Sweden ends funding for UN Palestinian aid agency UNRWA

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(Reuters) -Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide increased overall humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Nordic country said on Friday.

Israel, which says it will ban UNRWA operations in the country from late January, accuses the agency of being involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel that triggered the 14-month-old war in Gaza.

“The government’s core support to UNRWA ends,” the Swedish foreign ministry said in a statement.

Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channelling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, told Swedish broadcaster TV4.

The new Israeli law does not directly ban UNRWA’s operations in the West Bank and Gaza but it will have a severe impact on UNRWA’s ability to work. Top U.N. officials describe UNRWA as the backbone of Gaza’s aid response.

Sweden plans to increase its overall humanitarian assistance to Gaza next year to 800 million Swedish crowns ($72.44 million) from 451 million Swedish crowns spent this year, the foreign ministry said.

Aid will flow via several organisations including the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the U.N. Populations Fund (UNFPA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the ministry added.

The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.” The refugee population relies on UNRWA healthcare, education, emergency relief and humanitarian assistance, it said.

The United Nations General Assembly threw its support behind UNRWA this month, demanding that Israel respect the agency’s mandate and “enable its operations to proceed without impediment or restriction”.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on X: “Defunding UNRWA now will undermine decades of Sweden’s investment in human development including by denying access to education for hundreds of thousands of girls and boys across the region.”

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.

“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.

The U.N. has said nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack and had been fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon – killed by Israel – was also found to have had an UNRWA job.

($1 = 11.0429 Swedish crowns)

(Reporting by Terje Solsvik in Oslo, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, West Bank, and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Editing by Howard Goller, William Maclean)