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Speakers' Bureau
 Karen Koning AbuZayd
UNRWA COMMISSIONER GENERAL
On October 23, 2007 Karen AbuZayd will
was hosted by NCCAR's Speakers' Bureau to give an overall update
from the ground- reporting on the unfolding crisis in the Gaza Strip,
the current situation in Naher Al Bared, and policy challenges and the
status of refugees in Lebanon
From her base in Gaza, Karen
Koning AbuZayd helps to oversee the education, health, social services
and micro-enterprise programs for 4.4 million Palestinian refugees.
services and micro-enterprise programs for 4.4 million Palestinian
refugees. assistance to, and generating employment for, the victims of
the current crisis in the occupied Palestinian territory.
With Headquarters in Gaza and Amman,
UNRWA provides education, health, and relief and social services to
Palestine refugees living in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab
Republic, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. With some 28,000
employees, mainly locally recruited teachers and health workers, UNRWA
is the largest United Nations Agency in terms of staff. The Agency’s
2007 General Fund budget is US$ 506 million.
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In the News
UN Palestine Agency Faces Cash
Shortage
The head of UNRWA says her group appreciates Canada's funding, but
still needs more donations to improve life for Palestinians.
Embassy, October 24th, 2007
By Jeff Davis
The chief of the United Nations agency providing humanitarian assistance
to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza has asked the Canadian
government for multi-year funding rather than the current year-to-year
support so long-term planning can be facilitated.
In addition, Karen Koning AbuZayd, commissioner general of the UN Relief
and Works Agency, said that while Canada donates almost $25 million
annually and is always within the top five or six largest donors to the
UNRWA, the organization has been wrestling with serious budget
shortfalls for the past few years.
The UNRWA was established in 1948 following the Arab-Israeli conflict
and has been the UN's lead provider of humanitarian assistance to
Palestinian populations in the occupied territories for almost 60 years.
The basic responsibilities of the UNRWA are to provide primary health
care and education to the Palestinian population. The UNRWA also
provides food aid, some social services and runs a successful
microfinance and micro-enterprise program.
During her two-day trip, Mrs. Koning AbuZayd and her staff met with
officials from the Prime Minister's Office, the Privy Council Office,
the Canadian International Development Agency and the Department of
Foreign Affairs and International Trade. She also gave a lecture at the
International Development Research Centre and attended a talk hosted by
the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations.
Mrs. Koning AbuZayd said she spoke with Canadian officials about the
"increasing needs of the Palestinian refugees and the miserable
conditions on the ground," and iterated that her organization is a
"very stable partner, a force for stability in the region and a
good means through which people can help the Palestine refugees."
A multi-year funding regime would help bring predictability to the UNRWA
funding estimates and therefore help with longer term planning, she
added.
As for the funding shortfalls, Mrs. Koning AbuZayd said the agency has
been undertaking some ambitious and expensive projects to try and
improve life in the camps. These improvements will be achieved through
the building of more schools, housing, hospitals and sewers.
Most schools in the occupied territories, she says, are overloaded. This
forces students to take shifts in coming to school. As a result, she
says, education quality in basic subjects such as Arabic and math is
dropping.
Building new housing facilities are also a priority as some crammed
tenements are now 50 years old.
Constructing more clinics and hiring more doctors is also essential, she
said, because most "doctors are now seeing 100 patients a
day."
Mrs. Koning AbuZayd said that the occupied territories experienced a
time of strain after Canada cut aid funding to the Palestinian authority
when Hamas won elections and formed the government in 2006.
"In Gaza 23,000 people who worked for Palestinian authority no
longer had salaries, even though they had jobs, so they had to come to
us for food distribution like everyone else without jobs," she
said.
This increased demand, she said, put pressure on her organization.
What was particularly difficult, though, was seeing the shift in public
mood that the cut in aid caused, she said.
"What's stressful is that you see people growing poorer, and the
whole society growing poorer and more frustrated and more angry and days
go by," Mrs. Koning AbuZayd said.
However, she said the main reason she was in Ottawa was to meet Foreign
Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier and International Development Minister
Bev Oda and "thank the new ministers we're dealing with here and to
let them know how much they support UNRWA in various ways."
Mrs. Koning AbuZayd was scheduled to fly to UN headquarters in New York,
where she will present her 2007-2008 budget which will call for $1.09
billion. This represents an almost $400 million increase from previous
years.
jdavis@embassymag.ca
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