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With Israel banning UNRWA and the US planning to withdraw from WHO, our Inside Geneva podcast reports on a turbulent couple of weeks for United Nations agencies. 

In Gaza, Israel’s ban on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has come into effect.

“UNRWA is what we call the backbone of the humanitarian operation. Meaning that they not only bring in aid themselves, but they are also the operation on which all other humanitarian actors depend,” says Jorgen Jensehaugen from the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).

US President Donald Trump has also announced that the US will leave the World Health Organization (WHO).

“This is going to mean that all of the vital work of the WHO – polio eradication, AIDS, TB and malaria – will be even more underfunded,” continues Lawrence Gostin, professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University in the United States.

Trump has also ordered a freeze on US foreign aid.

“The 90-day suspension is a death sentence for many small NGOs who simply don’t have the finances to weather this period,” says Colum Lynch, a senior global reporter for Devex, a media platform for the development community.

Where does that leave the UN’s humanitarian work?

“I think there is an increasing disrespect for what the UN stands for,” says Jensehaugen.

“This is really the end of foreign aid as we know it,” concludes Lynch.

Join host Imogen Foulkes on our Inside Geneva podcast.

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Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
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