- JERUSALEM -- United Nations
relief workers reported yesterday that they could meet only 40 per cent
of the minimum food needs of nearly a million Palestinian refugees made
destitute by three years of violent confrontation with Israel. They said
international donors had provided less than half of the emergency aid they
had sought for this year.
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- Mobile clinics, on which one in three of the refugees
depend for basic health care, may have to be taken off the road, they said.
The number of births at home rather than in hospital has already risen
sharply and there has been a 35 per cent drop in infants completing immunisation
programmes.
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- The backlog on rebuilding refugee homes demolished by
the Israeli army has grown to 1,100, with an average waiting time of two
years. "These families will continue to be without a roof over their
heads if we can't get the funding," warned Peter Hansen, commissioner-general
of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees
in the Near East (UNRWA). He estimated that between a third and a half
of the Palestinian labour force was unemployed.
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- Mr Hansen was launching a $193m (£110m) emergency
appeal for next year. The sum is $3m less than had beenrequested for this
year, but $108m more than wasreceived. "I urge donors to assist UNRWA
in caring for the thousands who have lost their jobs or their homes,"
he said.
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- "UNRWA needs this funding if it is to repair some
of the damage done to the minds and emotions of the children it cares for,
or to simply provide food for the hungry."
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- Britain and the United States, the prime movers behind
the invasion of Iraq, have been more generous than most, with donations
of $8.3m and $46m respectively. They may have wanted to show anti-war campaigners
that they were not neglecting another Middle East conflict.
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- Ireland has already committed itself to provide $1.2m
next year. UNRWA, which has sustained Palestinian refugees for more than
half a century, is trying to draw Russia and China into the circle of donors
for the first time.
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- Mr Hansen reported, however, that a number of European
states had cut back, either because they were channelling the money to
reconstruct Iraq or because they complained they were "tired of financing
the Israeli occupation".
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=472807
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