UNRWUNRWA meeting—Geneva

 “You will not be abandoned”

Summing up a meeting of 91 nations and organizations on Palestinian refugees and UNRWA, Walter Fust, Director-General of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation stated that there is a strong desire to continue supporting UNRWA “until a just and lasting solution is found to the question of Palestine refugees based on UN resolutions”.
To the Palestinian refugees, said Ambassador Fust, “you will not be abandoned”.

 The two-day meeting in June was convened to send a positive signal “of our common and sustained concerned for the Palestine refugees at a moment when the peace process shows little prospect of an imminent positive development,” said Ambassador Fust. The meeting was hosted by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and chaired by Ambassador Fust.

Although the meeting was not a pledging conference, additional pledges of $10.5 million were made to UNRWA’s estimated planned expenditure of $310 million for its 2004 regular program. An additional $193 million is needed for its emergency program in the occupied territories. Currently UNRWA has a total funding gap of $150 million in the two programs for 2004.

In his introductory remarks to the conference, UNRWA’s Commissioner-General Peter Hansen said that the new century saw “a drastic worsening in every sector of the life of the Palestine refugee communities—the start of the second intifada in late 2000; a retrogression in their social, civil and political lives; a huge drop in safety and security; a massive increase in the applicant pool for relief and aid; a break in their school; massive setbacks in their ability to simply feed their families; a destruction of the infrastructure introduced in preceding decades, the investments—physical, capital national—laid waste; and a continuing loss of that most valuable irreplaceable resource, human life.

Mr. Hansen outlined the aims of the conference:
To see what can collectively do to stop the decline in the human development and living conditions of Palestine refugee communities;
To see where and how the infrastructure in health, education and shelter can be retrieved;
To collectively agree on and draw up a set of actions for immediate, short-term, mid-term and longer-term implementation; and
To strengthen existing, and to establish, new partnerships towards these common humanitarian goals.

A message from Micheline Calmy-Rey, head of the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs underscored the purpose of the conference “to raise awareness about the needs and hopes of the Palestinian refugees and to rally support for UNRWA and other key actions to meet those needs. xnxx

For more information about the UNRWA conference visit the UNRWA website: www.unrwa.org