Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, has signalled that resuming Australia’s funding to a key UN agency delivering aid to Gaza is the only realistic route “if we are serious about trying to ensure that fewer children are starving”.
Wong has directed Australia’s humanitarian coordinator, Beth Delaney, to “lead urgent work coordinating with like-minded partners as well as UNRWA” to work out the next steps, after more than 10 countries suspended funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
Australia, the US and the UK were among donors to suspend funding to UNRWA last weekend after the Israeli government provided the agency with information alleging as many as 12 staff members were involved in the 7 October attacks on Israel.
The government has yet to give a timeframe for reinstating funding to UNRWA, but it is likely linked to progress on multiple investigations into the agency.
Wong on Thursday played down the idea of channelling the $6m in frozen Australian funds through another organisation.
She said it was important to remember “the scale of the humanitarian crisis” in Gaza and “the absence of any alternatives if we are serious about trying to ensure that fewer children are starving”.
“We have reports from the UN that 400,000 Palestinians in Gaza are actually starving and a million are at risk of starvation,” Wong told reporters.
“An estimated 1.7 million people in Gaza are internally displaced and there are increasingly few safe places for Palestinians to go.”
Wong said more than 1.4 million Palestinians were sheltering within UNRWA facilities and about 3,000 agency employees were “working on the humanitarian response in the most trying of conditions”.
Wong said successive Australian governments, since 1951, had funded UNRWA “because it is the only organisation which delivers the sort of assistance and substantive support into the occupied Palestinian territories within the international system”.
Wong said the government had been clear in stating that the allegations made against UNRWA staff were “deeply concerning” and they needed to be “thoroughly investigated and those responsible need to be held to account”.
Wong addressed the issue after a meeting with New Zealand ministers in Melbourne.
The New Zealand foreign minister, Winston Peters, said the allegations were “deadly serious” and must be investigated.
But he said New Zealand’s next tranche of funding to UNRWA was not due until the middle of the year, and that meant there was time for Wellington to assess the findings of the investigations.
“We do not want to hear people rushing to the press say New Zealand has stopped it, because we have not,” Peters said.
“We are looking at what this investigation means.”
Guardian Australia had earlier reported that Australia was in talks with close allies including the US and the UK to consider conditions to reinstate funding to UNRWA.
The Israeli government, which has long been critical of UNRWA, has argued the agency’s problems go deeper than the allegations surrounding 7 October involvement, and it should have no future role in Gaza.
Aid agencies and Palestinian diplomats have appealed for the funding to be reinstated, citing the extreme humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza as Israel continues its military operation in the besieged territory.
The US is demanding the allegations against UNRWA staff be fully and thoroughly investigated and that measures be put in place to prevent any repeat if they are proved.
The Coalition has argued Australia should redirect funding to another agency such as the Red Cross. The opposition criticised Wong last month after she announced an extra $6m for the UNRWA, while the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, said on Thursday her position would be “untenable” if she had received prior advice the funding might not be used appropriately.
On Monday, the former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark urged Australia and other western countries to reinstate funding to UNRWA to avoid “a very, very harsh, collective punishment of the Gazan people”.
