UNRWA – part 1
UNRWA is the short title for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the near east. The last part of the name is, sadly, usually omitted in most discourse. The agency was created by UN General Assembly resolution 302 (IV) on Dec 8th, 1949. It began work on May 1st, 1950. The Agency’s services, according to their own statement, encompass education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, microfinance and emergency assistance, including in times of armed conflict. Please notice that there is no mention of resettlement. Also worthy of note is the fact that UNRWA was created exclusively for palestine refugees; “palestine refugees” not “Palestinian refugees”. There was no state of Palestine at that time.
The UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees), also known as the UN Refugee Agency, was established a few months later. The UN refuge agency is specifically tasked with the protection of ALL refugees’ rights and making efforts to have them admitted into the territory of member states. Other tasks specifically mentioned are promoting the assimilation of refugees, and efforts promoting their voluntary repatriation. UNRWA was not placed under UNHCR and remained a separate entity.
UNHCR define a refugee as someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group..
UNRWA suffered from a typical problem of programs that give away goods or services to what may be a deserving population; over registration. Part of the solution to this was to adopt a definition from 1952 about who would be eligible for UNRWA aid. That definition was “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” Over the years a de facto addition has been made so that the descendants of palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, are also eligible for registration. The problem of who is really a Palestinian refugee will be considered in a future blog.
The principal reason for the definition in 1952 was that the original case for Palestine refugees included both Jews and Arabs. In 1952 Israel assumed responsibility for all such refugees within it’s’ borders and resettled them. In 1967 Israel came into possession of all of the territory that had been the Palestine Mandate in 1948 and the UNHCR issued a protocol that exempted Palestine refugees from UNHCR services until or unless UNRWA ceased operations. Those individuals eligible for UNRWA aid was also expanded form residents of UNRWA camps to any palestinian residing in one of the 5 countries where UNRWA operated. How this impacted the political climate surrounding Arab-Israeli peace agreements will also be considered in a separate future blog.
Wetherhorn 