US embassy cable - 04AMMAN9468

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 AMMAN 009468 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/04/2014 
TAGS: PREL, PREF, EAID, IS, SY, LE, JO 
SUBJECT: UNRWA STAKEHOLDERS DEBATE PALESTINE REFUGEE 
DEVELOPMENT PLAN AHEAD OF DISENGAGEMENT 
 
REF: A. AMMAN 9013 
     B. TEL AVIV 5436 
 
Classified By: ACTING DCM CHRISTOPHER HENZEL FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D 
). 
 
1. (C) SUMMARY.  UNRWA,s stakeholders endorsed a 
controversial plan to strengthen the Agency,s governance 
bodies by 2006 at their fall major donors meeting.  They also 
gave conditioned backing to the Agency,s decision to launch 
its own ambitious USD 1 Billion five-year Medium Term Plan 
(MTP).  Responding to demands for information on this and 
other opaque Agency planning efforts, UNRWA broke its 
practice of showcasing projects at Major Donors, Meetings 
and devoted this meeting to explaining how it had formulated 
its five-year plan and a new emergency appeal for Gaza/WB. 
But it failed to convince donors its MTP is already in line 
with reforms that a high-level conference Switzerland hosted 
in June.  USDEL head PRM A/S Dewey warned other donors they 
could not rely on the U.S. to continue funding almost 25 
percent of UNRWA,s emergency appeals, but joined them in 
urging ComGen Peter Hansen to delay launching the MTP to 
incorporate the Geneva Conference,s key findings, arguing 
"buy-in" is crucial .  Dewey visited UNRWA installations 
immediately after the MDM to examine the needs described in 
the MTP.  Reftels report additional meetings he held to try 
to repair Israeli-UNRWA relations and to identify a successor 
to Hansen.  END SUMMARY. 
 
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NOT YOUR TYPICAL MAJOR DONORS MEETING 
------------------------------------- 
 
2. (SBU) UNRWA hosted its traditional informal fall meeting 
of donors and Palestinian refugee-hosting nations in Amman 
October 13-14, adopting an unusual agenda in response to 
donor concerns.  Sensing that the so-called "Geneva 
Conference process" (a high level international meeting 
Switzerland hosted in June to evaluate UNRWA operations and 
foster cooperation among UN agencies providing services to 
Palestinian refugees) had created the first real opening to 
press for direct oversight of the Agency in years -- and 
alarmed by rumors that the ComGen was planning a December 
pledging event for a largely in-house drafted five-year plan 
-- UNRWA,s major donors had joined forces in the run-up to 
this MDM (with the quiet backing of Jordan, Syria and 
UNRWA,s own progressive Deputy ComGen and External Relations 
Director).  Using five meetings UNRWA held in Amman and 
Jerusalem to finalize the conference report, they demanded 
that Hansen include two unprecedented items on the agenda: a 
debate on the need to revitalize UNRWA,s governance bodies 
and a substantive review of its current budget planning 
assumptions and methodologies.  Two serious topical issues 
raised by delegates over the two-day meeting - the ramp up of 
IDF operations in north Gaza camps and a troubling interview 
the ComGen gave on the eve of the meeting in which he 
asserted that members of Hamas were on UNRWA,s payroll - 
failed to politicize the proceedings, due in part to the 
determination of key stakeholders to show a united front on 
their expectations to see changes in the way UNRWA operates. 
 
CONTROVERSIAL GOVERNANCE REFORM PROCESS ENDORSED 
--------------------------------------------- --- 
 
3. (SBU) The key outcome was secured in the governance 
session, which the majority of stakeholders used to endorse a 
controversial new "Working Group on Stakeholders Relations" 
(WGSR).  Local Agency watchers created the WGSR in September 
through a process suggested by the Geneva Conference 
organizers and that progressive UNRWA officials pushed 
forward.  In what most donors hope will be a first step 
towards establishing direct oversight, the new group has been 
charged with evaluating the Agency,s existing governance 
bodies (i.e., its UNGA-mandated Advisory Commission, NY-based 
Finance Committee and the informal MDM) and recommending a 
structure that "meets donor and host nations, needs" by the 
next MDM, which is scheduled for May.  The deadline builds in 
time to table any UNGA resolutions that might be needed to 
modify the AdCom early in 2005.  However, this hard-won 
workplan nearly unraveled when the EC discovered that UNRWA 
had made a last-minute change to the group,s terms of 
reference that would have 
limited its ability to look at other UN agencies, for 
potential models -- a change UNRWA claimed it had made to 
respond to strong Lebanese, Syrian and PLO opposition to the 
creation of new bodies that might change UNRWA,s mandate. 
Japan unexpectedly used the opening to oppose the creation of 
any group that might be empowered to remove it from the 
AdCom, but timely interventions by Jordan and Syria (which 
favor revitalizing the AdCom) supporting the original terms, 
and reminding delegates that any change to the AdCom would 
require UNGA approval, prevented the discussion from 
deteriorating further.  To help ensure the WGSR looks beyond 
UNRWA for effective structures, Switzerland is offering to 
fund two consultants to assist the group with its study. 
 
US URGES DONORS TO RESPOND TO 2005 GAZA/WB APPEAL 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
4. (SBU)  As the intifada drags on into its fifth year, 
coping mechanisms are being exhausted, poverty and 
unemployment are soaring, and emergency needs are increasing. 
 UNRWA Gaza and West Bank field directors briefed donors on 
the 2005 emergency appeal the Agency intends to launch in 
late November to maintain food, cash assistance, job creation 
and re-housing programs, as well as mobile health clinics, to 
the 1.6 million refugees in Gaza and West Bank hardest hit by 
the ongoing conflict.  The session confirmed that UNRWA is 
responding to donor suggestions that it move its longer-term 
interventions, 
such as its psychosocial programs, from its emergency appeal 
to its regular budget.  UNRWA also reported that it is 
starting to adopt a needs-based approach to plan its 
emergency programs, rather than budgeting based on what UNRWA 
thinks donors will contribute.  A needs-based budget would 
likely result in a larger emergency appeal, since UNRWA has 
not budgeted to meet the full food and other emergency needs 
of the refugees in West Bank and Gaza.  However, the 2003 
emergency appeal was only 50 percent funded, while the 2004 
appeal has not yet attained even that level of response. 
There were no indications at the MDM that donors will be more 
forthcoming to UNRWA,s 2005 appeal.  A/S Dewey called on 
donors to share the burden of funding UNRWA,s emergency 
appeals, noting that the U.S. is doing far more than its 
share and cannot be expected to keep doing so. 
 
MTP: UNRWA AGREES TO DELAY LAUNCH 
--------------------------------- 
 
5. (C) Donors cautiously supported UNRWA,s proposed plan to 
launch an ambitious 2005-2009 "Medium Term Plan" -- a USD one 
billion development strategy for Palestinian refugees in the 
region designed to support Roadmap provisions by ensuring the 
Agency hands over "assets, not liabilities" when a peace 
agreement is reached.  Most donors acknowledged that UNRWA,s 
plan to build needed schools, medical clinics, housing, and 
to fund other programs to keep pace with the significant 
education and health sector investments that host nations 
like Jordan and Syria are now making -- is overdue, but urged 
ComGen Peter Hansen to delay his plan to launch the MTP as 
early as December.  A/S Dewey had privately told Hansen at a 
breakfast October 14 that the U.S. and other donors would not 
buy into the MTP until we were satisfied with the product. 
According to UNRWA External Affairs Director Andrew Whitley, 
the EC also held out the possibility of a five-year 
commitment to the MTP provided UNRWA assured donors that the 
Agency was undertaking the process of implementing the 
critical operational reforms recommended at the Geneva 
Conference. 
 
6. (SBU) Most donors also made it clear during the meeting 
that they wanted to see a commitment to adopt the most 
critical operational changes the Geneva meeting had 
recommended before they fully committed to large new 
programs.  Noting that UNRWA had canceled a pre-MDM briefing 
on the formulation of the MTP, and had only unveiled the 
revised plan the day before the MDM, donors universally urged 
the Agency to revise the plan after a systematic effort to 
identify and to cost the most critical, actionable reforms 
had been finalized.  The Agency failed to allay those 
concerns by sharing an in-house assessment of the conference 
recommendations it was already implementing because follow-up 
activities for many of those recommendations had not yet been 
identified/costed. 
 
7. (SBU) Syria appealed for any harmonization effort to be 
completed quickly, reminding donors that some of the more 
ambitious development efforts described in the MTP are based 
on ongoing pilot projects, such as the re-housing projects in 
the Neirab and Ein el Tal camps near Aleppo (currently being 
funded by Canada, the U.S. and Switzerland), that had 
required six years of intensive negotiation with camp leaders 
who initially opposed the project on grounds it would 
jeopardize the right of return.  At an ad hoc meeting of 
donors held immediately after the MDM, Sweden, Switzerland 
and the EC agreed to offer consultants to ensure the process 
of melding the Geneva Conference recommendations and the MTP 
into one document no later than March, when UNRWA starts 
preparing its 2006-2007 biennium budget.  Deputy 
ComGen Karen AbuZayd confirmed in a separate post-MDM meeting 
with Switzerland, the EC, Sweden and the U.S. that Hansen had 
agreed to delay the MTP rollout until spring. 
 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
A/S DEWEY EXAMINES APPEAL AND MTP DURING FIELD VISITS 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
8. (U) A/S Dewey visited UNRWA installations in the West Bank 
and Jordan immediately after the meeting to examine the 
critical needs described in UNRWA,s draft 2005 emergency 
appeal and MTP.  In Jerusalem, he toured the separation 
barrier, met the Director of the West Bank Field, and 
discussed access issues with USG-funded operation support 
officers who verify that UNRWA installations are not being 
used improperly and who facilitate the access of mobile 
health clinics, food distributions and other UNRWA services. 
He also met the West Bank Field Education, Health and Relief 
and Social Services Department Directors who anecdotally 
reported that they were struggling to respond to requests 
from refugees who had been able to afford private health care 
and education as recently as 2003.  The Education Director 
made a specific appeal to maintain funding for his field,s 
tolerance promotion program, arguing that it could be 
effective in the current environment but was undercut by the 
fact that it only had resources to target children under 10. 
 
9. (U) In Jordan, A/S Dewey visited UNRWA,s Jerash, Baqa,a 
and Jabel Hussein camps, and also compared UNRWA schools in 
Amman neighborhoods with large populations of registered 
refugees to government schools in adjacent neighborhoods, to 
examine two endemic problems the MTP has identified as 
factors that could potentially undermine the future capacity 
of Palestinian communities in the region: the fact that basic 
infrastructure in many of the camps has not been improved nor 
repaired since they were established in 1948 and 1967, 
exposing residents to severe overcrowding and environmental 
health problems, and the fact that UNRWA education and health 
standards are falling.  The Jerash camp, which is populated 
by Gazan refugees who do not hold Jordanian nationality and 
have consequently been neglected by Jordanian authorities 
until very recently, for example, still has open sewers, and 
many of its shelters are in need of repair.  Touring schools 
in two areas of Amman with the UNRWA Jordan Field Director, 
A/S Dewey heard how the Agency is struggling to keep up with 
investments Jordan has started to make to create an 
IT-literate population.  Jordan,s Education Ministry, for 
example, has started introducing computer science to grades 
7-10, equipping schools with state of the art labs, as well 
as separate labs for other sciences.  UNRWA has a policy of 
using host nation curricula but has been unable to expand or 
introduce computer science programs due to lack of funding 
for equipment and the basic space constraints that exist in 
most of the 177 schools it operates in Jordan.  Ninety-two 
percent of the UNRWA schools are run on double shifts in 
Jordan (compared to 15% of government schools) and one in 
four are housed in rented 
premises (usually converted apartment buildings) that tend to 
be too cramped to establish libraries and suffer neglect as 
landlords hope to drive UNRWA out of long-term leases. 
 
10. (C) COMMENT: The majority of delegates seemed to 
recognize that this MDM was being held at a critical period 
in the Agency,s history: for the first time in years, donors 
are making progress toward establishing a greater say in the 
way the Agency conducts business.  UNRWA has also started a 
good-faith effort to look beyond its three-year mandate and 
come up with a strategy to reverse the deterioration in the 
standards of health, education, vocational training, housing 
and other services it provides 4.2 million Palestinian 
refugees in the region, recognizing that if they handed these 
communities over now they would represent a net liability. 
Twenty years ago donors provided $200 per registered refugee. 
 Today they provide $70 per registered refugee.  That 
under-funding is perpetuating, and in some cases creating, 
conditions that could undermine future development by forcing 
the Agency to cut back programs at a time when host nations 
have finally made inroads among refugee leaders who opposed 
development on the principle that it compromised the right of 
return.  Our consultations with other major donors suggests 
there is real potential for MTP burden sharing.  The EC, 
Sweden and Switzerland have already devoted resources to 
ensure the plan is harmonized with reforms that would be a 
prerequisite for them to fund a major new program by March, 
privately acknowledging that they fear fueling the suspicion 
and resentment that is already directed towards the 
humanitarian community in the region by failing to respond to 
a landmark appeal that UNRWA appears determined to launch in 
2005.  The MTP is estimated to cost one billion USD over five 
years, or USD 200 million/year on average.  Contributing 25 
percent of the MTP (the traditional U.S. share of UNRWA 
funding) would cost us $50M/year from FY 05 through FY 09 
above our regular contribution to UNRWA.  It is a significant 
amount, but strong USG support for UNRWA continues to meet 
two primary U.S. interests -- addressing the humanitarian 
needs of Palestinian refugees and laying the groundwork for a 
successful peace process. 
 
11. (U)  PRM PDAS Richard Greene cleared this message. 
 
HALE