UK could be sued over decision to stop funding a key UN agency delivering aid to Gaza
A legal challenge is to be launched against the Foreign Office over its decision to pause funding for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency.
On behalf of a British-Palestinian man with family in Gaza, Bindmans LLP has issued a pre-action letter to the government department warning, if funding is not reinstated by Tuesday 2, April, the client will issue judicial review proceedings in the High Court.
The legal challenge claims that the government’s decision to withdraw funds from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on 27, January was decided, “illogically and without due consideration of evidence, of international obligations, or of FCDO decision-making frameworks”.
Funding was paused by 10 governments including Australia, the United States and Canada following allegations by the Israeli authorities that several UNRWA staff were involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks.
‘The NHS isn’t failing, it’s being failed. What an appalling act of state vandalism’
Public satisfaction with the NHS is at its lowest ever level, plunging for the first time in the 41-year history of the survey to show less than a quarter of people are satisfied with the way the health service is currently running.
Compared to 2010 when 70% of the public were satisfied with the NHS, the latest survey findings lay bare what 14 years of a Tory government stripping funds and resources from the NHS has had.
Campaign group Keep Our NHS Public has called it “an appalling act of state vandalism” commenting that the NHS “isn’t failing, it’s being failed”.
NHS workers have expressed heartbreak over the shocking decline in public satisfaction for the service under the Tories while unions have called for immediate action to address the staffing crisis.
One palliative care doctor wrote on X: “14 years of Tory government understaffing, underfunding & private sector outsourcing have trashed the NHS into a travesty of the service we want to give you.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) and U.S. President Joe Biden (top C) listen as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) reads a statements before their meeting in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“I wasn’t able to really do my job anymore,” said Annelle Sheline. “Trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible.”
Saying her job at a State Department office that advocates for human rights in the Middle East has become “impossible” as the Biden administration continues to back Israel’s assault on civilians in Gaza, foreign affairs officer Annelle Sheline resigned from her position on Wednesday in protest of President Joe Biden’s policy in the region.
Sheline noted in an interview with The Washington Post that quitting her job in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor was not something she took lightly, with “a daughter and a mortgage”—but said her day-to-day work on human rights had become ineffectual “as long as the U.S. continues to send a steady stream of weapons to Israel.”
Despite the fact that U.S. law prohibits the government from arming countries that violate human rights—as Israel has long been accused by the United Nations of doing in its policy toward the occupied Palestinian territories—the Biden administration has approved the transfer of bombs and other weapons to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since the military began its relentless bombardment of Gaza and blockade on nearly all humanitarian aid.
Sheline told the Post that as the news out of Gaza has grown more dire since October—with at least 32,490 Palestinians killed, at least 74,889 wounded, and parts of northern Gaza now facing famine conditions due to Israel’s blocking of aid—some of her bureau’s partners in the Middle East have stopped engaging with the State Department.
“If they are willing to engage, they mostly want to talk about Gaza rather than the fact that they are also dealing with extreme repression or threats of imprisonment,” Sheline told the Post of the activists and civil society groups her office routinely worked with to further human rights in the region before Israel’s assault began. “The first point they bring up is: How is this happening?”
“I wasn’t able to really do my job anymore,” Sheline added. “Trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible.”
Sheline is just the latest official to resign in protest of Biden’s approach to Israel and Gaza.
In October Josh Paul resigned from his position as director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, where he oversaw weapons transfers to U.S. allies.
Paul told the Post that Sheline’s decision “speaks volumes about the Biden administration’s disregard for the laws, policies and basic humanity of American foreign policy that the bureau exists to advance.”
A policy adviser in the Education Department, Tariq Habash, also stepped down from his role in January, saying he could no longer be “quietly complicit” in the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
The State Department’s internal dissent channel has also been used by numerous officials to voice outrage over the Biden administration’s continued defense of Israel’s actions.
Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, called Sheline’s resignation “courageous.”
A sign that some people in Washington value conscience over career; another courageous State Department official resigns over US Gaza policy. https://t.co/s3vaTIaLGH
Feds United for Peace, a group of government workers across nearly two dozen federal agencies which organized a daylong fast in January to protest the U.S.-backed slaughter of Palestinians, expressed solidarity with Sheline.
“That decision comes at a personal and real cost to her, and is a loss of a patriotic and deeply qualified employee for the Department of State,” said the group in a statement. “Every arms shipment to Israel by the Biden administration and every one of the three vetoes of U.N. cease-fire resolutions has enabled Israeli impunity in its rampage across Gaza… Thousands of innocent lives are in President Biden’s hands; the time has come to translate gentle requests for the protection of civilians into concrete action to stop the killing.”
Braverman will be addressing the upcoming National Conservatism Conference in April as a keynote speaker
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman is set to deliver a speech from the same stage as Hungary’s far-right authoritarian dictator Viktor Orban.
That Braverman is so comfortable sharing a platform with the far-right Orban who has spouted bigoted far right views, speaks volumes. Orban has previously made reference to the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory which claims that there is a liberal elite plot to replace the white populations of Europe and the US through immigration and demographic growth with non-white people.
During his time as leader of Hungary, Orban has also attacked and undermined democratic institutions and attacked the rights of LGBT and minority communities.
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Reacting to Environment Agency figures showing water companies increasing sewage discharges into rivers, Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer said:
“Water companies continue to be allowed to dump ever more sewage into our rivers, waterways and coastal waters while splashing funds at shareholder dividends and fat cat salaries for water bosses.
“The £57bn in payouts from the water industry over the last 30 years should have gone towards improving standards.
“Greens would end this failed experiment in privatisation, bringing the water companies back into public control so we can clean up this industry.”
