The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said on Saturday that the plight of Palestinian refugees remains “the world’s longest-running unresolved refugee crisis,” calling on the international community to find a “just and lasting solution” for them.
This came in a statement acknowledging World Refugee Day, which falls on June 20 of each year.
UNRWA added: “The plight of Palestine refugees remains the world’s longest-running unresolved refugee crisis.
“It is time to end this cycle. Displacement and war have affected the lives of generations of Palestinian families.”
The statement called on the international community to shoulder its responsibilities and contribute to “finding a just and lasting solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees.”
In a statement published on Friday, the UN agency said: “In 1948 (the Nakba), more than 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their towns and villages.
“After 77 years, Palestinians are still being subjected to forced displacement.”
UNRWA records as of August 2023 indicate that the number of registered Palestinian refugees is approximately 5.9 million, of whom approximately 2.5 million reside in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, representing approximately 42% of the total number of registered refugees (15% in the West Bank and 27% in Gaza), according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
In Arab countries, data shows that approximately 40% of Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA reside in Jordan, compared to 10% in Syria and 8% in Lebanon, according to the same source.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics stated that these figures are minimum estimates, as they do not include Palestinian refugees not registered with the agency, including those displaced after 1949 until the eve of the June 1967 war, according to UNRWA’s definition, as well as those displaced during the aforementioned war who were not originally refugees.
Palestinian translator Alaa’ wrote on World Refugee Day, “I watched Al-Taghriba Al-Filistinia more than twenty times before the genocide. But I couldn’t bring myself to watch it again—until last week, when I began translating the series. Watching the scene of forced displacement at the very beginning of our 1948 Nakba broke my heart. We never imagined we would live through the same pain these days , yet here we are. Our suffering has never stopped. It only changed shape, faces, and years. The wound is still open, and we are still being torn from our homes. Consider supporting our project to help us translate the full series. t.co/AZR4apykBX.”
Israeli destruction of the al-Shuja’eyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City over the past 21 months:
