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A two-day
conference hosted by the Swiss Government and the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
opened this morning in Geneva to address the humanitarian needs of 4
million Palestinian refugees and to come up with the best practical
solutions to attend to these needs.
In his opening
remarks, Peter Hansen, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, said that
the gathering was a testimony of the international community to the
growing needs of the Palestinian refugees and was being held at an
historic moment. The Conference was an opportunity for participants
to work together on addressing key humanitarian aspects of the
Palestinian refugees. What was needed was better cooperation between
donors and host countries on defining the real needs of the
Palestinian refugees and thinking collectively how to meet them. The
Conference marked a big step in that direction.
The
Commissioner-General read out the message of United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the occasion of the meeting. In his
message, the Secretary-General recalled the continuing struggle of
the Palestinian refugees to cope with increased socio-economic
hardship, noting that since September 2000, the number of
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip who relied on UNRWA for
food aid had risen from 130,000 to 1.1 million and in the same
period, the percentage of Palestinians living below the poverty line
had tripled from 20 per cent to 60 per cent. Moreover, the message
underlined the upsurge of violence in recent months, particularly in
Rafah last month where the demolition of Palestinian homes by the
Israeli army had resulted in a significant loss of Palestinian life.
In closing his
message, the Secretary-General appealed to all participants to
embrace the aims of the conference, and reinforce the partnerships
with UNRWA that had been nurtured since its inception in 1950.
Ambassador Walter
Fust, Director-General of the Swiss Agency for Development and
Cooperation and Chairman of the Conference, expressed the importance
of keeping a comprehensive view of the Palestinian refugees’
situation in all five of UNRWA’s areas of operations – Syria,
Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza – while adding the
importance of adopting a medium-term solution to the challenges
facing UNRWA.
“We will have been
successful if this Conference and the process it is part of lead to
a tangible improvement in the living conditions and life
expectations of the Palestinian refugees,” said Ambassador Fust, who
also provided an overview of the workshops that would be held in the
course of the two-day gathering and whose goal was to build a high
degree of consensus on the key challenges facing Palestinian
refugees and on the main areas where humanitarian action was needed
to address these challenges. The themes of the workshops were
promoting the well-being of the Palestinian refugee child; community
development and refugees; promoting the socio-economic development
of Palestinian refugees; and conditions for the successful
management and mobilization of resources on behalf of Palestinian
refugees.
The Executive
Secretary to the Conference and UNRWA’s Director of External
Relations, Andrew Whitley, provided an introduction to the
workshops, indicating that they had been the culmination of six
months of work among four working groups in Gaza, Jerusalem,
Ramallah and Amman. In short, the aim of the workshops was to reach
a consensus on the best way forward to address the humanitarian
needs of the Palestinian refugees.
A short
documentary entitled “The Story of UNRWA and the Palestinian
Refugees” was also screened in the opening meeting.
The Conference is
expected to gather dozens of high-level delegations including
representatives from communities hosting Palestinian refugees, the
United Nations family and donor countries. It will reconvene in
public at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, 8 June at the International
Conference Centre in Geneva
Statements
PETER HANSEN,
Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), in opening the
conference, said the two-day gathering was a testimony of the
international community to the growing needs of the Palestinian
refugees and was being held at an historic moment. It gave a chance
to take a longer-term look at the needs of the 4 million Palestinian
refugees which UNRWA served. The Conference was an opportunity for
participants to work together on addressing the key humanitarian
aspects of the Palestinian refugees. The intifada, which had been
raging over the past 45 months, represented a danger to losing focus
on long-term needs of the Palestinian refugees. Provided that there
was an adequate and appropriate donor response, beginning next
January a medium-term plan which had been developed in recent months
and would be finalized at the Conference would provide tools to make
up the ground which had been lost in several areas over the years
due to chronic under-funding. As a consequence, it was hoped that
UNRWA would, once again, be in the vanguard in the region in the
areas of health, education, social welfare and vocational training.
The
Commissioner-General highlighted three things needed by UNRWA and
the Conference’s co-sponsor, the Swiss Agency for Development and
Cooperation, for them to remain relevant: high quality-staff, the
right supporting environment and adequate funding. Moreover, what
was needed was better cooperation between donors and host countries
on defining the real needs of the Palestinian refugees and thinking
collectively how to meet them. The Conference marked a big step in
that direction.
Mr. Hansen then
read the message to the Conference of KOFI ANNAN, the
Secretary-General of the United Nations, in which the
Secretary-General recalled the continuing struggle of the
Palestinian refugees to cope with increased socio-economic hardship,
and to grapple with painful uncertainty about the future. Since
September 2000, the number of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip who relied on UNRWA for food aid had risen from 130,000 to 1.1
million and in the same period, the percentage of Palestinians
living below the poverty line had tripled from 20 per cent to 60 per
cent. There had also been a substantial rise in the number of people
making use of UNRWA’s primary health services.
The
Secretary-General further underlined the upsurge of violence in
recent months, particularly in Rafah in May where the demolition of
Palestinian homes by the Israeli army resulted in a significant loss
of Palestinian life, and which led to a Security Council resolution
calling on Israel to respect its obligations under international
humanitarian law. The resolution also called on the Government of
Israel and the Palestinian Authority to immediately implement their
obligations under the Quartet’s Roadmap, which continued to offer a
way to reach a comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
The
Secretary-General highlighted UNRWA’s, as well as the host
communities, invaluable contribution to the well-being and stability
of the refugee community. “A Palestinian refugee child born today is
more likely than at any time in the past, and more likely than his
or her non-refugee peers in the region, to survive infancy in good
health”, the Secretary-General’s message said. Moreover, today
Palestinian refugees were universally literate. These achievements
had placed social indicators for Palestinian refugees ahead of much
of the developing world.
The under-funding
of UNRWA’s budget was reflected in over-crowded classrooms and
clinics, and in the decaying infrastructure of the Agency, the
Secretary-General noted. “There is real concern that if these trends
continue, the key human development strengths of the Palestinian
refugee population will begin to unravel.” The dedication of the
staff in the occupied Palestinian territory, who had kept operations
going in difficult circumstances, and nine of whom had been killed
in the past three years, had been exceptional, the Secretary-General
stated.
In closing his
message, the Secretary-General appealed to all participants to
embrace the aims of the Conference, and reinforce the partnerships
with UNRWA that had been nurtured since 1950.
WALTER FUST,
Director-General of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
and Chairman of the Conference, said that in all, some 350
representatives from 62 countries and 29 international organizations
had responded positively to the invitations issued to attend the
Conference, which was a reflection of the interest that the
Conference had aroused in the world. The Conference itself was being
convened to address the humanitarian needs of the refugees and was
not linked to any ongoing political discussions or initiatives and
it was important that participants did not deviate from the
humanitarian objectives set forth.
Mr. Fust provided
an overview of the workshops that would be held in the course of the
two-day gathering and whose goal was to build a high degree of
consensus on the key challenges facing Palestinian refugees and on
the main areas where humanitarian action was needed to address these
challenges. The themes of the workshops were promoting the
well-being of the Palestinian refugee child; community development
and refugees; promoting the socio-economic development of
Palestinian refugees; and conditions for the successful management
and mobilization of resources on behalf of Palestinian refugees.
The Ambassador
recalled initiatives taken by the Swiss Agency for Development and
Cooperation on a related approach, namely the gathering it organized
in Montreux in December 1998 bringing together UNRWA and its donors
and a similar meeting in Lausanne in December 2000 with the
objective of responding rapidly to the emergency funding needs
arising from the tragic humanitarian situation then prevailing in
the refugees camps in the West Bank and Gaza.
In closing, Mr.
Fust expressed the importance of keeping a comprehensive view of the
Palestinian refugee situation in all five of UNRWA’s areas of
operations – Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. It was
also important that a medium-term perspective on the challenges
facing UNRWA was adopted. “In the medium term, we will have made
progress if this Conference leads to stronger partnerships between
UNRWA, the host authorities, donors and partner agencies. But most
of all, we will have been successful if this Conference and the
process it is part of lead to a tangible improvement in the living
conditions and life expectations of the Palestinian refugees.”
ANDREW WHITLEY,
Executive Secretary of the Conference and UNRWA Director of External
Relations, briefly introduced the workshops to be held and which had
been the culmination of six months of work among four working groups
in Gaza, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Amman. These groups had been made
up of UNRWA staff and representatives from the host communities and
had produced a short discussion paper identifying the needs of the
Palestinian refuges in different sectors. The recommendations within
were a starting point by which the international community could
respond to the needs of the Palestinian refugees. The process
itself, he said, was not a negotiation process but it was the hope
that the end result would be to settle on the highest common
denominator in each of the four areas being addressed. In short, the
aim of the workshops was to reach a consensus on the best way
forward to address the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian
refugees.
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