Guterres tells donor conference the agency’s cash crisis carries “grave implications for the entire region,” as austerity cuts strip services from Gaza to Lebanon.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has issued a stark warning that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) UNRWA, is approaching a breaking point, urging member states to urgently close a $100m funding gap that threatens the survival of an agency relied upon by 2.6 million people.
Addressing an ad hoc UN General Assembly meeting on voluntary contributions, Guterres said UNRWA’s situation had grown “increasingly precarious,” compounded by sweeping operational restrictions across the occupied Palestinian territory and a persistent cash shortfall. “As we meet here today, the safety and welfare of millions of Palestine refugees hangs in the balance,” he told the donor conference.
$100M Funding Gap Pushes UNRWA to Brink:
UNRWA operates across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, providing education, healthcare, emergency aid, shelter and social services. Guterres described the agency as “a stabilising force in an age of instability,” warning that its collapse would remove a critical buffer against the “hopelessness that can fuel insecurity” in the region.
Yet the agency has been forced into deepening austerity. UNRWA’s acting commissioner-general, Christian Saunders, told the same conference that operations were now at breaking point, citing $175m in austerity measures in 2025 alone that have so far staved off mass layoffs. Service-delivery hours have been cut by 20 percent, salaries for local Palestinian staff slashed, and 15.5 percent of international posts left vacant. “UNRWA’s financial situation is untenable and the viability of our operations across the region is at stake,” Saunders said, warning that such measures “cannot continue indefinitely.”
Chronic underfunding, growing needs:
The shortfall reflects a broader funding pattern that has left UNRWA perennially strapped for cash. In 2025, the agency received roughly $829m in contributions against $887m in pledges-covering just 27 percent of its total funding requirement. The gap has persisted since the United States, historically UNRWA’s largest donor, cut funding in January 2024 after Israel accused a number of agency staff of involvement in the October 7, 2023 attack. Sweden also suspended funding, though most major donors have since resumed contributions following investigations.
Guterres rejected what he called sustained efforts to discredit the agency, describing a pattern of “disinformation, smear campaigns, legislative actions, operational restrictions, diplomatic roadblocks and more” aimed at undermining UNRWA’s work. He noted the agency had implemented more than 40 recommendations from the 2024 independent Colonna review in response to the allegations, calling it proof that “UNRWA has taken decisive steps to ensure its house is in order.”
Conditions on the ground remain dire:
The warning comes as humanitarian conditions across the region remain severe. Guterres described living conditions in Gaza as “utterly appalling,” pointing to unexploded ordnance, exposed sewage, rodent infestations, disease outbreaks and mass displacement that have left families sleeping outdoors or going without food. He said Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took hold, and that 390 UNRWA staff members have been killed since October 2023-a toll he called among the highest of any humanitarian agency in recent memory.
He also pointed to escalating settler violence in the West Bank and warned that any move toward annexation would constitute “a flagrant violation of international law,” while citing continuing Israeli strikes on Lebanon as part of the volatile backdrop against which UNRWA is struggling to operate.
Donors Urged to Rescue UNRWA:
UNRWA’s mandate, renewed by the General Assembly six months ago with overwhelming member-state support, underpins services for millions of registered refugees across five fields of operation. But Guterres cautioned that the mandate means little without the resources to fulfil it. “They cannot keep going like this without urgent backing and financial support from member states,” he said, praising staff who continue working “under some of the harshest conditions imaginable.”
UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric described the situation in blunter terms, calling it an existential crisis for the agency. The outcome of the pledging conference-and whether donor nations move to close the $100m gap-was expected to be announced Wednesday.
For UN General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock, the agency’s continued necessity nearly eight decades after its founding is itself an indictment of unresolved conflict. “A Palestinian State means that UNRWA is no longer needed,” she told member states. “Until that day comes, let us never stop working for the two-State solution and let us never stop supporting UNRWA.”