Press Releases

Amidst the ongoing Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip and mass forcible displacement in the West Bank, the United Nations newly released Strategic Assessment [herein Assessment] of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) acts as a blueprint for the Agency’s collapse and erasing the last operational institution serving the protection of over 5.9 million Palestine refugees. BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights and the Global Palestinian Refugee and IDP Network (GPRN) outline the pitfalls of this Assessment and recommendations for all stakeholders in the position paper entitled, Engineered Collapse: The United Nations’ Strategic Assessment of UNRWA and Palestinian Refugee Rights.

Commissioned by the UN Secretary-General and published in June 2025, in response to escalating political and financial pressures facing the Agency, the Assessment outlines four future scenarios for UNRWA—all treating its collapse as inevitable in varying ways. Rather than reinforcing the Agency’s mandate under UNGA Resolution 302, to support fulfilling Resolution 194, the report frames UNRWA as a political liability, signaling its dismantlement as imminent.

The Assessment decontextualizes UNRWA’s role, prioritizes western colonial states and the Israeli regime’s interests, and proposes service and governance reforms that fragment refugee protection, offloading international and institutional responsibilities onto host states in the region. These proposals echo long-standing strategies to dissolve and undermine UNRWA without resolving the root causes of Palestinian forced displacement.

It further ignores feasible funding solutions, such as integrating UNRWA’s budget into the UN’s regular one or drawing from revenues of Palestinian refugee properties held in trust. Instead, it artificially narrows the financial debate, presenting the financial crisis and collapse as unavoidable coupled with restructuring that detaches it from its mandate.

Concerningly, the Assessment frames neutrality in colonial terms, portraying UNRWA as a mere tool to stabilize the Israeli regime in the region and serve donor-driven political objectives. In doing so, the Assessment helps absolve the UN and member states of their historic and legal responsibilities toward Palestinian refugees, who have been forcibly displaced by the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime.

The release of this position paper is a call to states, UN agencies, legal experts, and advocates: UNRWA must not be restructured to serve colonial agendas and its mandate must be defended in its entirety. Its existence is inseparable from the fulfilment of Palestinian refugees and IDPs right to reparation (return, property restitution, compensation and guarantees of non-repetition) and the international community’s obligations under international law.

UNRWA is our Right until Return