UN Secretary-General António Guterres issued a stark plea to donors on Friday, urging them to fund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which aids Palestinian refugees in Gaza and other parts of the Middle East.
He accused Israel of issuing evacuation orders that force Palestinians “to move like human pinballs through a landscape of destruction and death,” driving civilians into deeper circles of hell.
Speaking at a donor conference, Guterres highlighted a “massive funding gap” faced by UNRWA. The agency’s Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, revealed at the beginning of the conference that UNRWA has only enough funds to continue its operations until August.
By the end of the conference, Lazzarini expressed cautious optimism, stating that while the total amount of pledges wouldn’t be clear until the following week, he was confident there would be sufficient new funds to cover the agency’s $850 million annual budget through the end of September.
UNRWA’s 30,000 staff members provide education, primary healthcare, and other developmental activities to approximately six million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.
Lazzarini noted that the agency would seek additional funds over the coming months to continue its operations through December and to launch emergency appeals for $1.2 billion for the Gaza war and $460 million for the Syrian crisis.
However, he lamented that these appeals had only managed to raise less than 20% of the necessary funds.
Guterres emphasized the critical nature of financial support for UNRWA, warning that without it, “Palestinian refugees will lose a vital lifeline and their last glimmer of hope for a better future.”
The Secretary-General reserved his harshest words for describing the ongoing Israeli military assault in Gaza, which has profoundly impacted its Palestinian refugee population.
“The extreme level of fighting and destruction is incomprehensible and unjustifiable. The chaos affects every Palestinian in Gaza and all those desperately trying to get aid to them,” he said.
Guterres continued, “Just when we thought things couldn’t get worse in Gaza, somehow, horrifically, civilians are being driven into deeper circles of hell.” He criticized Israel’s latest evacuation orders in Gaza City for causing further civilian suffering and bloodshed.
While condemning Hamas’s October 7th attacks in southern Israel, which killed about 1,200 people—mostly civilians—and resulted in around 250 kidnappings, Guterres insisted that “nothing justifies the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
The conflict has since resulted in over 38,300 deaths in Gaza due to Israeli ground attacks and bombings, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Guterres also noted that UNRWA itself has not been spared, with 195 of its staff members killed, the highest number of UN staff fatalities in history.
UNRWA has struggled with funding shortages for years, but this year has been particularly dire due to Israeli allegations that 12 out of 13,000 agency workers in Gaza were involved in Hamas’s surprise attack, sparking the ongoing conflict. In response to these allegations, 16 countries halted their funding, totaling around $450 million.
Lazzarini reported that 14 donors have formally resumed funding, and he believes a fifteenth donor, the United Kingdom, will return “very soon.” The sixteenth donor, the United States, was once UNRWA’s largest contributor but has had its aid to the agency blocked by Congress until March 25, 2025.
Before the conference began, Slovenia’s Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon announced that 118 countries had signed a declaration of strong support for UNRWA, a move welcomed by Lazzarini.
He noted that the United States was among the signatories, even though it did not attend the conference. “This was a very good sign,” he said, “indicating they are providing the necessary political support for the agency.”