Qatar, Iraq pledge $25 mln each to UNRWA

Qatar’s UN ambassador Sheikha Alya Ahmed bin Saif al-Thani pledged an additional $25 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to help it meet emergency needs, Qatar’s state news agency reported on Wednesday.

Iraq also pledged to donate $25 million donation to UNRWA, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

They did not say when Baghdad will pay the sum.

Many countries that paused funding to the UN Palestinian refugee agency are likely having second thoughts and payments could resume soon, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said on Wednesday.

Several countries, including the United States and Britain, paused their funding to UNRWA after accusations by Israel that a dozen of its 13,000 staff in Gaza took part in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

Norway, a top donor to UNRWA, has maintained its funding and transferred 275 million crowns ($26 million) in February, its regular annual contribution, and said more could come. It is also lobbying countries that have paused funding to resume.

“I think that a large number of those countries who suspended are (having) second thoughts,” Barth Eide told Reuters in an interview, citing the recognition from these nations that “they cannot punish the whole Palestinian society.”

“This is increasingly recognized and agreed by many,” he said, after meeting Norwegian aid organizations to take stock of the humanitarian situation in Gaza.