UNRWA report ‘damning’ for Israel
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/22/no-evidence-of-unrwa-staff-links-terrorist-groups-independent-review
An independent review on the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees is expected to be released publicly at the UN headquarters in New York in the next few hours.
It’s about 48 pages long. I’m still going through all of it, but there are some highlights that we can glean from it already. Number one, the big picture, is that this is a pretty damning report, damning not for UNRWA but for Israel, which accused 12 UNRWA employees of taking part in the October 7 attack, leading to a number of donors suspending their funding.
In this report, former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna says that Israel never gave them any evidence to back up those claims.
Now, this isn’t necessarily new. We’ve been hearing that for months now from the spokesperson of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. But the fact that this is now also in the Colonna report, this backs up what we’ve been hearing all along.
The report is not intended to look directly at the claims of the 12 people who were allegedly involved. This probe, commissioned by the secretary-general, is an independent investigation that’s an “independent review to ensure that UNRWA adheres to the principle of neutrality”.
Israeli allegations against UNRWA ‘amount to the mother of all lies’: Former employee
Chris Gunness, the former chief spokesperson for UNRWA, has spoken to Al Jazeera about the report by a former French foreign minister that we have been covering. “I will welcome this report,” he said. “I think UNRWA will welcome it because it confirms that UNRWA is an indispensable lifeline for the people of the Middle East for refugees.”
“It also confirms UNRWA has established a significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with humanitarian principles, particularly neutrality, and it says UNRWA possesses a more robust approach to neutrality than any other UN or NGO organisation,” he said.
In late January, Israel accused 12 UNRWA workers from Gaza of involvement in the October 7 attacks on southern Israel by the Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian armed groups, prompting key donors to halt funding to the agency.
Those allegations, Gunness said, “remain unsubstantiated; it would seem that the Israeli claims amount to the mother of all lies based on a dodgy dossier”.
Colonna is speaking at the UN
Catherine Colonna, the former French foreign minister, is speaking at the UN about the independent investigation she led into UNRWA.
“UNRWA plays an indispensable and irreplaceable role in the region,” she said.
She said the UN agency had a “significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the humanitarian principle of neutrality” and UNRWA had a “more developed system than other UN organisations or agencies”.
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One recommendation is that UNRWA regularly shares digitalised lists of employees with host countries and Israel. She says host countries and Israel would need to provide screening results and evidence if there are any red flags.
UNRWA ‘one of the best’ UN agencies: AJ senior analyst
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, says the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is “one of the best-performing UN agencies”.
“It is evaluated, reviewed, and audited, and various recommendations are made. I think it’s part of the nature of things of any UN agency,” Bishara said.
He noted that when Israel began making allegations against UNRWA staff in Gaza in January, the Israeli army had already killed some 150 UN staff members there.
“We are putting UNRWA on the stand … while the country that is killing UN staff is, of course, not at all on the stand,” Bishara said.
If Israel has such damaging evidence, where is it?
There are two separate reports; that’s the confusing thing about this.
[Colonna’s] report looked at the mechanisms of UNRWA and looked at whether they needed to be reformed.
While there’s a specific report into potential wrongdoing of UN staff, and remember, Israel claimed that 12 UNRWA staff were involved in the October 7 attacks, it also made claims that 12 percent of the organisation was affiliated with Hamas. The UN Office of Internal Oversight is conducting a separate report.
[Colonna’s] report does touch on this issue, and you have heard people asking about it at the UN. Israel has made public claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organisations. However, Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this.
We’ve heard similar things from the UN spokesman every single day when he’s asked about this at the daily UN briefing, and it does beg the question; if Israel has such damaging allegations, why does it not provide the evidence?
UNRWA welcomes Colonna report’s findings and recommendations
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees “welcomes the findings and recommendations of the independent review on the agency’s adherence to the humanitarian principle of neutrality”, the head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, says in a statement.
“The report confirms that UNRWA has established – over many years – policies, mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the principle of neutrality” he said.
“Safeguarding the neutrality of the agency is central to our ability to continue saving lives and contributing to the human development of Palestine Refugees in the Gaza Strip as it faces an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.”
He also stated that the agency is developing an action plan with a timeline and budget to implement the report’s recommendations.
UNRWA has ‘very comprehensive neutrality framework’, analyst says
The Colonna report shows UNRWA has “developed a very comprehensive neutrality framework with policies, practical measures, arrangements to inspect installations”, Lex Takkenberg, a senior advisor for the Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development NGO, has told Al Jazeera.
He added that there was also evidence that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) had “arrangements to safeguard the neutrality of beneficiaries, and robust training on social media neutrality and, more generally, on neutrality [in] humanitarian operations”.
He noted that these systems continued to remain in place “even in the very challenging circumstances of genocidal actions in the Gaza Strip”.
