The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has become one of the largest UN programs, with over 30,000 personnel operating in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. It remains the only UN agency whose area of operation is not global but regional,and which deals with a single group of people; it is also unique in that it directly provides government-like public services to its beneficiaries.
Undoubtedly, since its inception nearly sixty-five years ago, UNRWA has accomplished significant major achievements, providing relief and humanitarian aid in one of the most complex geopolitical arenas, under the challenging conditions of political uncertainty and physical insecurity. Nevertheless, within the last few decades, the vast, quasi-state machinery into which the Agency has evolved has attracted considerable criticism. Some of UNRWA’s long-standing policies have made it susceptible to political manipulation, in particular by extremist groups. It is evident that the Agency has become deeply involved in Middle-Eastern politics, in a way that might overshadow its significant accomplishments.
In the following commentary,we will review the main areas of criticism regarding UNRWA’s actual performance and strategies,as well as the legal-institutional and political factors that have combined to bring about the current situation, which raises concern among experts and statesmen, calling, in particular, for awareness and action on the part of UNRWA’s donor countries.
1. A Humanitarian Agency Becoming an Active Political Actor
On June 20, 2013, on the occasion of World Refugee Day, Catherine Ashton, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, decided to visit the Rimal Boys’ School in Gaza.1 Obviously, choosing a Gazan elementary school out of all of the numerous refugee facilities and camps scattered around the world was no coincidence. Hosted by Filippo Grandi, Commissioner General of UNRWA, Ashton made it clear that her visit was meant to “underline the situation in Gaza” and to support the work of UNRWA.2 She took that opportunity to share her wish to see the crossings opened, and declared that the EU would continue to be the strongest supporter, providing the required financial aid, and “also the political support.”3Clearly, Ashton’s visit was a major achievement for UNRWA, the result of an ongoing, intensive, world-embracing lobbying effort by the UN Agency’s leadership, tailored to attract international public attention to the political problem of Palestinian refugees.
Recently, the bloody Syrian conflict provided another excellent platform for UNRWA’s Commissioner General to recall “the plight of Palestinian refugees,resulting in a 65-year-old diaspora.”4 In a written interview given by Grandi (March 2013), broadly spread by the UN News Center, he emphasized UNRWA’s endeavors to assist Palestinian refugees residing in Syria, while expressing grave concerns that the situation in Syria might divert international attention away from the “ongoing Gaza blockade.”5 This very same point had been made a month earlier by Grandi at the Conference on Cooperation Among East Asian Countries for Palestinian Development, which was hosted by Japan, where he had stated – alongside Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister – that Syria’s brutal war “should not make us forget that for Palestinian refugees, as for other Palestinians, the most powerful obstacle to development continues to be the Israeli occupation.”6 Grandi publicly condemned the ‘tightening grip” of Israeli policies, while presenting UNRWA as the “international politicalframework” that “strives to afford a measure of human development amidst the carefully structured and ever expanding occupation,” calculated, according to Grandi, to “slowly but surely alienate Palestinians from their land and assets.”7
These recent examples demonstrate the extent to which UNRWA has become an active player involved in Middle-Eastern politics, and a powerful tool within the anti-Israel propaganda campaign. Nevertheless, this proficiency in translating humanitarian hardship into political gains has been only one cause of the growing body of criticism that has been directed at UNRWA within the past few decades.8 UNRWA’s actual performance, which includes the breeding of an atmosphere of hatred and violence among Palestinian youth and even the support of terrorist activities, as well as the upholding of the concept of the “right of return” and the determined policy of inflating the number of refugees, have raised concern among experts, commentators, and statesmen alike.9
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