Press Releases
Urgent Call to Protect UNRWA
Israel’s ban on the Agency: A Calculated Attack on Palestinian Refugees’ Rights and the UN System
The Israeli regime’s laws that aim to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), are set to take effect at the end of January 2025. If the ban is realized, it will have devastating consequences on the ground, particularly in Gaza, but it will also impact Palestinian refugees across the region, as well as the UN system itself, signaling the demise of the UN multilateral protection framework. Most importantly, the elimination of UNRWA brings the Israeli regime closer to its ultimate goal: the elimination of Palestinian refugees’ rights.
While the Israeli campaign to demonize, dismantle UNRWA and transfer its responsibilities is not new, it is crucial to recognize that it is part of a broader strategy aimed at liquidating the Palestinian refugee issue. Responsible for providing aid, education, and social services to Palestinians, UNRWA embodies the UN and states’ responsibility to provide international protection to and ensure the rights of Palestinian refugees. Since UNRWA is mandated to operate until the application of UNGA Resolution 194, this includes Palestinian refugees’ rights to return, property restitution, compensation and guarantees of non-repetition.
Over 5.9 million Palestine refugees rely on the Agency for essential services, including education, healthcare, and food assistance in its 5 areas of operation: West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Amid the ongoing Israeli genocide, UNRWA has been repeatedly recognized as the lifeline to 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Trying to staunch the Israeli-engineered famine, the Agency provides food aid to over 1.2 million people — 60% of the population — facing unprecedented levels of food insecurity. UNRWA facilities are used as shelters for displaced people, while nearly 70% of the Agency's schools have been hit, some several times. Severing the crucial aid and services to the besieged, starved, displaced and injured Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip will amplify the conditions of life engineered by the Israeli regime to bring about their physical destruction.
The implementation of the Israeli laws prohibiting UNRWA’s presence in Palestine and banning its operations will have a disastrous impact on Palestinian refugees in the whole of the occupied Palestinian territory. By eliminating UNRWA’s presence in Jerusalem, the implementation of these laws reduces international presence, entrenching Israeli domination and colonial expansion in the city. In the West Bank, this would entail the denial of healthcare to refugees across 50 health centers, the exclusion of 45,000 students from education in 96 primary schools, and the loss of employment for thousands of Palestinians.
Additionally, the ban will affect states’ support to UNRWA, which in turn will impact UNRWA’s budget, operations and logistical abilities. This, therefore, will extend far beyond the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, disrupting UNRWA’s ability to provide services and aid in its other areas of operation, including Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Banning the Agency in one area effectively weaponizes national laws to dismantle its entire mandate, jeopardizing a vital support system for 5.9 million Palestine refugees across the region, including 3.7 million who depend on it for life-saving emergency aid. Banning UNRWA is not just a localized act; it is a deliberate assault on the international protection framework designed to ensure the fulfilment of Palestinian refugees’ rights. Without the Agency’s presence, aid and services, the rights of Palestinian refugees in host states will be further marginalized, leaving them more vulnerable to systemic neglect and oppression.
The UN and its member states have cultivated a history of failing to act to protect UNRWA: permitting through their inaction the killing of over 330 aid workers in Gaza, with UNRWA personnel accounting for 263 of these fatalities - the highest number ever recorded in history. A UN Member State banning a UN organization is also a first in the history of the UN. The failure of third states and the broader UN to take decisive action against the Israeli regime’s unprecedented violations threatens the multilateral system and sets a dangerous precedent. Statements of concern from individual States, or resolutions from the UN General Assembly urging cooperation with UNRWA, are insufficient to protect UNRWA and the multilateral framework.
In order to compel the Israeli regime to rescind its laws, protect Palestinian refugees and safeguard UNRWA, States must take decisive actions such as severing diplomatic ties, suspending Israeli membership and privileges within the UN, halting joint projects and cooperation agreements, and freezing all contracts with the Israeli regime and its private sector. Concrete measures, in the form of political, financial and military sanctions, are urgently required to hold the Israeli regime accountable, prevent further genocide, and more fracturing of the UN system.
The time to act is long overdue. The continued failure of states to act will not only entrench their complicity in the ongoing Israeli genocide, but will also have catastrophic impacts over the whole region, and on the global multilateral framework.