Where can I find information about how much money UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine receives from the United States currently? Does the president have the power to cut off aid immediately, or does he need the approval of Congress to do that? If aid for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine is already legislated, how long is that funding set aside, and how often does it need to be renewed?
1 Answer
Thanks so much for your question and for contributing to the discussion on Stack Exchange. We’d like to apologize for the delay in getting back to you, since the Data Services team was hard at work making important updates to the DDL that I hope you’ll find useful.
You can find information about US contributions to the UN Relief and Works Agency using Foreign Aid Explorer’s Query function—just add a Country filter for West Bank/Gaza and an Implementing Partner Subcategory filter for Multilateral - United Nations, which will show you the obligations and disbursements the US Government has made to UN efforts in West Bank/Gaza at the activity level.
Congress allocates funds for government expenditures through the authorization-appropriations process (you can find a two-page overview of the process in this Congressional Research Service report). The Executive Branch has no direct control over the appropriations process, but influences it using the annual budget proposal, which in turn is influenced by each agency’s Congressional Budget Justification. You can find USAID’s annual Congressional Budget Justifications here.
Please don’t hesitate to follow up on this thread or email us at dataservices@usaid.gov if you have any other questions.
Hope this helps!
Robin, USAID Data Services
