Additional $100 Million Will Keep UNRWA Going ‘Until MidSummer’
Donors pledged an additional $100 million to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, addressing around a quarter of the shortfall caused by a drop in United States funding.
The U.S. halved its first funding installment to the UNRWA this year and U.N. officials fear that $60 million might be all it gets after President Donald Trump warned of funding cuts to Palestinians. Historically, the U.S. has donated $350 million a year, around 30 percent of the agency’s budget.
The emergency donor conference in Rome was hosted by Jordan, Egypt and Sweden. The UNRWA said France, Qatar, Canada, Switzerland, Turkey, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Mexico, Slovakia and India had made additional pledges.
UNRWA commissioner-general Pierre Krahenbuhl said the additional funds would keep the agency going for a few more months, until around midsummer. It provides health, education and food assistance to some 5 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
Hungary Jails Syrian Man for Seven Years for Border Clash
A Syrian man was sentenced to seven years in prison in Hungary for throwing stones at police in a ruling that Amnesty International called a “travesty of justice.”
Ahmed Hamed also has a Cypriot passport but he wanted to help his elderly parents and other relatives escape Syria so he left Cyprus and ended up on the migration trail to Europe in 2015.
In September 2015, Hungary closed the border with Serbia, prompting clashes with a group of refugees and migrants stranded there, including Hamed. TV footage shows him using a megaphone to call for calm . “We did not go to the border to cause problems,” Hamed told the court. “Neither my culture, nor my religion would encourage that.”
Hamed was first sentenced to 10 years for “an act of terror” in November 2016 but an appeals court ordered a retrial. His lawyers plan to contest the new verdict.
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, who has ramped up the alarmist rhetoric over Muslims and migration ahead of April’s elections, frequently refers to Hamed’s case in his party’s anti-immigration propaganda.
Lawsuit Claims U.S. Holding Most Asylum Seekers In Detention
The Trump administration is being sued for unfairly keeping asylum seekers in detention while their claims are assessed.
The class-action lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and several other groups on behalf of nine asylum seekers, claims that five United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices are keeping nearly all asylum seekers in custody.
In 2013, 92 percent of asylum seekers deemed to have a “credible fear” of persecution were released on humanitarian grounds according to an ICE directive, while today virtually none are being released, the lawsuit claims.
Resuming humanitarian releases is even more critical after the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that asylum seekers who entered the country illegally do not have the right to a bond hearing, said ACLU lawyer Michael Tan.
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