Governments should continue funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), given its vital role in averting a humanitarian catastrophe and the risk of famine in the Gaza Strip, Human Rights Watch said today.
“Withholding funds from the UN agency most able to provide immediate lifesaving food, water, and medicine to the more than 2.3 million people of Gaza shows callous indifference to what the world’s leading experts have warned is the looming risk of famine,” said Akshaya Kumar, crisis advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “Palestinian civilians in Gaza, including children, people with disabilities, and those who are pregnant, rely heavily on UNRWA services”
Shortly after October 7th, Israeli authorities cut off essential services, including water and electricity, to Gaza’s population and blocked the entry of all but a trickle of fuel and critical humanitarian aid, acts of collective punishment that amount to war crimes.
HRW has also found that Israeli authorities are using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.
“They are doing so by deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival under a policy set out by Israeli officials and carried out by Israeli forces,” HRW said.
HRW has urged several countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany to suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel so long as its forces commit, with impunity, widespread and serious abuses amounting to war crimes against Palestinian civilians.
(WAFA)
