Former New Zealand PM urges Australia and west to reinstate UNRWA funding to avoid ‘catastrophic’ impact on Palestinians

Helen Clark says that if the UN refugee agency UNRWA is ‘crippled financially it has devastating impacts for the families living in Gaza’. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters

The former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark has urged Australia and other western countries to reinstate funding to a key UN agency to avoid “a very, very harsh, collective punishment of the Gazan people”.

The call came as an Australian government minister, Anne Aly, said she hoped the pause in funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was “as short as possible”.