MSF: Pause in UNRWA funding will exacerbate humanitarian crisis in Gaza

JERUSALEM, January 29, 2024—Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is deeply alarmed by the decision of the United States and other countries to suspend their funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached catastrophic levels.

UNRWA is a lifeline for millions of Palestinians in Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the wider region. Cutting this funding and any additional limitations on aid will result in more deaths and suffering in Gaza as people there are in desperate need of more aid, not less. Humanitarian organizations are already grappling to meet even a fraction of the urgent needs in Gaza, including those related to medical care, food, and shelter.

MSF continues to call for an immediate and sustained ceasefire, and for the end of the siege that’s preventing humanitarian supplies from crossing into Gaza and getting to the nearly 2.2 million people who need them.