Policy Voices | UNRWA’s Jonathan Fowler on Gaza: “It is a war of superlatives”

On the week the World Refugee Day is commemorated, host Catarina Vila Nova spoke with Jonathan Fowler, Senior Communications Manager for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Jonathan joined UNRWA shortly after the 7 October attacks and is currently based in East Jerusalem. What he details is an intense campaign against UNRWA by the Israeli authorities. But nowhere is this situation more egregious than in the Gaza Strip.

As Jonathan calls it, “it is a war of superlatives” and at no point in the history of the United Nations have so many UN personnel been killed in a war. The staff UNRWA employs in Gaza are local staff and are themselves refugees. During this episode of Policy Voices, Jonathan tells their stories. Like the story of a sanitation engineer who lost his family and kept showing up for work to prevent a worsening health situation in his community.

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