Newsroom

A rare positive story from Gaza: the first round of the polio vaccination campaign ended successfully.

Listen as Stephen Sackur speaks to Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the UN’s refugee agency for Palestinians. This week, six UN relief agency staff were killed in an Israeli strike on a central Gaza school that had been turned into an emergency shelter for thousands. UNRWA’s death count in Gaza since the beginning of the war is over 220. Is his agency’s mission now impossible?

On 9 September, around 45,000 Palestine Refugee students began their school year in 96 schools operated by UNRWA across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

"The UN Relief and Works Agency, as its name indicates, has a limited mandate mainly concerned with relief work for the refugees from Palestine who were forcibly displaced from their homes during the 1948 war. Nearly 75 years later, it is an indispensable organization, not for its services but for its institutional memory, which is also that of Palestinian society worldwide."

Anas loves games. Whether dribbling a football with friends or racing others in the playground, this 15-year-old seizes every opportunity to play. But today, he is playing a different type of game — one intended to exercise his mind instead of his body.