São Paulo – Brazil has donated USD 75,000 to help fight the coronavirus in Palestinian refugee camps. Ambassador Alessandro Candeas, head of the Brazilian Representation office in Ramallah, delivered this Tuesday (30) a donation letter to the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, at a meeting in Amman, capital of Jordan. Pictured above, Candeas (left) delivers the letter to Lazzarini (right).
The donation was made through the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), an agency linked to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responsible for humanitarian and technical cooperation matters. “For the second time, Brazil made this donation of USD 75,000 to fight covid in Palestinian refugee camps,” Candeas told ANBA. According to the ambassador, since 2008, Brazil has donated a total of USD 20 million to UNRWA to help in multiple agency programs.
UNRWA is the UN agency providing public services in Palestinian refugee camps, ranging from education to health and urban sanitation. In total, 5.6 million Palestinian refugees are assisted in camps in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Refugees are people who have had to leave their homes or countries because of significant problems such as conflict, persecution, or serious human rights violations. Diplomat Candeas stated Brazil has always supported UNRWA and will continue to do so.
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UNRWA will hold a two-day meeting of its Consultative Committee in Jordan. The Brazilian donation was announced in mid-November at the UNRWA International Ministerial Conference in Brussels, Belgium. Brazil is the single Latin American country to be part of the Agency’s Advisory Commission, responsible for advising the agency’s commissioner-general and ensuring the institution follows the UN humanitarian principles.
At the commission, Lazzarini informed the dramatic situation of UNRWA, which does not have the necessary resources to pay over 28,000 employees of the agency up to date in November, according to an opening speech posted on the UNRWA website. The commissioner spoke of the hard work of the agency’s staff and said the institution was on the brink of collapse as the humanitarian needs of refugee communities grew. He asked countries to make their contributions as soon as possible and make additional contributions.
Translated by Elúsio Brasileiro
