Libya Before the UN Fourth Committee: UNRWA Will Remain as Long as the Refugee Issue Persists.

New York, 15 November 2026 (Lana): Libya affirmed that the crisis facing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is not a crisis of performance or relevance, but rather one of international will, warning that financial strangulation has become another form of siege and a tool to achieve what Israeli occupation bombs and legislation have failed to accomplish: dismantling the Agency from within.

This came in a statement delivered by Mohamed Abusnina, Counsellor at Libya's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, during the general debate of the Fourth Committee on agenda item 47 (UNRWA), as part of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly.

The statement noted that more than three years of aggression against the Gaza Strip have left over 74,000 people dead and deprived approximately 700,000 children of education.

It added that UNRWA has lost 395 of its staff members, marking the highest number of UN personnel killed in the organization's history, recalling the advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice on 22 October 2025, which affirmed the Agency's neutrality and that the occupying power must not obstruct its operations.

Libya called for the immediate repeal of all unlawful legislation and measures targeting the Agency, an end to impunity, and the provision of adequate, flexible, and multi-year funding. It stressed that decisions concerning the Agency's future fall exclusively within the mandate of the General Assembly.

In response to the representative of the occupying power, the statement emphasized that the time for accountability has indeed come, and that UNRWA's mandate will not end by a decision of the occupation, but only when the occupation ends and the last refugee returns home, reaffirming Libya's solidarity with Palestine, its people, its cause, and its rights.

=Lana=