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From left: Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert, Jørgen Jensehaugen, Kjersti Berg, Leni Stenseth and Julie Takahashi. Photo: PRIO / Ida Verlo
From left: Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert, Jørgen Jensehaugen, Kjersti Berg, Leni Stenseth and Julie Takahashi. Photo: PRIO / Ida Verlo

For the past 70 years, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has provided humanitarian support to Palestinian refugees (currently numbering 5.9 million), as they wait for a political solution. After decades of conflict, such a solution has failed to materialize and UNRWA continues to need to exist. Despite this, it has struggled with persistent underfunding even though humanitarian needs are immense.

In the wake of multiple regional crises, the situation for Palestinian refugees is becoming increasingly precarious, while at the same time there has been an increasingly politicized debate concerning UNRWA funding in a number of donor countries.

Leni Stenseth, the Deputy Commissioner General for UNRWA, will visit PRIO on 15 February to lead a discussion on UNRWA’s political and financial challenges.

In the panel, she meets Kjersti Berg(CMI), who together withJørgen Jensehaugen (PRIO) will present a recent report that examines possibles scenarios for UNRWA’s future. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry will also offer perspectives on what Norway’s policy for UNRWA is.

The seminar will be moderated by Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert (PRIO and Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies).

The event is co-hosted by PRIO’s Middle East Centre and Chr. Michelsens Institute.

Click here to read the report “UNRWA, funding crisis and the way forward”.

MidEast Breakfast

The PRIO Middle East Centre hosts a series of breakfast seminars, catering to Oslo's diverse community of MidEast watchers. The series will draw attention to current issues, and discuss those in the light of historical, regional and global trends. The MidEast Breakfast provides an opportunity to combine breakfast with food for thought in a compact one-hour format.

This seminar is a collaboration between PRIO and the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies (NCHS). The NCHS is a joint initiative between three Norwegian research institutes, the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).