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US decision to freeze Palestinian refugee funding to have devastating impact

Agencies
January 17, 2018

The international community has condemned the US government’s ruthless decision to cut more than half of its planned funding to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

The Arab League on Wednesday warned of the devastating consequences of a US decision to freeze $65 million of Palestinian refugee funding. On the  other hand Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a Twitter post late on Tuesday that Washington was "holding Palestinian kids' humanitarian needs hostage to political agendas".

The outcry came as the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas again blasted Donald Trump’s “sinful” decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Washington said on Tuesday it would provide $60 million to the UN Relief and Welfare Agency but would hold back a further $65 million. The US State Department said UNRWA needed to make unspecified reforms.

Both the head of the Arab League and the chief of the UN agency warned that holding back the money would exacerbate hardship, and effect education and health for some of the region’s most vulnerable people.

More than half a million boys and girls in 700 UNRWA schools could be affected by the fund cut, as well as Palestinian access to primary health care.

The cut in funding will effect Gaza in particular, where UNRWA helps much of its population of 2 million.

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, urged the US government to reverse its decision.  "The move will have devastating consequences for vulnerable Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, including hundreds of thousands of refugee children in the West Bank and Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria who depend on the agency for their education," he said in a statement on Tuesday.

"It will also deny their parents a social safety net that helps them to survive, and undermine the UN agency's ability to respond in the event of another flare-up in the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict."

On Twitter, Egeland said: "Cutting aid to innocent refugee children due to political disagreements among well-fed grown men and women is a really bad politization of humanitarian aid. US holds back $65m aid to Palestinians."

The Turkish Mnistry of Foreign Affairs said cuts to UNRWA would "hamper the efforts towards a two-state political solution and regional stability". It also said that Ankara would increase its contributions to the agency.

Yazan Muhammad Sabri, an 18-year-old Palestinian refugee in Dheisheh camp in the occupied West Bank town of Bethlehem, told Al Jazeera last week that "if the wakala [UNRWA] goes away, there will be no education, no healthcare, no sanitation". "There will be nothing - everything will disappear," he said.

Salah Ajarmeh, a 44-year-old refugee living in West Bank's Aida camp, told Al Jazeera that "if the services stop, there will be a revolution". "Palestinian uprisings began in the refugee camps in Jordan and Syria, and this will happen again."

‘International obligation’

Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's delegation to the US, said in a statement on Wednesday that Palestinian refugees and children's access to basic humanitarian services was "not a bargaining chip but a US and international obligation".

"Taking away food and education from vulnerable refugees does not bring a lasting and comprehensive peace," the statement said.

"Heeding Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu's zero-sum game to take Jerusalem off the table and now attempting to dismantle UNRWA, thinking that it would relinquish the rights of Palestinian refugees is a fallacy."

Zomlot was referring to the earlier US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a move that prompted widespread international condemnation and led Palestinian leaders to say that they would "no longer" accept any peace plan put forward by the US.

Tuesday's announcement on UNRWA came after US President Donald Trump had threatened on January 2 to cut aid to Palestinians.

In a series of tweets, Trump had said: "... We pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. "... With the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?"

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News Network
February 29,2020

New Delhi, Feb 29: India’s economy expanded at its slowest pace in more than six years in the last three months of 2019, with analysts predicting further deceleration as the global Covid 19 coronavirus outbreak stifles growth in Asia’s third-largest economy.

The gross domestic product (GDP) data released yesterday showed government spending, private investment and exports slowing down, while there is a slight upturn in consumer spending and improvement in rural demand lent support.

The quarterly figure of 4.7% growth matched the consensus in a Reuters poll of analysts but was below a revised - and greatly increased - 5.1% rate for the previous quarter.

The central bank has warned that downside risks to global growth have increased as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, the full effects of which are still unfolding.

Prime minister Narendra Modi’s government has taken several steps to bolster economic growth, including a privatisation push and increased state spending, after cutting corporate tax rates last September.

In its annual budget presented this month, the government estimated that annual economic growth in the financial year to March 31 would be 5%, its lowest for last 11 years.

Modi’s government is targeting a slight recovery in growth to 6% for 2020/21, still far below the level needed to generate jobs for millions of young Indians entering the labour market each month.

The annual GDP figure for the September quarter was ramped up from an earlier estimate of 4.5%, while the April-June reading was similarly lifted to 5.6% from 5%, data released by the Ministry of Statistics showed on Friday.

Capital Investment Drop

In the December quarter, private investment grew 5.9%, up from 5.6% in the previous quarter, while government spending rose by 11.8%, against 13.2% in the previous three months.

However, corporate capital investment contracted by 5.2% after a 4.1% decline in the previous quarter, indicating that interest rate cuts by the central bank have failed to encourage new investment. Manufacturing, meanwhile, contracted by 0.2%.

“It appears growth slowdown is not just cyclical but more entrenched with consumption secularly joining the slowdown bandwagon even as the investment story continues to languish,” said Madhavi Arora of Edelweiss Securities in Mumbai.

Many economists said that the government stimulus could take four to six quarters of time before lifting the economy and the impact of those efforts could be outweighed by the global fallout from the coronavirus epidemic that began in China.

“The coronavirus remains the critical risk as India depends on China for both demand and supply of inputs,” said Abheek Barua, chief economist at HDFC Bank.

Indian shares sank on Friday for a sixth session running, capping their worst week in more than a decade. The NSE Nifty 50 index shed 7.3% over the week, while the Sensex dropped 6.8%, the worst weekly declines since the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Separately, India’s infrastructure output rose 2.2% year on year in January, data showed on Friday.

A spike in inflation to a more than 5-1/2 year high of 7.59% in January is expected to make the RBI hold off from further cuts to interest rates for now, while keeping its monetary stance accommodative.

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News Network
June 30,2020

Beijing, June 30: China said on Tuesday it was concerned about India’s decision to ban Chinese mobile apps such as Bytedance’s TikTok and Tencent’s WeChat and was making checks to verify the situation.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters during a daily briefing that (the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government of) India has a responsibility to uphold the rights of Chinese businesses.

India on Monday banned 59, mostly Chinese, mobile apps in its strongest move yet targeting China in the online space since a border crisis erupted between the two countries this month.

The apps are “prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the defence of India, the security of state and public order", the ministry of information technology said in a statement, which came two weeks after 20 Indian Army personnel were killed in a violent clash on the India-China border in Ladakh.

The companies have been invited to offer clarifications before a government panel, which will decide whether the ban can be removed or will stay.

The move also came ahead of military and diplomatic talks between India and China scheduled this week.

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News Network
August 8,2020

The Kozhikode International Airport located at Karipur is not safe for the landing of flights in rainy season, according to an air-safety expert, who had warned the aviation ministry and the civil aviation regulator about this in 2011. 

The warning was particularly about the dangers of permitting passenger aircraft to land on runway 10 of the airport during rains and unfavourable wind conditions. 

Nine years later, on August 7, 2020, the warning became a reality when an Air India Express pilots landed in tailwind conditions and the aircraft overshot the tabletop runway to drop off the end and crash.

 “An aircraft landing on runway 10 in tailwind will experience poor braking action due to heavy rubber deposits … All such flights … are endangering the lives of all on board,’’ said Capt Mohan Ranganathan, in a letter sent on June 17, 2011 to then director general of civil aviation Bharat Bhushan and Nasim Zaidi, chairman of a civil aviation safety advisory committee, which was formed after the May 2010 Mangaluru air crash which killed 158 people.

“My warning issued after the Mangaluru crash was ignored. It is a table-top runway with a down slope. The buffer zone at the end of the runway is inadequate,” Capt Ranganathan said. Given the topography, he pointed out, the airport should have a buffer of 240m at the end of the runway, but it only has 90m (which the DGCA had approved). “Moreover, the space on either side of the runway is only 75m instead of the mandatory 100m,” he added.

Capt Ranganathan said there is no guideline for operations on a table-top runway when it is raining. “Runway 10 approach should not be permitted in view of the lack of runway end safety area (RESA) and the terrain beyond the end of the runway. RESA of 240m should be immediately introduced and runway length has to be reduced to make the operations safe,” his letter said.

If an aircraft is unable to stop within the runway, there is no RESA beyond the end. The ILS localiser antenna is housed on a concrete structure and the area beyond is a steep slope. “The Air India Express accident in Mangalore should have alerted AAI to make the runway conditions safe. We have brought up the issue of RESA during the initial Casac-sub group meetings. We had specifically mentioned that the declared distances for both runways have to be reduced in order to comply with ICAO Annex 14 requirement,” Capt Ranganathan said.

He said the condition of the runway strip was known to DGCA teams that have been conducting inspection and safety assessments. “Have they considered the danger involved? Did the DGCA or the airlines lay down any operational restrictions or special procedures?”

The letter also refers to Approach and Landing Accident Reduction (ALAR) training, which is supposed to be mandatory before every monsoon, but airlines don’t follow it, he said. “70% of accidents take place during approach and landing and that is why this training is essential,” he added.

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