APAwire - APAwire CLIENTS ONLY, Gaza – 06 April 2021. Palestinian teachers take part in a protest demanding their rights in front of the headquarters United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), in Gaza City.
01.SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Leader of the Islamic Jihad movement, Ahmed Al-Mudallal
02.SOUNDBITE Palestinian teacher Maram Al-Madhoun
03.SOUNDBITE Palestinian teacher
STORYLINE
Protesters slammed the agency’s cuts to vital services, especially aid and employment. UNRWA is already suffering from a huge budget deficit that has forced it to scale back services to Palestinian refugees in recent years. The crisis worsened after the United States suspended its funding to UNRWA in 2018.
Protesters slammed the agency’s cuts to vital services, especially aid and employment. UNRWA is already suffering from a huge budget deficit that has forced it to scale back services to Palestinian refugees in recent years. The crisis worsened after the United States suspended its funding to UNRWA in 2018.
The UN agency provides education, health and welfare services to millions of Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
Over the past decades, the Israeli regime had been campaigning to defund UNRWA and to end its mandate.
Palestinian refugees say that they have been suffering for more than seven decades because the world has failed to fulfill its obligations towards them as required by international law.
Footage by Mahmoud Ajjour/APAwire