A wall mural in Burj Barajneh refugee camp, Beirut. Picture by Stephen McCloskey, all rights reserved.The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) plays a critical front-line role in providing key services and support to 5.3 million Palestinian refugees living in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. These services include: primary health centres, schools, women’s centres, vocational and training centres, and community rehabilitation centres. It also provides jobs, cash support and food aid to refugees consigned since the ethnic cleansing of Palestine during the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948 to a life of poverty and marginalisation.
UNRWA has recently been subjected to severe cuts from the Trump administration which normally provides one-third of its total annual budget of $1.2 billion. So dire have been the implications of these cuts that UNRWA managed to open its 711 schools for 526,000 students on September only by leveraging additional finance of $238 million from donors. The agency has said that it still needs to secure an additional $217 million to ensure that the schools remain open for the rest of the academic year.
Refugee crisis in Lebanon
