NEW DELHI: India has donated $2.5 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for humanitarian assistance in Gaza. The UNRWA, functional since 1950, carries out direct relief and work programmes for registered Palestine refugees and is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions from UN member states.
India on Monday handed the UNRWA $2.5 million as part of its annual contribution of $5 million for the year 2023-24 to support the agency’s core programmes and services, including education, healthcare, relief, and social services provided to Palestinian refugees, the Representative Office of India at Ramallah said.
The contribution was handed over by the Representative of India (ROI) to Palestine, Renu Yadav, to the Director of Partnerships, Department of External Relations of UNRWA, Karim Amer. The ROI underlined India’s continued support for the agency’s activities in the region and the services it provides to Palestinian refugees during the handover ceremony at UNRWA’s field office in Jerusalem, an official press release said.
The UNRWA has been struggling to provide basic services to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians since the October 7 Israel-Hamas conflict which has prompted more than two-thirds of the Gaza population of approximately 2.3 million to flee their homes.
Earlier on November 19, India had delivered 32 tonnes of humanitarian assistance to the people of Palestine via the El-Arish Airport in Egypt. Since 2018, India has provided $27.5 million to the UNRWA.
During an extraordinary virtual ministerial pledging conference for UNRWA held on June 23, 2020, India announced that it would contribute $10 million to UNRWA over the next two years.
Prior to the war in Gaza, UNRWA was already facing an increased demand for services resulting from a growth in the number of registered Palestine refugees, the extent of their vulnerability, and their deepening poverty.