The United Nations chief appointed a British human rights activist on Tuesday to carry out a strategic review of the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees to assess its impact under the"present political, financial, security and other constraints.”
Israel has banned the agency, known as UNRWA, from operating on its territory, but its Palestinian staff have still been key to delivering aid and running medical clinics in Gaza, even though Israel has cut off all humanitarian deliveries since March 2.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, who announced the review, said Ian Martin, a former head of Amnesty International, would also be looking at the “consequences and risks for Palestinian refugees” of UNRWA’s operations.
UNRWA was established by the U.N. General Assembly in 1949 to provide relief for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, which followed the establishment of Israel, as well as their descendants, until there is a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The agency has been providing aid and services — including health and education — to some 2.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, as well as 3 million more in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. This month, Israel ordered six UNRWA schools in east Jerusalem to close.
Dujarric stressed that the review is not about changing UNRWA’s mandate.
“We’re trying to see how, in this very complex environment, UNRWA can best deliver for the Palestine refugees it serves, for the communities it serves,” he told reporters. "They deserve to be assisted by an organization — by UNRWA — that can work in the best possible manner given all these challenges.”
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Israel alleged that 19 out of UNRWA’s approximately 13,000 staff in Gaza took part in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel, which killed about 1,200 people and set off the war in Gaza. UNRWA said it fired nine staffers after an internal U.N. investigation concluded that they could have been involved, although the evidence was not authenticated and corroborated. Israel later alleged that about 100 other Palestinians in Gaza were Hamas members, but never provided any evidence to the United Nations.
Israel has maintained that other U.N. agencies can take over from UNRWA, but Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly said they cannot. Dujarric said Tuesday in response to a question about the Israeli position that the review was solely to try to improve UNRWA.
He said Martin, who led a strategic review of the U.N. mission in Somalia and was a member of a high-level independent panel looking at U.N. peace operations, would submit his report in mid-June.
Israel cut off aid deliveries to Gaza to pressure Hamas for another ceasefire and the release of all remaining hostages taken on Oct. 7.
UNRWA’s Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini issued a statement urging Israel to lift its 50-day siege, saying 2 million people in Gaza, a majority of them women and children, “are undergoing collective punishment.” Israel's military response to the Oct. 7 attack has killed over 51,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry, which doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants.
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“Humanitarian aid is being used as a bargaining chip and a weapon of war,” Lazzarini said. “Hunger is spreading and deepening, deliberate and manmade. … The wounded, sick and elderly are deprived of medical supplies and care.”