PNC urges international community to support UNRWA

AMMAN — The Palestinian National Council (PNC) on Sunday called on world parliaments and unions to support UNRWA to overcome its current financial crisis, which is unprecedented in its 70 years of establishment.

PNC Chairman Salim Zanoun, in a council statement carried by the Jordan News Agency, Petra, said that the magnitude of this crisis threatens to stop the UN agency as it has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing poverty and unemployment rates.

Zanoun said that such circumstances require providing more resources for UNRWA to be able to meet the growing needs of refugees during the pandemic.

Zanoun, in identical letters the PNC sent to world parliaments and unions in cooperation with the refugees affairs department at the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, noted that this severe financial crisis has directly affected UNRWA’s educational, health and aid services presented to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.

The threat of this crisis has touched the salaries of the agency’s employees whose number reached some 30,000, where UNRWA is unable to disburse employee salaries.

In the letter, he expressed the council’s hope for the parliaments to pressure their countries to financially support UNRWA to be able to provide $85 million to be used for paying the salaries of employees for December and overcome the financial crisis.

The chairman also called for extending assistance to enable the UN agency to offer its vital and important services to refugees according to its mandate granted under UN General Assembly Resolution 302.