Minister: ‘UN aid agency is part of the problem in the Middle East’
Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis heading to Jordan on Monday
Keystone
United Nations aid work for Palestinian refugees is a stumbling block to peace in the Middle East, hindering the integration of Palestinians who have lived in Jordan and Lebanon for years, according to Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis.
This content was published on
2 minutes
SDA-ATS/ts
Deutsch
de
Nahost-Experten sind überrascht von Cassis’ Aussagen zur UNRWA
So long as Palestinians live in refugee camps, they can dream of returning home, he said in an interviewExternal link published in several Swiss newspapers on Thursday.
Five million Palestinian refugees currently live in such camps, with aid and protection provided by the UNRWAExternal link, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
More
More
Life in Jordan’s desert city
This content was published on
Swiss photographer Olivier Vogelsang visited the Zaatari refugee camp in April 2013 and witnessed work by UNHCR and non-governmental organisations Terre des Hommes and Caritas for refugee children and families. The Zaatari refugee camp is about 70 kilometers north of the Jordanian capital Amman, near the town of Mafraq and 30 kilometers from the Syrian…
“It is unrealistic that all of them can fulfil this dream. Yet the UNRWA keeps this dream alive,” Cassis said. “For a long time the UNRWA was the solution to this problem, but today it has become part of the problem. It supplies the ammunition to continue the conflict. By supporting the UNRWA, we keep the conflict alive. It’s a perverse logic.”
He called for the integration of long-term refugees in their countries of residence. Instead of UNRWA schools and hospitals, he said Switzerland could support Jordanian facilities to promote the integration of Palestinian refugees.
Financial crisis
Unlike the United States, Switzerland does not want to significantly reduce or end UNRWA involvement.
“In other cases that’s a good move: if there’s no money, things finally happen,” Cassis said. “But in this case, that’s a big risk: millions of Palestinians could end up on the street. If all nations refused to contribute to the UNRWA, a machinery would collapse that ensures a certain stability. This is a risk that Switzerland can’t afford – perhaps unlike the US.”
The UNRWA was founded in 1949External link following the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict and is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions from UN member states. The Swiss foreign affairs ministry says it is set to pay CHF21.2 million ($21.2 million) for 2018.
The US this year cut its contribution from $360 million to $60 million. “This is our largest funding crisis ever,” said the UNRWA’s Swiss head Pierre Krähenbühl on April 24.
Popular Stories
More
Culture
Documentary portrays Swiss teenagers forced to return to parents’ homeland
This content was published on
Czech President Petr Pavel and his wife, Eva Pavlova, arrived in Switzerland on Tuesday at the start of a two-day state visit.
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
Read more
More
Switzerland ‘extremely worried’ by US aid cuts to Palestinians
This content was published on
The Swiss foreign ministry says it is preoccupied by the US aid cut to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
Swiss NGOs on frontline of South Sudan’s forgotten war
This content was published on
We look at how the four-year civil war is affecting the population and how two Swiss NGOs are helping alleviate the suffering.
This content was published on
For the past few months, Syrians in besieged areas have been dying of hunger, thirst, sickness and more recently of cold and not only because of the daily fighting on both sides. They made bread out of lentils when there was no more flour and when the lentils ran out, they ate cats, dogs and…
This content was published on
The vast makeshift Greek refugee camp Idomeni became a stark symbol of the European refugee crisis. But amid the despair, there was also solidarity.
This content was published on
Alain Berset, who holds the rotating Swiss presidency this year, says Switzerland supports the full implementation of the recommendations made by an advisory commission headed by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on resolving the Rohingya crisis. Berset made this statement on Tuesday while visiting refugee camps in Bangladesh to talk to Rohingya Muslim refugees who…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.