The UN has a lot of sub-organizations. Most deal with specific aspects of international cooperation. In common with most bureaucratic organizations, the first order of business for many of them is to ensure that they continue to exist. This is being written because one such organization, in particular, has continued to function long past the point where it should have been phased out.
The organization in question is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA). It was created in 1949 to deal with a refugee crisis that resulted from the very first Arab-Israel War. At that time the UN had no special body to handle refugees from wars or other crises. The office of the UN High Commissioner on Refugees was created later. When UNHCR was created, there was a sizable bloc of Arab nations that prevented transferring UNRWA to the new organization despite compelling reasons for doing so. This anomaly has continued now for over 72 years. Putting an end to this aberration is long overdue.
Why is it still around? Because some Arab countries, especially those where the unfortunate. so-called Palestinian refugees and their descendants live, benefit economically and politically. The original premise of the organization was to provide “temporary” homes and health and education services for a very limited and specific population; Arab refugees who fled the fighting in 1948-49 and needed a place to stay until they could return home after a peace agreement was reached. The refugees were placed in “camps” in Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Those host countries claimed they could not absorb the refugees into their own populations for a variety of reasons. Egypt, for example, kept them all in the Gaza strip which was then under Egyptian control. Jordan annexed the part we now often call the West Bank, and even granted all residents Jordanian citizenship. But being dependent upon foreign donations for its’ own existence, Jordan could not afford the expense. In any case, the unilateral annexation was not recognized by the rest of the world (except Pakistan and the UK).
The most important reason the Arab world did not want UNRWA under UNHCR authority is found in the wording of documents creating those organizations. UNHCR is empowered to solve refugee problems by resettlement OR repatriation. UNRWA does not have the option of resettlement, only repatriation. This idea does seem somewhat absurd in light of the fact that almost none of the people currently benefiting from UNRWA refugee status ever lived in any place in Palestine (and many more of the original “refugees” had immigrated to Palestine from nearby countries in search of a better economic status only a short time before 1948).
Over the years, UNRWA has become a highly corrupt organization. Originally, UNRWA ration cards were issued to provide food assistance. That evolved into seriously corrupt system with a black market in ration cards that led to a joke about people never dying in the camps because their ration cards were still being used. UNRWA schools in Gaza are notorious for being used as launching sites and storage facilities for Hamas terrorist rockets.
During the extended Syrian civil war, refugees from UNRWA camps insisted that they be listed as Syrian (NOT Palestinian) refugees for that war in order to be eligible for resettlement elsewhere.
The biggest benefit from closing down UNRWA would possibly be in providing an extra incentive for the Palestinians to make peace with Israel. Currently, the major Palestinian political groups all call for creating a Palestinian state in ALL the former mandate territory (despite the fact that the original League of Nations Mandate reserve all that same land for a Jewish state). The Palestinians also call for repatriation (forced) of all UNRWA registered refugees. The Palestinian Authority claims to support a two state solution, and even modified it’s territorial claims (for now) to a return to the 1967 cease-fire line. This means that the claim to all Palestine may really be open for a negotiated border settlement deal. Closing down UNRWA would, de facto, remove that all or nothing demand, and also force the current host countries to find funding for the health and education services that were being provided for them at no cost.
Wetherhorn 