ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s top diplomat at the United Nations praised the relief agency responsible for providing critical aid to Palestine refugees on Tuesday, seeking its continued funding to help 1.9 million residents of Gaza who have been displaced due to Israel’s military campaign in the area which started last year.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has faced shortage of funding after Israel accused nearly a dozen of its employees of involvement in the surprise attack launched by Hamas on October 7.
The attack that killed about 1,200 Israelis were said to be in response to the deteriorating condition of Palestinian people living under occupation, prompting a fierce response from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government that was viewed as highly disproportionate by the world community.
Israel has so far killed over 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children. Its allegation against UNRWA employees also led to the suspension of funding by the United States, Canada, Britain and other Western countries.
“We salute UNRWA’s role as the critical lifeline for the Palestinian refugees over the past 75 years,” Ambassador Munir Akram said in a statement at an informal meeting on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
“We commend the Agency’s role in providing humanitarian relief to more than 1.9 million Gazans who have been displaced due to the sustained and ongoing brutal onslaught by the Israeli occupation forces,” he added. “We pay homage to the more than 150 UNRWA employees who have been killed during this cruel conflict.”
Akram said OIC deeply regretted the decision of some donor countries who had suspended their funding, causing it a matter of serious concern.
“The OIC emphasizes that this suspension of funding ostensibly arising from unproven allegations against a handful of UNRWA’s 30,000 staff members is extreme and inhumane,” he continued. “The entire population of 6 million Palestinian refugees, dependent on UNRWA, cannot be collectively punished for an unverified allegation against a few.”
This situation, he noted, posed a significant risk of further exacerbating the already unbearable suffering to Palestinian children, women and men, unless urgently reversed.
Akram also reiterated that Israel should be held accountable for carrying out the “genocide” of Palestinians in Gaza.
