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”.
Over the weekend, more than 10 donor countries – including Australia, the US and the UK – suspended funding to UNRWA after Israel provided the agency with information alleging that as many as 12 of its staff were involved in Hamas’s 7 October attack on southern Israel.
The Australian foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said on Saturday that she was “deeply concerned” by the allegations and would “temporarily pause disbursement” of $6m in humanitarian funding for UNRWA that she had announced in mid-January.
Prime minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday the government wanted to resume funding, but that the reports were a “concern”, and that he wanted assurance of further “protections” about where that money would go.
The government has not publicly set out any specific conditions for resuming funding, although it is in talks with UNRWA and other countries to gather more details about the investigations that have been launched into the claims.
Speaking on Triple J’s Hack program, Albanese did not outline any specifics to turn the funding back on, but praised the work of UNRWA.
“We want the funding to resume but there’s a pause on while this investigation takes place. The foreign minister [Wong] is talking with the United Nations,” he said.
“We want to make sure that protections are put in place to ensure that the money that Australia is giving, goes to the right purpose.”
Albanese called the reports “unfortunate”, saying “UNRWA do good work overwhelmingly, but this is of real concern”.
“We believe this is very important that the humanitarian assistance gets to the people who need it, when they need it, and we know they need it now,” he said.
Wong has acknowledged that more than 1.4 million Palestinians are currently sheltering in UNRWA facilities and the agency carries out “vital, life saving work”, in a sign that the government may be hopeful of resuming funding once the allegations are sufficiently addressed.
Clark said that given the allegations related to 12 people out of a UNRWA workforce of 13,000, the decision to suspend aid funding was “completely disproportionate”.
She said the UNRWA chief had “immediately dismissed the nine people of the 12 that he could find – one is dead and two others are untraced”.
Clark, who is also a former administrator of the UN development program, argued that the UN had “acted very, very quickly” to deal with the allegations.
“That’s why the suspension of aid by Australia, the US and others seems a very, very harsh, collective punishment of the Gazan people at this point and I think needs to be reconsidered,” she told ABC Radio National on Monday.
Clark said the suspension could have a “catastrophic” impact because UNRWA was the biggest deliverer of services, including emergency relief, in Gaza.
“If UNRWA is crippled financially it has devastating impacts for the families living in Gaza,” she said.
Clark said Wong should “take it as fact that the secretary general will leave no stone unturned to ensure that those who have supported the terrorist acts of Hamas are driven out of the organisation”.
Aly, the minister for early childhood education, told ABC Radio National the allegations were serious, “which is why not just Australia but a number of countries have taken that step” of suspending funding.
“What I’d like to see is a resolution as quickly as possible so we can get that aid back into where it’s needed in Gaza and Palestine,” Aly said.
“I’d like it to be as short as possible.”
The Coalition’s home affairs spokesperson, James Paterson, said the funding should be channelled through a different agency, such as the Red Cross or Red Crescent.
“The allegations that we’ve been reading about in the media in the last few days are just the latest in a long line of serious allegations about UNRWA, which have included that UNRWA textbooks taught in UN schools in Gaza have included antisemitic content and content glorifying terrorists,” he told 2GB.
“Of course, there’s a genuine humanitarian need in Gaza right now, but there are safer ways than giving it to UNRWA.”
The Zionist Federation of Australia said the government should “insist on reforms” before resuming funding to UNRWA.
But the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network said it strongly condemned the decision to “freeze this life-saving funding”.
The deputy leader of the Greens, Mehreen Faruqi, also called on the Australian government to reinstate the funding.
“The Labor government’s blatant hypocrisy is on full display – suspending funding to UNRWA while Palestinians are being killed, starved and displaced, but not so much as a slap on the wrist for Israel, which is on a genocidal mission,” she said.
The international court of justice has not yet ruled on South Africa’s allegations that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, but in a provisional ruling on Friday it found “a real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice” will be caused to the rights of Palestinians.
The court ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent” any genocidal acts and also to “prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide”.
The order also called on Israel to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”.
Additional reporting by Emily Wind
