Austria is the 12th country to stop sending money to the UNRWA, which is the UN’s Palestine help agency and sends help to Gaza.
For many, cutting off funds to the UNRWA has become a big deal because people who work for the UNRWA have been accused of being involved in the October 7 attack that killed many.
What the Austrian ministry said was, “We call on UNRWA and the UN to do a full, quick, and thorough investigation into the claims.” Several countries have stopped giving money to the UNRWA, with Austria being the latest. The US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, and Japan are on this list of countries that have stopped giving money to the UNRWA.
“France has not planned a new payment at UNRWA in the first quarter of 2024. When the time comes, France will decide what action to take with the UN and the main donors,” France’s Foreign Ministry said as they stopped giving money.
Japan said, “Given this situation, Japan is very worried about the claims that UNRWA employees were involved in the terror attack on Israel on October 7 of last year.” As a result, Japan has chosen to stop giving more money to UNRWA for now while UNRWA looks into the situation and thinks about how to deal with the accusations. This is what they said when they said they would not be giving any more money.
As they said they would no longer be giving money to UNRWA, the US said, “The US is very troubled by the allegations that twelve UNRWA employees may have been involved in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.” The US Department of State has stopped giving more money to UNRWA until we look into these claims and the steps the UN is taking to deal with them.
A lot of different people in UNRWA have different claims about how they helped or were involved in the October 7 attack. In one case, the Israeli foreign ministry said that teachers at UNRWA were said to have celebrated the attacks on October 7 in front of their children.
That being said, some countries have said they will keep giving help to the UNRWA. Norway said they understood the worries and would keep helping for now. Other countries have made it clear that they will help the Palestinian people no matter what, which means that they will also keep giving money to the UNRWA.
