Since 1949, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has played a crucial role in providing essential humanitarian and development support to 5.3 million Palestine refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.  The United States has long been UNRWA’s top donor but has recently decided to decrease funding to UNRWA by 83 percent over 2017 levels, which has led UNRWA into a financial crisis.  What does the U.S. decision mean for Palestine refugees and for the region as a whole? Elizabeth Campbell, Director of UNRWA’s Representative Office in Washington, D.C., will discuss the implications of this drastic funding cut.

Author Bio
Elizabeth Campbell is Director of UNRWA’s Representative Office in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining UNRWA, Campbell was the senior humanitarian policy advisor in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs at the Department of State, where she worked on refugee and humanitarian issues in the United Nations system. Campbell has also served as a senior advocate for Refugees International, where she focused on the humanitarian crises in East Africa and the Middle East. She was director of Refugee Council USA, an NGO consortium focused on refugee resettlement and protection. Prior to that, she worked for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Kenya. Campbell holds a B.A. from St. Lawrence University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She has published several articles and book chapters on refugee and humanitarian issues and has served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Law, James Madison University, and the State University of New York at Binghamton. Her courses focused on humanitarian affairs, refugees, environmental studies, and inequality and social justice.