February 10, 2024

Defunding UNWRA in Gaza is ‘collective punishment’ – Lancet & Health Justice Organizations

Health and political leaders globally have condemned defunding of UNRWA, the principle lifeline for the people of Gaza.  Sharmila Devi, in the current issue of Lancet, quotes UN leaders and aid agency leaders (including WHO) “no other entity has the capacity to deliver the scale and breadth of assistance that 2·2 million people in Gaza urgently need,”  the cuts are “collective punishment,” and “if a teacher is found to be a murderer, we don’t get calls to defund the school where they worked.”  https://www-sciencedirect-com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/science/article/pii/S0140673624002332

Health GAP, the Peoples Health Movement,  the Health Justice Initiative, and nine other organizations that have historically worked on issues of health justice and access to medicines have condemned the defunding as an “ACT OF DEPRAVITY AND ENABLES A GENOCIDE.”  They write that “in taking the decision to pause funding to UNRWA at this CRITICAL time when a real risk of hunger, disease, starvation, and famine looms in Gaza, these countries and donors are enabling a worsening humanitarian disaster and a genocide that cruelly depends on aid deprivation. They are not standing on the right side of history or for humanity – and their double standards must now be called out by more of us in the global health community.”

HEALTH ACTIVIST GROUPS: DEFUNDING UNRWA IN GAZA IS AN ACT OF DEPRAVITY AND ENABLES A GENOCIDE