UN-strike leaves west bank refugee camps in chaos

A strike among UN-employees in Palestinian refugee camps have left 51 000 children out of school for over a month, over 40 health clinics are closed and garbage are piling up at the camps. Yet there are no signs of the labour dispute beeing solved.  ”Our children are now on the streets. There is no medicine and trash is blocking the streets of the refugee camps. UNRWA doesn’t care about us or about the employees. It’s not enough that we are under siege and apartheid wall, and that we have been deported from our lands. Where are the rights of the refugees?”, says Khalil Bal’awi, resident of Al Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem. In the West Bank 5000 employees at the UN refugees agency UNRWA are on strike since 3:rd of december last year demanding higher salaries and permanent contracts instead of short term contracts. Yesterday UNRWA employees in Gaza also went on strike, demanding higher salaries.”We only demand salaries high enough to feed our children”, says one of the striking employees in Jerusalem, adding that according to the union the salaries to palestinian UNRWA employees are 20 percent below the salaries of an equivalent job at the Palestinian Authority.UNRWA spokesperson Christopher Gunness on the other hand says that UNRWA is paying in average 20 percent above the comparable salaries at the Palestinian Authority, which, he says, is totally within the agencys salary policy which aims to keep the staff paid at the same rate or above the equvalent at the Palestinian Authority.”It is such an unjustified strike. I think that punishing refugees, who are already punished by the occupation in the West Bank and the blackade in Gaza is completely unjustifiable”, says Gunness.Despite that the refugees are suffering from the strike, the strikers claim that in the end the refugees will benefit from it.”The refugees need the strike. We are fighting for their needs also”, says one of the strikers, explaining that there has been a decline in the services offered by UNRWA to the refugees in the camps in the West Bank. ”We want UNRWA to increase the servies in the rcamps to the same level as it was a few years ago.””I have not heard that argument before, and I don’t understand it. Why are they stopping 51 000 children being educated if they are worried about services being withheld from the refugees? That is totally illogical.” says Christopher Gunness, adding that increasing the services to refugees has never been an official demand from the strikers.Over 20 former employees at the UNRWA job creation program are hungerstriking, demanding permanent contracts.”Some of us have been working for UNRWA for 10 years, but we always only get short term contracts, it is not fair”, says one of the hungerstrikers. ”We will continue hungerstriking until our demands are fulfilled. We don’t want cuts, nor in the number of employees, nor in the services we provide to the refugees in need.”