UNRWA: donors dally, finally rally.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established by the General Assembly in 1949 to help the 750,000 Palestine refugees who lost their homes and livelihood as a result of the conflict in Palestine in 1948. UNRWA is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions from the international community. major donors include members of the European Union, collectively as well as individually, the United States, the Nordic countries, Japan, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

In the last five years, the Agency has had a chronic situation of budget deficit at the end of each year, thus there had been four rounds of austerity measures. This year, UNRWA was facing a gap of $70 million between the Agency's budget as approved by the General Assembly and its estimated income. A saving of some $50 million had been achieved by these measures, but $20 million remained unfunded by mid-August. Because of this deficit, UNRWA had to announce, for the first time in its history, severe cuts on the actual programmes. There was talk about charging fees for schools, for example, and to cancel hospitalization for the last two months of this year.

During the second week of September 1997, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Peter Hansen, announced that, after obtaining over $19 million in new pledges from donor countries, he was able to revoke some of the cuts in the UNRWA services which he had been forced to introduce earlier this year. The UN Chronicle went to see William Lee, Chief of the New York Liaison Office of UNRWA, to talk about the Agency's activities.

About the activities in 1997, Mr. Lee observed: "UNRWA provides education, health and relief services and social programmes to refugees living in camps - accounting for about 40 per cent of the total refugees - as well as to those who live outside the camps. Today, those refugees number more than 3.5 million people. Of these, 1.4 million are staying in Jordan, 1.3 million in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and about 350,000 each in Lebanon and Syria."

"Most of the refugees come in contact with UNRWA through pregnancy", Mr. Lee stated. "The pregnant refugee will visit one of the UNRWA clinics, deliver her baby there or give birth with the help of one of the UNRWA midwives, and from then on the baby will be taken cared of by the Agency in many ways. The babies will be weighed, measured, immunized and, when they are six years old, they will go to one of the 643 schools of UNRWA." Even after the children have completed primary and secondary schooling that UNRWA provides, a specialization through a two-year technical course is also offered by the Agency. This allows refugee children to learn computer science, architectural draughting, nursing, marketing and industrial electronics, to name a few of the wide spectrum of courses covered.

UNRWA also offers a specific four-year educational programme for Agency teachers and some scholarships to students, allowing them to pursue their studies in different subjects and different universities throughout the Middle East. "Thereby, UNRWA is able to employ 23,000 Palestine refugees as teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers, health care providers, school supervisors, administrators, drivers and so on", who are mostly educated by the UNRWA programmes or whose education is made possible with the Agency's help.

"Because of the growth in the refugee population, UNRWA is facing a growing costs of its activities, which is visible particularly in the UNRWA schools", Mr. Lee says. "Every year, there are 3 per cent more pupils than the year before. Those pupils cannot be crammed in the classrooms - 60 in one classroom is no exception - so extra money is provided to built new schools or classrooms." And all those extra pupils need teachers who need to be educated by UNRWA, and there is no money to pay for that.

To discuss the budgetary problem, a meeting with major donors and host Governments was arranged in the Jordanian capital of Amman on 9 September 1997, which yielded the $19 million pledges referred to earlier.

With the extra money pledged, UNRWA could survive this year, but the outlook for 1998 remains uncertain. Mr. Lee hopes "that the General Assembly will not only approve the budget for next year, but that it will also focus on how to get it funded." Until now, most of the donations are project money or even food and clothes, and are only given by countries. This is, of course, a blessing, but this does not pay the salaries of the extra teachers. To solve this problem, UNRWA is looking for new sources of support and new donors, like the nongovernmental organizations or the private sector.

Education is the largest programme of UNRWA. Nearly half of this year's budget goes to education and allied subjects. This includes education of the youth up to tenth grade, aid training centers, specific educational programmes for Agency teachers - "most of the teachers are refugees themselves" - and scholarships for further education. It is also the most growing programme because of the naturally high population growth and the arrival of new refugee families in the West Bank and Gaza.

Health care is the second largest, including basic health care, primary health care, mother and child care, and family planning provided in health centers, which are in all areas where refugees are. apart from the basic health care, Mr. Lee pointed out that "specialist care is also provided, for example in gynaecology, cardiology, nose and ear diseases, and dental care". There are also clinical laboratories, and assistance is provided towards hospitalization expenses of refugees with contracted private hospitals and through non-governmental organizations.

Relief programmes and social services provide material and financial assistance for the neediest, like widows, orphans, the sick and poor people, identifying their eligibility and completing their registration. Quality control of individuals schemes is monitored and camp services are provided. In the long term, initiatives are launched to improve the economic and social status of refugees.