{"id":11009,"date":"2018-08-10T05:26:07","date_gmt":"2018-08-10T05:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=11009"},"modified":"2018-08-10T05:26:07","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T05:26:07","slug":"jordan-says-palestinian-refugees-at-risk-with-un-agency-in-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=11009","title":{"rendered":"Jordan says Palestinian refugees at risk with UN agency in crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1353606\/middle-east\" readability=\"79\">\n<p>\nAMMAN: Jordan warned on Wednesday that a severe financial shortfall facing a United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees could have a \u201ccatastrophic\u201d impact on the lives of millions of refugees in the region.<\/p>\n<p>\nForeign Minister Ayman Safadi said after meeting visiting UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Pierre Kr\u00e4henb\u00fchl the budget crisis facing the agency could deprive refugees of core education, health care and food security service that would only \u201cdeepen their humanitarian plight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cUNRWA faces a dangerous financial deficit that threatens catastrophic consequences on refugees if it is not covered before its financial allocations run out,\u201d Safadi was quoted as saying in a Foreign Ministry statement.<\/p>\n<p>\nUNRWA has faced a cash crisis since the United States, long its biggest donor, slashed funding to the agency, providing just $60 million of a promised $365 million this year.<\/p>\n<p>\nUS President Donald Trump withheld the aid after questioning its value and saying Washington would only provide more assistance if the Palestinians agreed to renew peace talks with Israel.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe largest ever reduction in UNRWA\u2019s funding has cast doubts about the agency\u2019s\u2019 long-term outlook and has already begun to impact some services. UN officials have said it could even affect the opening of schools at the start of the next academic year<\/p>\n<p>\nThe agency operates around 700 schools, educating 500,000 refugee children in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.<\/p>\n<p>\nJordan, which hosts the largest number of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East outside Palestinian territories, was engaged in intensive lobbying with donors, Safadi said.<\/p>\n<p>\nOfficials privately have said they were was also worried about any US drive to dismantle the agency as part of a nascent Middle East peace plan that Washington has promised to unveil soon<\/p>\n<p>\nAccording to diplomats, the plan diverges from longstanding US support for a Palestinian state and backing for a full Israeli withdrawal from territory captured in 1967.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AMMAN: Jordan warned on Wednesday that a severe financial shortfall facing a United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees could have a \u201ccatastrophic\u201d impact on the lives of millions of refugees in the region. Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said after meeting visiting UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Pierre Kr\u00e4henb\u00fchl the budget crisis facing&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":11010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}