Belgium supports the mandate of UNRWA and renews its flexible and multi-year humanitarian contribution

In 2024, Belgium has reaffirmed its flexible and multi-year support to the general resources of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. It amounts to a contribution of 27.5 million euros over a period of three years (2024, 2025 and 2026) to the so-called core financing. The entire contribution for 2024, of which €13.5 million has already been paid, will go to core funding, as this provides UNRWA with essential flexibility to cope with the current volatile context.

The Belgian Minister of Development Cooperation: "What is currently unfolding in Gaza is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the past 25 years. 34,000 people are dead, an overwhelming majority of them women and children, 76,000 injured, and more than 1.5 million people displaced. A major famine is looming, especially in the north. There is hardly any medical aid left. This goes against every principle of international and humanitarian law. Not to mention human decency".

Belgium’s opting for core funding to UNRWA is fully in line with Belgian policy to provide as much unallocated resources as possible to our partner organisations. This maximises predictable and available funding for those organisations and offers real added value in terms of flexibility to use them in order to alleviate humanitarian needs on the ground.

This financing policy is also consistent with the principles of "Good Humanitarian Donorship" and the commitments within the framework of the “Grand Bargain” to which Belgium subscribed in 2003 and 2016, respectively.

Belgium supports UNRWA's mandate to provide humanitarian assistance to the millions of registered Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), as well as to contribute to their protection through the provision of essential services, such as primary education, primary health care, mental health care, emergency aid and social services, microcredits and emergency aid - including in situations of armed conflict.

"UNRWA is currently the only aid agency in Gaza that has enough staff and infrastructure on the ground to get humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. If the agency runs out of funds, the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people will be at stake," the Minister of Development Cooperation concluded.