News Brief

U.N. DIRECTOR ADMITS THOUSANDS OF DEAD ARABS STILL ON RELIEF ROLLS

At a press conference after the Committee meeting today Dr. Davis conceded, for the first time in UNRWA history that between 90,000 and 100,000 refugees who died, are still on the UNR WA ration rolls in Jordan alone. He was asked whether he could make an “educated estimate” as to the number of unreported deaths on his agency’s relief rolls, and he replied:

“I don’t actually know. There is considerable inaccuracy. The basic ration rolls are still the same as they were when UNR WA started (in 1950). We have made a constant effort to rectify the rolls and have met with only very limited success. There is among the refugees a reluctance to report deaths. In Jordan, UNR WA has refused to place newborn children on the ration rolls unless the deaths were reported. As a result, while 30,000 children were added to our register of refugee population, only 4,500 of these children were added to the ration rolls.

“It is true that the host governments resist our efforts to rectify the rolls. But it must be understood clearly that the refugees themselves resist rectification by threatening strikes and riots. They simply do not have confidence in us to deal fairly with them.”

It was at this point that Dr. Davis was pinned down to his estimate that, of Jordan’s registered figure of 591,439 Arab refugees, the unreported deaths since 1950 totaled between 90,000 and 100,000 However, he said, about 125,000 newborn children have been kept off the UNR WA rolls, thus offsetting the cost of providing rations to the dead.