Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what amount of funding the UK provided to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in (a) 2015, (b) 2016 and (c) 2017.

The amount of UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) funds to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in 2015 and 2016 is given in the table below. This data is published each year in the Statistics on International Development (SID) publication. Figures for 2017 will be released next year.

The UK is unequivocally committed to supporting Palestinian refugees across the region. Over the course of the 2017/18 financial year, the UK provided around £50 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), assisting in their provision of essential services including basic education to around 500,000 children, health services for around 3 million Palestinian refugees and supporting Palestinian refugees from Syria.

Source: Statistics for International Development 2013-2016

ODA figures are produced only on a calendar year basis in line with the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation, Development Assistance Committee definitions.

Bilateral ODA through multilateral is funding to multilateral organisations for specific programmes or for specific countries. In this case, bilateral ODA through multilateral refers UK contributions to UNRWA’s Emergency Appeals. Core multilateral ODA describes un-earmarked funds from the UK which are pooled with other donors’ funding and disbursed as part of the core budget of the multilateral organisation, which is UNRWA’s Programme Budget in this case.