Switzerland should continue UNRWA funding, says Swisspeace director
A Palestinian family who fled from northern Gaza Strip prepare food outside their shelter in Deir Al Balah, Gaza Strip, February 1, 2024.
Keystone / Mohammed Saber
Swisspeace Director Laurent Goetschel has urged the Swiss authorities to keep funding the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA).
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“I don’t believe that Switzerland should suspend funding of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA),” the director of the Basel-based peace NGO Swisspeace told Le Temps newspaper on Monday.
The fact that UNRWA employees took part in the October 7 Hamas terrorist against Israel is deplorable and these people must be punished, he said. “But that is no reason to call the whole organisation into question,” he declared in an interview.
At the moment there is no alternative organisation providing education and health services for the Palestinian people, said Goetschel.
“If [states] had wanted to reform UNRWA in the past, all they had to do was get on with it,” he declared. “UNRWA is supposed to be the most closely watched UN organisation of all.”
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has been at the centre of a controversy since Israel accused 12 of its 30,000 employees of involvement in the October 7 attack by Hamas. In response, a dozen countries, including major donors such as the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden, have announced that they are suspending their funding of the agency. Switzerland, on the other hand, is waiting for more information before taking a decision on its funding of UNRWA.
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