environment it operates in will deteriorate,” he added. 

There are over 422,000 Palestinian refugees registered in Lebanon, most of who live in the country’s 12 squalid refugee camps. 

The figure may no longer be accurate, however, as UNRWA does not remove refugees who have moved abroad from its records. There are also an unknown number of nonregistered refugees and an additional 40,000 Palestinians residing in 42 so-called “gatherings,” or ghettoized neighborhoods. 

UNRWA has routinely faced funding shortages in the past, but the ongoing international financial crisis and a lack of financial reserves have resulted in a “situation of unprecedented gravity,” the UNRWA website said. 

The agency held its annual pledging conference at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, hoping the international community would respond to its financial emergency. “It would be timely, and extremely welcome, if UNRWA was to receive new pledges of support from unexpected quarters or else the announcement of increase in funding from those that have historically underperformed in this respect,” said Andrew Whitley on behalf of UNRWA Commissioner General Karen Abu Zayd ahead of the conference. 

“The refugees and our 30,000-strong Palestinian staff, who live in great anxiety these days about the prospect of further reductions in their modest living standards, would be enormously relieved.” UNRWA has warned salary cuts were straining relations with its employees. 

But Lombardo said that while pledges were made at the conference, it was “not enough to cover the shortfall for 2010.” 

Speaking in September on the occasion of UNRWA’s 60th anniversary, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged the agency’s serious funding shortages and appealed to the international community to give generously. “The agency’s work is too important for it to suffer budget crisis after budget crisis,” he said. 

UNRWA’s funding shortfall will impact other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working with Palestinians, said John Viste of ANERA, an American NGO which provides humanitarian relief aid to Palestinian refugees. “It does affect us when UNRWA services are cut back.” 

Medicine, normally provided by UNRWA, was a case in point, Viste said. “If they don’t have any medicine available, others have to fill in the gap. If they can’t provide then the Palestinians are forced to buy, which places greater strain on their resources.” 

In spite of the financial difficulties, UNRWA is pursuing internal reform that requires no additional funding, Lombardo said. “We are committed to improving the management of our services. We will do so through decentralizing decision-making to the head teachers, medical officers and relief workers that run our schools, clinics and camp officers, communicating better with our beneficiaries and eliminating bureaucracy in our processes.” 

Nevertheless, the cutbacks have raised fears that the security situation in the camps could explode. “The consequences of the financial deficit extend beyond the level of quality of services we provide,” Lombardo said. “Instability feeds on poverty and a lack of opportunities. There are very concrete steps that can be taken to push back against such scenario. 

“Providing health, education, and relief and social services means not only teaching the young, caring for the sick and fending for the poor. It means creating a platform of stability on which future political progress can rest. UNRWA is part of the solution here in Lebanon,” he said.

Refugee boss urges better deal for Palestinians

Crippling restrictions breed ‘radicalism’ and ‘militancy’ in Lebanon’s camps
By Dalila Mahdawi
Daily Star staff
Friday, November 13, 2009
BEIRUT: The deprivation faced by Palestinian refugees in Lebanon should be eased to allow for a greater sense of security and prosperity among the extremely marginalized community, the chief of the United Nations Palestinian relief agency said Thursday. Karen AbuZayd, Commissioner General of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, said the extreme poverty and desperation endured by Palestinian refugees pushed disaffected youth into the clutches of militancy.

While Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Syria are seen as “enjoying the broadest spectrum of freedoms,” those in Lebanon face considerably more difficulties, she said.

“Here, the currents of vulnerability are very much in evidence,” said AbuZayd.

There are 422,188 registered Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, as well as an unknown number of non-registered Palestinians who fall outside of the scope of UNRWA. An additional 40,000 Palestinians reside in 42 so-called “gatherings,” or ghettoized neighborhoods consisting of 25 or more Palestinian houses.

The memory of the role Palestinians played in Lebanon’s devastating 1975-90 Civil War, the fragility of Lebanon’s sectarian and political system, the susceptibility of the country’s 12 refugee camps to foreign actors, and factional splits within the camps only exacerbated divisions between the Lebanese and Palestinians, and the Palestinians themselves, AbuZayd argued.

“In the years since the early 1990s, there has been a progressive isolation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, both in a physical sense of limiting their presence to the camps, and in terms of the constrictions and scope of economic and civil rights they enjoy,” she said.

Unlike their compatriots in Jordan, Palestinians in Lebanon do not enjoy legal status and have little access to medical, education and social services outside the provisions of UNWRA. The refugees are subject to severe restrictions of movement, forbidden from owning or repairing property and are barred from all but the most menial professions. An unknown number of Palestinians without formal identification are even more vulnerable to chronic poverty.

But AbuZayd said there were clear advantages to granting the Palestinian refugees greater rights.

“Marginalization and entrenched poverty have never served the ends of security and stability,” she said. “Restrictions breed radicalism and create an atmosphere in which disaffected youth become receptive to the call of militancy and violence.”

Boosting economic activity, raising living standards and expanding the currently limited choices afforded to Palestinians “are goals whose benefits will expand beyond the camps boundaries,” AbuZayd argued.

The existence of Palestinian and other refugees also lays a burden of duty upon the international community to uphold basic human rights during periods of asylum, she said.

So long as refugees are unable to return to their homes, the global community and host countries are “duty bound” to ensure the displaced enjoy their human rights and have access to social services and other provisions, said AbuZayd.

Her remarks came weeks before she is due to step down from her position, held since June 2005. A US national, AbuZayd has 28 years of professional experience in refugee work and previously served as an assistant secretary general of the UN and deputy commissioner-general of UNRWA.

Lebanon ‘worst place’ for Palestinian refugees

Country suffers from ‘complete lack of integration’
By Dalila Mahdawi
Saturday, November 29, 2008

 

BEIRUT: Lebanon may not host the largest population of Palestinian refugees but it “is the most difficult place to be a Palestinian refugee.” That is the opinion of Zara Sejberg, Child Protection project manager at Save the Children Sweden, at least.  Speaking ahead of the UN-designated “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” on Saturday.

Sejberg, who works to promote the rights of Lebanese and Palestinian refugee children and who has travelled widely throughout the Middle East, told The Daily Star that over 409,700 Palestinians living in squalid, overcrowded camps in Lebanon suffered from a “complete lack of integration,” inadequate services, harmful stereotypes, and discriminatory laws. Over 3000 Palestinians in Lebanon do not even have formal documentation, meaning they are not recognized by either the Lebanese state or UNRWA.

Refugees in Lebanon suffer from the highest levels of abject poverty of all Palestinian  refugees, according to UNRWA. In accordance with the UN Refugee Convention of 1951, all refugees must be given the right to work and to own property. But Palestinians in Lebanon do not enjoy those rights. Nor are they entitled to state health care. Their status has long been an issue of bitter dispute between Lebanese political parties, many of whom argue that Palestinians are temporary guests and vehemently oppose the possibility of Palestinian naturalization.

In an address to the UN General Assembly Tuesday to mark the day of solidarity with the Palestinians, Lebanese Ambassador to the UN Nawwaf Salem said Lebanon “strictly opposes any sort of naturalization of the Palestinians, a matter which has been repeatedly emphasized by [President] Michel Sleiman.” Naturalization was “not feasible because it threatened the Lebanese state and identity, as well as the identity of Palestinian refugees,” Salem added.

For Sejberg, the debate over naturalization was pointless. The majority of Palestinians themselves have no interest in becoming Lebanese. Indeed, as recently as last Wednesday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki told An-Nahar newspaper that the naturalization of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon would not be tolerated. “I don’t even know why we’re bothering to talk about naturalization when that’s not the issue,” said Sejberg. “The issue is how to improve the life of these people who have been in Lebanon’s backyard since 1948.”

But according to former Ambassador Khalil Makkawi, president of the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee (LPDC), which since 2005 has been working on the issue of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon under the guise of the Cabinet, responsibility for the Palestinians lay “not [with] Lebanon but UNRWA and the international community.”

“I think it’s time to take a more proactive stance,” Sejberg said, suggesting Lebanon used UNRWA’s mandate over the Palestinians as a “convenient” tool to absolve itself of responsibility toward them.

Haifa Jammal, Human Rights and Advocacy program coordinator at Norwegian People’s Aid, which works with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, likewise said that the Lebanese government was not working hard enough to improve the situation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. “The government took the initiative to establish the LPDC, but that committee has not done nearly enough. Regarding the right of Palestinians to work or to own property, there has been nothing done yet.”

During his UN address, Salem said Lebanon’s “very limited resources” meant it was unable to adequately provide for Palestinian refugees. “I don’t think the problem is one of money,” said Jammal. “The Palestinians are asking for the right to work and not for aid. If they were allowed to work and to buy property, the Palestinians would be contributing to the Lebanese economy” and helping to build up the very resources Salem complained his country lacked, Jammal added.

According to Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch, what the Lebanese government needed to do was “to show the political will and a true desire to improve the living conditions of Palestinians.” Some of the means to do that did not require financing, he said. “Lifting restrictions on employment opportunities and on construction permits require no expense. For the things that do require money, like the rebuilding of Nahr al-Bared, the international community needs to support Lebanon.” Houry was referring to the Palestinian refugee camp destroyed when the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) engaged militant group Fatah al-Islam between May and September 2007. The fighting killed 400 people, including 169 LAF soldiers and an unverified number of Palestinian camp residents.

When questioned Friday on LPDC efforts to change laws that discriminated against Palestinian refugees, Makkawi answered simply: “We are working on it.”