U.N.: Palestinian aid pledges short

ROME — The United Nations received pledges Thursday of nearly $100 million in new funding for the U.N. relief agency for Palestinians after the U.S. slashed its aid, but it is still facing a nearly $350 million shortfall this year.

U.N. officials said the countries providing the new financing include Qatar, Canada, Switzerland, Turkey, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Mexico, Slovakia, India and France.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “an important first step was reached” at an emergency donor conference in Rome with the new pledges. But he said “a long way is in front of us” to fully fund the agency, which went into the conference facing a $446 million gap in financing this year — the worst funding crisis in its 68-year history.

“If UNRWA would not exist, if these services were not provided, the security of region would be severely undermined,” Guterres told reporters.

The agency, the oldest and largest U.N. relief program in the Middle East, provides health care, education and social services to an estimated 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. They are the refugees or descendants of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who either fled or were forced from their homes during the war that led to Israel’s establishment in 1948.

Guterres told the conference that cutting sanitation, health care and medical services in already poverty-wracked and conflict-ridden areas “would have severe impact — a cascade of problems that could push the suffering in disastrous and unpredictable directions.”

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration announced in January it was slashing $65 million this year.

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