Chris Gunness demands the UK immediately restores all funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency which provides essential aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
He also warns that third party states freezing aid to UNRWA at a time when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled it is ‘plausible’ that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza may well make these states complicit in that genocide.
Gunness demands the UK and other third party states call for an investigation into the killing of hundreds of UNRWA staff by Israel since 7th October 2023.
Chris Gunness is an award-winning journalist who spent 23 years at the BBC as producer, correspondent, and anchor. In 2006 he joined The Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) in Jerusalem. In 2007 he was appointed Chief Spokesman and Director of Strategic Information and Advocacy for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). He left UNRWA at the start of 2020, and in 2021 established the Myanmar Accountability Project, a legal initiative which brings criminal prosecutions against war criminals in the Myanmar junta.
Mark Seddon is a former speech writer for the United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, and a senior information officer for the president of the UN General Assembly, Maria Fernanda Espinosa. He was the director of communication, education commission, chaired by Gordon Brown, and a UN Special Envoy for global education. Mark was the first UN correspondent for Al Jazeera English TV, and New York bureau chief. He was the editor of Tribune for 13 years, and an elected member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee.
0:00 - Introduction
0:40 - ‘Rishi Sunak, Lord Cameron, Keir Starmer you MUST immediately restore British funding to UNRWA!’
03:32 - The dishonest campaign by Israel to prevent aid to Gaza
09:45 - The two reports into allegations against UNRWA
17:00 - Could the UK Labour opposition have done more before now?
21:54 - The complicity of western leaders in the Israeli attack against UNRWA
24:16 - The hypocrisy of western states supporting Israel
26:49 - Should Britain recognise Palestine as a state?