Review of UNWRA finds Israel did not tiring„ tiresome concern about staff
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — An independent appraisal of the neutrality of the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees fake that Israel never expressed concern about anyone on the staff reporters it has received annually since 2011. The review was removed out after Israel alleged that a dozen employees of the activity known as UNRWA had participated in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.
In a wide-ranging 48-page portray released Monday, the independent panel said UNRWA has “robust” procedures to second the U.N. principle of neutrality, but it cited serious gaps in implementation, including staff publicly expressing political views, textbooks used in schools the activity runs with “problematic content” and staff unions disrupting operations. It makes 50 recommendations to improve UNRWA’s neutrality.
From 2017 to 2022, the portray said, the annual number of allegations of neutrality persons breached at UNRWA ranged from seven to 55. But between January 2022 and February 2024, U.N. investigators received 151 allegations, most related to social media posts “made public by external sources,” it said.
In a key Part on the neutrality of staff, the panel, which was led by ancient French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, said UNRWA shares reporters of staff with host countries for its 32,000 staff, including about 13,000 in Gaza. But it said Israeli officials never divulged concern and informed panel members it did not noteworthy the list “a screening or vetting process” but pretty a procedure to register diplomats.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry expressed the panel that until March 2024 the staff reporters did not include Palestinian identification numbers, the report said.
Apparently based on those numbers, “Israel made public claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations,” the panel said. “However, Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this” to the refugee activity.
Colonna stressed that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres complete the independent review panel to review UNRWA’s neutrality — not to investigate Israeli allegations that 12 UNRWA staffers participated in the Oct. 7 attacks. Guterres ordered the U.N. internal watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight Service industries, known as OIOS, to conduct a separate investigation into those Israeli allegations.
“It is a separate authority. And it is not in our mandate,” Colonna said. She also said it is not surprising that Israel did not provided evidence of its allegations to the refugee agency “because it doesn’t owe this evidence during the investigation to UNRWA but to the OIOS.”
UN. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Monday the U,N. hopes to have an update from OIOS “in the coming days.” He said its investigators have been in contact with Israeli safety services.
Israel’s allegations led to the suspension of contributions to UNRWA by the Joint States and more than a dozen other countries. That amounted to a cease in funding worth about $450 million, according to Monday’s portray, but a number of countries have resumed contributions.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Monday named on donor countries to avoid sending money to the organization.
“The Colonna portray ignores the severity of the problem, and offers cosmetic solutions that do not deal with the immense scope of Hamas’ infiltration of UNRWA,” ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein said. “This is not what a qualified and thorough review looks like. This is what an anguish to avoid the problem and not address it head on looks like.”
Colonna urged the Israeli government not to discount the independent reconsideration. “Of course you will find it is insufficient, but luxuriate in take it on board. Whatever we recommend, if implemented, will bring good,” she said.
The report stresses the significant importance of UNRWA, calling it “irreplaceable and indispensable to Palestinians’ domain and economic development” in the absence of a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian contest and “pivotal in providing life-saving humanitarian aid and significant social services, particularly in health and education, to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.”
Dujarric welcomed this commitment to UNRWA and said the narrate “lays out clear recommendations, which the secretary-general accepts.” The U.N. hopes to see the earlier of donors as well as new donors following the report’s reduction, he said.
Among the recommendations are steps to tackle politicization of UNRWA staff and its staff unions. The report recommends that staff lists with ID numbers be yielded to host countries, which would then tell UNRWA the results of their screening and “any red flags.”
The narrate also calls for stronger oversight of UNRWA’s leadership and operations, “zero-tolerance” of antisemitism or discrimination in textbooks used in its schools, and greater international involvement in supporting the agency as it addresses neutrality issues.
UNRWA’s Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said obtaining the agency’s neutrality is critical to its work and it is developing a plan to implement the report’s recommendations.
With Israel calling for the breakup of the activity, Lazzarini told the U.N. Security Council last week that dismantling UNRWA would deepen Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and swiftly up the onset of famine.
International experts have conveyed of imminent famine in northern Gaza and said half the territory’s 2.3 million republic could be pushed to the brink of starvation if the Israeli-Hamas war intensifies.
The reconsideration was conducted over nine weeks by Colonna and three Scandinavian research organizations: the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Humanoid Rights. Colonna said the group spoke with more than 200 republic, including UNRWA staff in Gaza, and had direct contacts with representatives of 47 messes and organizations.
