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UN / KRAHENBUHL
STORY: UN / KRAHENBUHL
TRT: 02:32
SOURCE: UNIFEED-UNTV
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 3 MAY 2016 / FILE
FILE – NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, UNHQ
3 MAY 2016, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, press room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Pierre Krähenbühl, Commissioner-General, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA):
“I’m always happy to help people in time of need, but I have a very big problem to be a provider of food assistance in a place where people are educated, have run their businesses in the past, used to export their materials be it to Israel, to the West Bank, and to Europe, and are not finding that impossible simply because of the intensity in which the blockade is imposed on them and the conflict dynamics have affected their lives in every shape and form.”
4. Med shot, reporter
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Pierre Krähenbühl, Commissioner-General, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA):
“For some people, the food is however a symbol of the status of refugeehood, and this is what people are reacting to in part. Some are also reacting to the simple fact that there is change. Some are reacting to the fact that maybe they felt UNRWA should have explained it in greater detail. Whatever are the motives of reaction, they gravitate around those three.”
6. Wide shot, reporters
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Pierre Krähenbühl, Commissioner-General, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East(UNRWA):
“One of our teachers said had organized a competition – we have a human rights curriculum and in the context of that human rights curriculum she organized a debate among students on Martin Luther King. And she was desperate because she said it was a failure. And she said it was a failure because ‘none of my students could come up with a dream.’”
8. Med shot, reporter
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Pierre Krähenbühl, Commissioner-General, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East(UNRWA):
“On average if you take the last decade, the amount of money receives has sort of increased by about one percent a year. Now, you can’t yet organize a celebration on that basis, but you can at least note that there is no declining trend. However, if you then put it in the context of increased needs, increased demographics – or demographic change- plus inflation, you realize that of course you’re than the starting point the year before.”
10. Wide shot, press briefing room
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Pierre Krähenbühl, Commissioner-General, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA):
“People hear about the two-state solution but they don’t see anything materializing. They hear almost every international official saying ‘we are in favour of the two-state solution’, but they see no concrete movement towards that. So whatever is announced in the region, I think people, particularly young people, they want to judge on results. They want to see things happening on the ground.”
12. Med shot, reporter
13. Zoom out, press room
The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) Commissioner-General said the lack of political progress on the Palestinian issue weighs heavily on the people affected, especially the youth.
Speaking to reporters today (3 MAY) in New York, Pierre Krähenbühl said half of the population of Gaza is under food assistance from the agency, with over 40 percent of the population unemployed. He said 90 percent of UNRWA students in Gaza have also never had the opportunity to leave. He told reporters that a recently organized competition on Martin Luther King was a complete failure because none of the students “could come up with a dream.”
Krähenbühl said UNRWA has been able to maintain a zero growth budget despite growing needs among Palestinian refugees. Still, he said the agency is facing an $80 million shortfall and called on Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, to repeat the generosity they showed last year when their contributions helped avoid shutting down UNRWA schools.
Asked about UNRWA staff “strikes” in response to a new policy to distribute cash instead of food assistance, Krähenbühl said these were not strikes rather “reactions.” He said his agency sees the new policy as a step forward which provides families with the flexibility to meet their particular needs, however, some people consider the food assistance “a symbol of the status of refugeehood.”
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