Brussels – The report of the independent commission tasked by the UN to review UNRWA’s internal mechanisms and procedures is a breath of fresh air for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. And a blow to the credibility of the charges of complicity with Hamas carried out by Israel. Not only Tel Aviv “has yet to provide supporting evidence of this,” but according to experts led by former French minister Catherine Colonna “set of rules and the mechanisms and procedures in place [at UNRWA] are the most elaborate within the UN system.”
The team comprising the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights noted that the agency has extensive tools to ensure impartiality in its work and to regularly provide Israel with lists of its employees. According to Colonna, “the Israeli Government has not informed UNRWA of any concerns relating to any UNRWA staff based on these staff lists since 2011.”
The 54-page final document presented to Antonio Guterres is the result of nine weeks of work in which the group conducted more than 200 interviews, met with Israeli and Palestinian authorities, and directly contacted 47 countries and organizations. The independent commission presented a set of 50 recommendations for the Agency, grouped into eight areas of possible improvements, ranging from management and internal control to new evaluation processes for staff recruitment, from education to building neutrality.
The assumption remains in each case that UNRWA, from 2017 to the present, has “established and updated a significant number of policies, mechanisms, and procedures” to ensure compliance with the principle of neutrality, including providing information and training for staff to prevent violations, ensuring “prompt and appropriate” responses to allegations or indications of violations including reporting and investigative systems and routines, and enforcing disciplinary sanctions on staff found to have violated the principles of neutrality. “What needs to be improved will be improved. I’m confident that implementing these measures will help UNRWA deliver on its mandate,” Colonna said at UN headquarters in New York after the report’s presentation.
The former French foreign minister “strongly encourages the international community to work side by side with the agency so it can perform its mission and overcome the challenges when they are there.” As the report underlines, the crux of the matter is that Israel’s allegations against 12 UNRWA staff members have resulted in the suspension of funding to the agency amounting to some $450 million. As early as January, several major donors, including Austria, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, the US, Canada, Iceland, the UK, Japan, and Australia, decided to preventively freeze funds. Instead, the European Commission chose to maintain its commitments pending the outcome of the investigations by Colonna and the one conducted by the UN’s highest investigative body (OIOS).
In the subsequent months, Canada, Sweden, and Japan followed Brussels’ lead, while Spain decided to increase its support for UNRWA. “The direct impact of Israel’s allegations swiftly hobbled UNRWA’s ability to continue its work,” the report noted. Work that involves assistance not only in the Gaza Strip but to some 6 million Palestinian refugees throughout the region. To strengthen the relationship of trust with donors, the independent commission recommended that the U.N. agency increase “the frequency and strengthening the transparency of UNRWA’s communication with donors on its financial situation and on neutrality allegations and breaches.” The review team also suggested regular updates and “integrity briefings” for donors interested in supporting UNRWA.
The call to release the frozen funds in light of the Israeli allegations was immediately revived by the EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič, who, emphasizing “the significant number of compliance systems in place at the agency” noted by Colonna’s report, called on all donors to “support UNRWA, the lifeline of Palestinian refugees.”
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
