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The Conversation

About a dozen countries, including the US, suspended funding to UNRWA, the United Nations agency responsible for delivering aid to Palestinian refugees.
This follows Israel’s allegations 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. UNRWA responded by dismissing all accused employees and launching an investigation.
While the seriousness of the accusations is clear, the US has been downplaying the significance of its funding pause, the action goes against precedent.
Western donors did not, for example, defund other UN agencies or peacekeeping operations amid accusations of sexual assault, corruption or complicity in war crimes.
Cuts to UNRWA funding will affect 1.7 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza along with an additional 400,000 Palestinians without refugee status, which benefit from UNRWA’s infrastructure. Some critics said depriving the agency of funds amounts to collective punishment against Palestinians.
Refugee and humanitarian aid, in theory, should be neutral and impartial. But as experts in migration and international relations, we know funding is often used as a foreign policy tool to reward allies and punish enemies. In this context, we believe cuts to UNRWA funding fit a broader pattern of politicisation of refugee aid, particularly Palestinian refugees.
Israel-Gaza war: UN agency under fire after October 7 involvement claims
What is UNRWA?
UNRWA, short for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, was founded two years after 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes during the months leading up to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war.
Before UNRWA’s founding, international and local organisations, many religious, provided services to displaced Palestinians. But after surveying the extreme poverty and dire situation across refugee camps, the UN General Assembly, including all Arab states and Israel, voted to create UNRWA in 1949.
Since then, UNRWA has become the main aid agency providing food, medical care, schooling and, in some cases, housing for 6 million Palestinians across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the areas that make up the occupied Palestinian territories: the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The mass displacement of Palestinians – known as the Nakba, or “catastrophe” – occurred before the 1951 Refugee Convention, which defined refugees as anyone with a well-founded fear of persecution owing to “events occurring in Europe before 1 January 1951.” Despite a 1967 protocol extending the definition worldwide, Palestinians are still excluded from the main international system protecting refugees.
While UNRWA is responsible for providing services to Palestinian refugees, the UN also created the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine in 1948 to seek a long-term political solution and “to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation.”
As a result, UNRWA does not have a mandate to push for traditional solutions available in other refugee situations. As it happened, the conciliation commission was active only for a few years and sidelined in favour of the US-brokered peace processes.




Is UNRWA political?
UNRWA has faced political obstacles since its inception, particularly at times of heightened tensions between Palestinians and Israelis.
While it is a UN organisation and thus apolitical, it has frequently been criticised by Palestinians, Israelis and donor countries, including the US, for acting politically.
UNRWA performs statelike functions across its five fields – including education, health and infrastructure – but its mandate restricts it from performing political or security activities.
Initial Palestinian objections to UNRWA arose from the organisation’s early focus on the economic integration of refugees into host states.
Although UNRWA adhered to the UN General Assembly’s Resolution 194 that called for the return of Palestine refugees to their homes, UN, UK and US officials sought ways to resettle and integrate Palestinians into host states, viewing this as the favourable political solution to the Palestinian refugee situation and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this sense, Palestinians perceived UNRWA as both highly political and actively working against their interests.

In later decades, at the urging of Palestinian refugees, UNRWA shifted its primary focus from employment to education. But UNRWA’s education materials were viewed by Israel as feeding Palestinian militancy, and the Israeli government insisted on reviewing and approving all materials in Gaza and the West Bank, which it has occupied since 1967.
While Israel has long been suspicious of UNRWA’s role in refugee camps and in providing education, the organisation’s operation, which is internationally funded, also saves Israel millions of dollars annually in services it would owe as the occupying power.
Since the 1960s, the US – UNRWA’s primary donor – and other Western countries repeatedly expressed their desire to use aid to prevent radicalisation among refugees.
In response to the increased presence of armed opposition groups, the US attached a provision to its UNRWA aid in 1970, requiring “UNRWA take all possible measures to assure that no part of the United States contribution shall be used to furnish assistance to any refugee who is receiving military training as a member of the so-called Palestine Liberation Army or any other guerilla-type organisation.”
UNRWA adheres to this requirement, even publishing an annual list of its employees so host governments can vet them, but it also employs 30,000 people, most of whom are Palestinian .
Questions over UNRWA’s links to any militancy led to the rise of Israeli and international watch groups that document the social media activity of the organisation’s large Palestinian staff.
What is UNRWA, the main aid provider in Gaza that Israel accuses of militant links?
Repeated cuts in funding
The US has used its money and power within the UN to block criticism of Israel, vetoing 45 UN resolutions critical of Israel.
The latest freeze is not the first time it cut funding to UNRWA or other UN agencies in response to the status of Palestinians.
In 2011, the US cut all funding to Unesco, the UN’s cultural body, after the agency voted to admit the state of Palestine as a full member.
The Obama administration defended the move, claiming it was required by a 1990s law to defund any UN body that admitted Palestine as a full member.
The action had a severe impact. Within four years, Unesco cut its staff in half and rolled back operations. President Donald Trump later withdrew the US completely from Unesco.
In 2018, the Trump administration paused its US$60 million contribution to UNRWA. Trump claimed this would create political pressure for Palestinians to negotiate. President Joe Biden restarted US contributions to UNRWA in 2021.


Politicisation of refugee aid
Palestinians are not the only group to suffer from the politicisation of refugee funding.
After World War II, different international organisations were established to assist refugees, but some groups were strategically excluded. For example, the US funded the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration to help resettle displaced persons after World War II, but resisted Soviet pressure to forcibly repatriate Soviet citizens.
The US also created a separate organisation, the precursor to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), to circumvent Soviet influence. UNRWA’s existence and the exclusion of Palestinian refugees from the wider refugee regime parallels this dynamic.
Funding for refugees has also been politicised through the earmarking of voluntary contributions to UN agencies. Some receive funding from UN dues; but UNRWA, alongside the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organisation for Migration (UNHCR), receive most of their funding from voluntary contributions from member states.
These contributions can be earmarked for specific activities or locations, leading to donors such as the US or EU dictating which refugees get aid and which do not. Earmarked contributions amounted to nearly 96 per cent of UNHCR’s budget, 96 per cent of IOM’s budget and 74 per cent of UNRWA funding in 2022.
As a result, cuts to UNRWA funding will affect its ability to service Palestinian refugees in Gaza – especially at a time when so many are facing hunger, disease and displacement as a result of war.
Nicholas R. Micinski is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Maine. Kelsey Norman is Fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. This article was first published by The Conversation.




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UNRWA funding cuts reflect the all-too-familiar politicisation of refugee aid

Up to 1.9 million people, or more than 85 per cent of the population, have been displaced throughout the Gaza Strip, some more than once, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees since the start of the Israel-Gaza war. Photo: EPA-EFE

A boy carries a sack bearing the logo of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), filled with salvaged items from the rubble of a destroyed high school. Photo: AFP

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A Palestinian youth sits next to bags of flour distributed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. Photo: Reuters

A displaced Palestinian woman sits by a tent while sheltering in a UNRWA school. Photo: Reuters

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Israeli soldiers enter a Hamas tunnel underneath a cemetery during the ground offensive on the Gaza Strip in Khan Younis. Photo: AP

A picture taken during a media tour organized by the Israeli military on December 15, 2023, shows a tunnel that Hamas reportedly used to attack Israel through the Erez border crossing on October 7. Photo: AFP

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Children gather in front of a building destroyed by Israeli bombing in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday. Photo: AFP

Children rest as Palestinians fleeing Khan Younis, due to the Israeli ground operation, move towards Rafah in Gaza on Saturday. Photo: Reuters

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A truck, marked with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) logo, crosses into Egypt from Gaza, at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip on November 27, 2023. Photo: Reuters

Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz has said UNRWA “must be replaced with agencies dedicated to genuine peace and development” in the rebuilding of Gaza. Photo: AFP

Palestinians carry bags of flour they grabbed from an aid truck near an Israeli checkpoint, as Gaza residents face crisis levels of hunger, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City on Saturday. Photo: Reuters

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has been asked to resign over allegations 12 staff members were accused of taking part in the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. Photo: AFP

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People wait for food relief in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, on December 31, 2023. Photo: Xinhua

Internally displaced Palestinians move past Israeli tanks as they head towards Rafah camps near the Egyptian border, southern Gaza Strip, on Saturday. Photo: EPA-EFE

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This Week in Asia

Opinion

Refugee and humanitarian aid should be neutral and impartial, but funding is often used as a foreign policy tool to reward allies and punish enemies
While UNRWA is apolitical, it has frequently been criticised by Palestinians, Israelis and donor countries, including the US, for acting politically


Refugee and humanitarian aid should be neutral and impartial, but funding is often used as a foreign policy tool to reward allies and punish enemies.


War and conflict

United Nations

Middle East

Human rights

Religion

Israel-Gaza war

Palestinian Territories

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)
