France will provide €30 million ($32 million) for the embattled United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) if it commits to neutrality, the French foreign ministry said on Thursday, March 28, without giving a timeline for payments.
"We will make our contributions ensuring that the conditions have been met for UNRWA to complete its missions in a spirit devoid of any call to hatred or violence," ministry spokesman Christophe Lemoine said. "We have always said UNRWA played a crucial role in Gaza and in the region and that it must imperatively be able to continue its work," Lemoine said. He gave no timeline for the payments, which usually are made quarter by quarter.
UNRWA, which coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, has been in crisis since Israel accused about a dozen of its 13,000 employees in Gaza of being involved in the attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas against it on October 7.
This led many donors, including the United States, to suspend their funding to the agency in January. France at the time said that it had no funding planned for UNRWA for the first quarter of 2024. Last year, France had provided the agency with €60 million in funding.
Human rights groups condemned the decision, pointing to a "worsening humanitarian catastrophe" and "looming famine" in the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza, where Israeli forces after October 7 launched a devastating military campaign.
The United Nations has since fired the accused employees and launched both an internal probe and an independent investigation into UNWRA. A preliminary investigation found "critical areas" that need to be addressed despite a "significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the humanitarian principle of neutrality," a UN spokesperson said last week. The final report is due to be presented to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on April 20.