Department of Refugee Affairs and the Right of Return in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

▪The Zionist and American schemes aimed at weakening the UNRWA and reducing its role and services constitute a suspicious political path that seeks to undermine the United Nations witness to the Nakba of our Palestinian people, and to evade international responsibility toward the refugee issue and their rights, foremost among them the right of return.

▪The danger of these trends increases amid the UNRWA administration’s alignment and its hinting at dispensing with large numbers of employees, at a time when our people face a war of extermination and humanitarian disasters that require strengthening the agency’s relief, educational and health services.

▪UNRWA embodies international responsibility toward our people who were displaced by the Nakba, and undermining its capacities or emptying its mandate of content threatens the rights of refugees and opens the الباب to attempts to evade international obligations toward their cause.

▪Accordingly, we emphasize the following:

1. Reject any measures that affect the job rights of UNRWA employees, and demand that the agency administration protect their job security, preserve their rights, and recognize their role in continuing to provide services despite the exceptional circumstances and the risks they faced, especially in the Gaza Strip.

2. Reject reducing the basic services provided to refugees, on the grounds that any decline in the sectors of education, health, relief and social services will multiply the suffering of refugees and burden them with the costs of a crisis for which they bear no responsibility, at a time when they are most in need of protection and support.

3. Hold the United Nations and donor states to their financial and political responsibilities, and call for providing sustainable and sufficient funding that ensures the continuation of the agency’s work, بعيداً عن الارتهان للتبرعات المتقلبة والضغوط السياسية، and include its funding within stable mechanisms that ensure the continuity of its mandate.

4. Confront attempts to undermine UNRWA’s United Nations mandate or replace it with alternatives that diminish the rights of refugees, and adhere to its mandate issued under General Assembly Resolution No. 302, and to the Palestinian rights affirmed by international resolutions, foremost among them the right of return and compensation under Resolution 194.

5. Support the legitimate trade union and popular actions of workers and refugees, and call for unifying national, Arab and international efforts to defend the rights of employees, the continuation of services, and the protection of UNRWA from attempts at weakening and marginalization.

▪We warn that the continued reduction of UNRWA’s role and weakening of its capabilities entrenches international evasion of responsibility toward the refugee issue, and whets the appetite of the occupation to continue its schemes aimed at ending the agency and liquidating the right of return, which constitutes a direct targeting of our people’s fixed national rights that do not lapse with time and are not subject to financial blackmail or political pressure.