Ramallah:The Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has firmly rejected any plans to lay off a significant number of employees from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The committee warns that the agency's financial struggles could jeopardize its services and threaten its UN mandate.
According to Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA – English, the PLO Executive Committee has called for urgent international intervention to secure sustainable funding for UNRWA. They emphasized the importance of the agency as a vital support system for Palestinian refugees and warned that cutting its funding could endanger refugee rights and destabilize the region.
The announcement followed a meeting of the PLO Executive Committee's higher committee, which is responsible for protecting UNRWA's mandate and operations. The meeting, held at the Executive Committee's secretariat in Ramallah, discussed the agency's financial crisis and the risks associated with potential large-scale layoffs.
The committee asserted that UNRWA employees are crucial to the agency's operations and that layoffs would not solve the financial issues but rather endanger the provision of essential services like education and healthcare to millions of Palestinian refugees. They also highlighted the broader humanitarian and social impacts, as well as potential threats to regional stability.
The PLO Committee urged donor countries to provide sufficient and sustainable funding to support UNRWA's ongoing operations. They also called on the UNRWA Acting Commissioner-General to abandon any plans for layoffs and explore alternative solutions to the crisis while engaging with proposals from the PLO Department of Refugee Affairs and other stakeholders.
Furthermore, the committee condemned recent Israeli military operations in Hebron, reporting the forced displacement of around 250 Palestinian families. They stated that residents were evacuated at gunpoint and their homes converted into military barracks, exacerbating the humanitarian situation in the region.