The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) provides schooling for Palestinian refugee children, health care for Palestinians most in need, and other public services.

Cutting aid to this population would be disastrous from a humanitarian and security perspective, with the potential to destabilize the region and imperil American allies..

More than half of UNRWA’s budget – to which the U.S. contributed $369 million in 2016 – is dedicated to education. Nearly 500,000 Palestinian children are educated through UNRWA-funded schools, taught a curriculum centered on tolerance, gender equality, human rights, and non-violence. Reducing or withdrawing funding would be counter-productive, creating a vacuum that extremist groups like Hamas or ISIS could fill.

Read the full article on cutting U.S. aid by Peter Yeo at United Nations Foundation