UNRWA neutrality must be strengthened, independent review finds

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An independent review of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has said the agency's neutrality must be strengthened.

 

Earlier this year, Israel accused at least 12 UNRWA staffers of being involved in Hamas' October 7 terror attacks and has alleged that about 12% of the agency's 13,000 staffers are members of Hamas or other Palestinian militant groups.

 

The review, which was led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna and published Monday, was not tasked with addressing Israel's allegations, but had a broader mandate to "assess whether UNRWA is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality."

 

Despite UNRWA adopting a "robust framework" in 2017 to address issues of neutrality, the issues persist, the review said. However, the report did note that "Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence" for their allegations that "a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations."

 

"They include instances of staff publicly expressing political views, host-country textbooks with problematic content being used in some UNRWA schools, and politicized staff unions making threats against UNRWA management and causing operational disruptions,” it said.

The review also found that “UNRWA's facilities have sometimes been misused for political or military gains, undermining its neutrality.”

Israel's response: “The Colonna report ignores the severity of the problem, and offers cosmetic solutions that do not deal with the enormous scope of Hamas' infiltration of UNRWA,” Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Oren Marmorstein alleged in a statement, adding this is not what a “genuine and thorough review looks like.

 

This is what an effort to avoid the problem and not address it head on looks like.” Israel has longstanding issues with UNRWA, accusing it of aiding Hamas and calling for it to be entirely dismantled.

 

2024-04-23

Source

 

 

[Bkk Brian]

Colonna stressed that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed the independent review panel to review UNRWA’s neutrality — not to investigate Israeli allegations that 12 UNRWA staffers participated in the Oct. 7 attacks. Guterres ordered the U.N. internal watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, known as OIOS, to conduct a separate investigation into those Israeli allegations.

“It is a separate mission. And it is not in our mandate,” Colonna said. She also said it is not surprising that Israel did not provide evidence of its allegations to the refugee agency “because it doesn’t owe this evidence during the investigation to UNRWA but to the OIOS.”

 

 

 

In a wide-ranging 48-page report released Monday, the independent panel said UNRWA has “robust” procedures to uphold the U.N. principle of neutrality, but it cited serious gaps in implementation, including staff publicly expressing political views, textbooks used in schools the agency runs with “problematic content” and staff unions disrupting operations. It makes 50 recommendations to improve UNRWA’s neutrality.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-unrwa-united-nations-28a63ddef23efdc4b050b0bcbdb587ff

 

Full report pdf download link

https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/2024/04/unrwa_independent_review_on_neutrality.pdf

 

[placeholder]

3 hours ago, Bkk Brian said:

Colonna stressed that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed the independent review panel to review UNRWA’s neutrality — not to investigate Israeli allegations that 12 UNRWA staffers participated in the Oct. 7 attacks. Guterres ordered the U.N. internal watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, known as OIOS, to conduct a separate investigation into those Israeli allegations.

“It is a separate mission. And it is not in our mandate,” Colonna said. She also said it is not surprising that Israel did not provide evidence of its allegations to the refugee agency “because it doesn’t owe this evidence during the investigation to UNRWA but to the OIOS.”

 

 

 

In a wide-ranging 48-page report released Monday, the independent panel said UNRWA has “robust” procedures to uphold the U.N. principle of neutrality, but it cited serious gaps in implementation, including staff publicly expressing political views, textbooks used in schools the agency runs with “problematic content” and staff unions disrupting operations. It makes 50 recommendations to improve UNRWA’s neutrality.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-unrwa-united-nations-28a63ddef23efdc4b050b0bcbdb587ff

 

Full report pdf download link

https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/2024/04/unrwa_independent_review_on_neutrality.pdf

 

And how does this address the issue of Israel's lack of proof for its allegation that a large proportion of UNRWA workers are actively working with Hanas?

[Bkk Brian]

Just now, placeholder said:

And how does this address the issue of Israel's lack of proof for its allegation that a large proportion of UNRWA workers are actively working with Hanas?

The report does not go into that. Perhaps you will instead

[Bkk Brian]

Stands to reason, there indeed needs to be real progress in almost every aspect of neutrality. 

 

White House wants ‘real progress’ before US restores UNRWA funding

“In terms of our funding of UNRWA, that is still suspended. We’re gonna have to see real progress here before that gets changed,” Kirby says.

Many donor countries have resumed funding since Israel’s accusations, including Sweden, Canada, Japan, the EU and France — while others, including the United States and Britain — have continued to hold out.“We welcome the results of this report and strongly support the recommendations in the report,” Kirby says, noting that the United States also faced legal constraints in restarting its funding.

Congress passed a bill signed into law by President Joe Biden last month that blocks US funding until March 2025.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/white-house-wants-real-progress-before-us-restores-unrwa-funding/

[Bkk Brian]

So all those misleading headlines from NYT, Guardian etc. Here is the head of the UN probe addressing this directly. They had “excellent cooperation” with Israel.

 

Head of UNRWA probe rejects @guardian headline, says she had “excellent cooperation” with Israel; her mandate had nothing to do with identifying UNRWA terrorists, Israel is sharing info with separate UN inquiry run by OIOS. 

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Q: How would you characterize the Israeli cooperation with you, given that as you may have seen today, the main takeaway from your report is Israel has yet to provide any evidence for its allegations that UNRWA personnel were involved in the October 7th attack. So how would you characterize that cooperation and this main takeaway?

 

Catherine Colonna: Thank you. I covered everybody when I said that we received very good cooperation from everywhere, including Israel. I could go in details who received us and so on and so forth, but I want to repeat that we had an excellent cooperation from all sides.

Now about one of the quotes—I couldn't read everything this morning—but one of the quotes that have been issued does not respect, I think, the text of the report. We have written – and the beauty of writing reports is that you can refer to what's written—we've written that UNRWA has not received evidence by Israel, not that there is no evidence. It's very different.

So please, again and again, refer to the content of the report and not to what you hear sometimes about it. I would really appreciate if you could base your comments and base your judgments on the content and not on preconceived opinions.

 

Q: You stated that Israel has given no evidence to UNRWA about their claims that any UNRWA employees took part in October 7th, but did you during your investigation ask Israel for evidence?

 

Catherine Colonna: Thank you for this opportunity to have me repeating that there must be no confusion between what we've been tasked for, which is assessing whether UNRWA does everything in its power to ensure neutrality and address challenges, etc., and what the OIOS is in charge of. There are two separate missions. So allegations regarding individuals, a difficult case, are in the scope of the OIOS mission. It is not the scope of our mandate.

And by the way, it is no surprise that Israel did not provide evidence to UNRWA because it doesn't owe this evidence during the investigation to UNRWA, but to the OIOS.

And my understanding is that they have a better cooperation now than at the beginning, and that the team will, their investigators will return there soon. So this is a separate, separate mission.

 

 

[Jeff the Chef]

A new mechanism for getting lifesaving aid into Gaza will start in the coming days, UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator Sigrid Kaag announced in a briefing to the Security Council on Wednesday.

“The operationalisation of the mechanism will allow for pipeline prioritisation, predictability, visibility and tracking of supplies to Gaza,” she told ambassadors.

The new plan stemmed from Security Council resolution 2720, adopted in December, which established Ms. Kaag’s position and requested her to forge a UN mechanism to accelerate aid deliveries into the war-torn enclave, which now faces looming famine.

 

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148956

[Hanaguma]

I know a foolproof method for getting needed aid into Gaza.

 

It's called "Hamas Surrenders".

 

Aid will flow within 24 hours of that blessed event and won't stop for a long time. It would be great for the people of Gaza if they could throw off the yoke of their terrorist oppressors, and make steps to become prosperous and free.

[Patong2021]

How about holding the entity accountable? With the amounts  of money involved, an outside auditor is needed. This agency has never been audited by any responsible party. There is no transparency. How the money is actually spent  in detail is never declared. That's one of the core issues. It is likely that large amounts of the donations are diverted into people's pockets or for activities not related to relief.

[Bkk Brian]

On 4/25/2024 at 9:00 AM, Jeff the Chef said:

A new mechanism for getting lifesaving aid into Gaza will start in the coming days, UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator Sigrid Kaag announced in a briefing to the Security Council on Wednesday.

“The operationalisation of the mechanism will allow for pipeline prioritisation, predictability, visibility and tracking of supplies to Gaza,” she told ambassadors.

The new plan stemmed from Security Council resolution 2720, adopted in December, which established Ms. Kaag’s position and requested her to forge a UN mechanism to accelerate aid deliveries into the war-torn enclave, which now faces looming famine.

 

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148956

What has that to do with the UNRWA investigation?

[Jeff the Chef]

36 minutes ago, Patong2021 said:

How about holding the entity accountable? With the amounts  of money involved, an outside auditor is needed. This agency has never been audited by any responsible party. There is no transparency. How the money is actually spent  in detail is never declared. That's one of the core issues. It is likely that large amounts of the donations are diverted into people's pockets or for activities not related to relief.

 

CORE PROGRAMME BUDGET
All contributions to the UNRWA Programme Budget go directly towards serving the Palestine refugees the Agency is mandated to protect and assist. UNRWA is committed to transparency and accountability, with sensible investment in fundraising and communication, and prudent expenditure on management support and administration.

UNDERSTANDING THE UNRWA FUNDING STRUCTURE
UNRWA is mandated by the General Assembly under resolution 302(IV) to respond to the needs of more than 5.6 million refugees in its five fields of operation until a just and durable solution is found to the refugee issue. Based on this mandate, UNRWA delivers essential services in the areas of education, health, protection, relief and social services, microfinance and camp improvement with the support of more than 28,000 national Palestinian staff members.

 

https://www.unrwa.org/how-you-can-help/how-we-spend-funds/core-programme-budget

[Jeff the Chef]

5 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

What has that to do with the UNRWA investigation?

 

It is a response by the UN

[Bkk Brian]

1 minute ago, Jeff the Chef said:

 

It is a response by the UN

Yes I think that is pretty obvious but not what I asked.

10 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

What has that to do with the UNRWA investigation?