- In short: Australia will resume its funding to the primary aid agency operating inside Gaza, UNRWA.
- Funding was paused by several nations after Israel claimed several workers had links to the October 7 terror attack by Hamas.
- What’s next? The government has committed additional support to Gaza, including assistance in delivering aid drops.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Australia will resume funding to the United Nations aid agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, Foreign Minister Penny Wong has announced.
In January, the federal government joined several western nations in freezing funding to the organisation after Israeli intelligence suggested a dozen of its workers had been linked to the October 7 terror attack by Hamas.
UNRWA terminated the contracts of some of its staff and launched an investigation in response, but governments said they would wait until they were confident funds would not support terror activities before returning them.
Canada and the European Union this month said they would also resume funding to UNRWA, but its largest donor the United States has maintained a payment freeze.
While Mr Dutton has argued the links were indisputable, there have been several reports by foreign media casting doubt on the veracity of Israel’s claims.
“It remains our view that delivering aid through UNRWA poses an insurmountable risk of Australian taxpayers’ money being wasted or, worse still, being used in part to support Hamas’s terrorist activities,” the group said.
The original article contains 475 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 3 months ago
If there’s any truth to that, I hope UNRWA has compensated and apologised to the people they fired.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 3 months ago
There may have been members of the UNRWA involved but, as I’ve pointed out previously, the accused represented around 0.6% of the UNRWA’s employees.
Even prior to the news that Israel obtained their “evidence” via war crimes (torture), the instantaneous defunding of the UNRWA without any due process was criminally disproportionate — a crime against humanity in and of itself.