Suspension of funding for UNRWA A UN rapporteur attacks the West and humanitarian organizations warn of a disaster

A United Nations Special Rapporteur said that Western countries' suspension of funding for UNRWA in exchange for their continued support for Israel is a "high double standard," while humanitarian organizations stressed that suspending support for UNRWA would lead to a disaster in Gaza.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, accused the Western countries that suspended their funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) of "double standards."

In a post on the X platform on Wednesday, Albanese criticized these countries’ continued support for Israel despite the latter’s continuation of its war on the Gaza Strip.

She pointed out that some countries' suspension of their funding to UNRWA "came due to allegations related to 12 employees of the UN agency," adding that "the governments themselves did not suspend their relations with the country whose army killed 26,000 people within 3.5 months in the Gaza Strip."

She added that these governments continue to support Israel despite the International Court of Justice’s decision that the Israeli war on Gaza may constitute “genocide crimes,” indicating that “this is a double standard of the highest level.”

In addition, the Joint Permanent Committee of a number of humanitarian organizations led by the United Nations said that some countries’ suspension of their financial support to UNRWA would lead to a disaster for the residents of the Gaza Strip.

A statement issued by the committee on Wednesday described the allegations of the participation of some UNRWA employees in the attacks against Israel on October 7 as “horrifying.”

He added, "The decision of some countries to suspend financial support to UNRWA will have serious consequences for the residents of Gaza, and no other organization has the capacity to provide the volume and scope of assistance that the 2.2 million people of Gaza urgently need, and we call for a reconsideration of this." Decisions.”

The statement warned that suspending financial support to UNRWA is dangerous and will lead to the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza, and this will have far-reaching consequences on the humanitarian and human rights levels in the occupied Palestinian territories and throughout the region.

Since January 26, 18 countries and the European Union have decided to suspend their funding to UNRWA, based on Israel’s allegations that 12 of the agency’s employees participated in the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023, on Israeli settlements adjacent to Gaza. .

These countries are: the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Italy, Britain, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, New Zealand, Iceland, Romania, Estonia, Sweden, in addition to the European Union, according to the United Nations as of Tuesday evening.

UNRWA said on Friday that it had opened an investigation into allegations of the involvement of a number of its employees in the attacks of October 7, 2023.

UNRWA was established by a decision of the United Nations General Assembly in 1949, and was mandated to provide assistance and protection to refugees in its five areas of operations: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation army has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip that, as of Wednesday, left “26,900 martyrs and 65,949 injured, most of them children and women,” according to the Palestinian authorities, and caused “massive destruction and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.”

It approved one violation, The International Court of Justice rejects Ukrainian charges against Russia

The International Court of Justice in The Hague rejected all Ukrainian accusations against Russia of violating the Conventions on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and Combating Terrorism, considering that Moscow violated one clause related to the failure to conduct investigations against individuals allegedly financing terrorism in Ukraine.

The International Court of Justice ended up rejecting the majority of Ukraine's allegations regarding Russia's violation of the International Convention against Terrorism, and upheld only one violation.

While reading the decision at the court's headquarters in The Hague on Wednesday, International Justice President Joan Donoghue noted that "Russia has only failed to fulfill its obligations to conduct investigations against individuals who allegedly may finance terrorism in Ukraine."

The court rejected all other claims of Ukraine in relation to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

She explained that "Russia, in the way it implemented the educational system in Crimea after 2014, with regard to school education in the Ukrainian language, violated its obligations under Articles 2 and 5 of the aforementioned agreement."

In 2017, Ukraine filed a lawsuit against Russia, accusing it of violating the “Anti-Terrorist Financing” and “Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination” agreements, claiming that Moscow “is waging a campaign of racial discrimination against the Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians on the peninsula,” which Russia rejects.

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine, followed by angry international reactions and the imposition of “severe” economic and financial sanctions on Moscow.