Middle East Piece - What is the United Nations UNRWA Refugee Agency?

What is the UNRWA?

The United Nations started the UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency) to assist the Palestinian Arab refugees created in the wake of the 1948 Palestine War. Unlike the UNHCR (UN High Commission for Refugees), which is the United Nations organization tasked with solving all other refugee situations the world over, the UNRWA is concerned only with Palestinian Arabs.

The UNRWA has also redefined fundamental designations that have traditionally been used when identifying the world’s refugees. “By 1951, the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was in place. It provides the definitional standard for the world’s refugees and is employed by UNHCR. The Palestinian Arab refugees constitute the sole exception to this definition. Differences between the Convention definition of ‘refugee’ and UNRWA’s definition are striking:

The 1951 Convention refers to a refugee as someone who–due to fear of persecution–is outside his country of origin or habitual residence. UNRWA says that Palestinian Arab refugees are: …persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948… [who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict]. The 1951 Convention does not define refugees’ descendants as also refugees. UNRWA counts patrilineal descendants. We are currently looking at the fourth generation of Palestinian Arab refugees. The 1951 Convention exempts from refugee status a person who “has acquired a new nationality and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality.” The UNRWA definition makes no mention of newly acquired nationality. Those who have such nationality (in particular Palestinian Arab refugees living in Jordan and possessing full Jordanian citizenship) are still classified as refugees.”¹ “According to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee was someone who was unable or unwilling to live in the country of his former ‘habitual’ residence and did not have any other nationality. Yet in the case of the Palestinian Arabs, the UN agreed to unique definitions … and removed them from the definitions contained in the global convention. First, Palestinian Arabs could keep their designation as refugees even if they acquired a new nationality … Second, the UN erased the requirement of “habitual” residence in the refugee’s previous country; instead, it defined an Arab refugee as one whose residence was Palestine ‘for a minimum of two years preceding the conflict in 1948.’ The UN was thus taking into account many recent Arab immigrants into Palestine … potentially huge numbers of people … Finally, the UN determined that the direct descendants of refugees were also eligible for refugee status.” ²

“Because there was virtually no repatriation or resettlement among UNRWA’s refugee population, its size includes not only those who fled their homes but also during the course of over a half-century and in considerably larger numbers their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, regardless of where and under what social, political, and economic conditions they live. Another distinction between UNRWA and UNHCR on population counts is this: Palestinians who had fled their homes from one location within Palestine to another location within Palestine … are nonetheless defined by UNRWA as refugees, even though they had not fled their homeland. By UNHCR reckoning, they are not refugees. And counted as well among the Palestinian refugees are descendants of refugees born, raised, and living elsewhere in the Middle East and abroad, who, never having seen the Palestinian home land, are free nonetheless to return to it and to live there permanently but choose not to do so. Their decision to reject repatriation to the Palestinian home land had nothing to do with the principles of non-refoulment since persecution of returnees was at no time a perceived threat. They do not satisfy UNHCR’s definition of refugee.” ³

The significant difference in the purposes of the UNRWA and the UNHCR should be emphasized. The UNHCR’s goal is to permanently assist refugees so that they can no longer be called refugees whether by resettlement to other countries or repatriation back to their own if possible. The UNRWA on the other hand, is not responsible for any solutions to the Palestinian refugee crisis; they exist merely to provide assistance to the Palestinian refugees for as long as they are considered refugees.

“All other cases of refugees in the world came under the jurisdiction of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); for the Palestinian Arabs, the UN established a completely separate agency, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The agencies had different missions. UNHCR was supposed to find permanent homes for refugees and thus solve refugee crises. In contrast, UNRWA was designed only to support the Palestinian refugees within the refugee camps that the Arab states created.”⁴

On the surface it would appear rather encouraging to Palestinian Arab refugees to have their own U.N. organization dedicated to their welfare. After all, look how many other refugees have been settled without the benefit of a custom organization assigned only to their particular ethnic group. Unfortunately, when you consider the fact the UNRWA is only providing them aid but not actually seeking to solve their refugee status, what this functionally means for them is that there is no one seeking to solve their refugee plight.

The UNHCR does not offer assistance to Palestinian Arabs where the UNRWA operates and the UNRWA is not tasked with finding a solution … so what about the refugees? Sure they get aid in the forms of food, shelter, education, etc, but considering we’re currently looking at the 4th generation of refugee status, the question that needs to be asked is can the UNRWA assistance be seen as more beneficial than permanent resettlement; resettlement that should have been achieved two or three generations ago? From a financial point of view, the answer is completely negative. As the Palestinian refugees exponentially grow, so will the cost in supporting them indefinitely.

The existence of the UNRWA has more dire humanitarian implications for the refugees as well. "Ironically, since the refugees are considered to be "at present receiving [protection and assistance] from organs or agencies of the United Nations other than the United Nations High Commission for Refugees," namely UNWRA, the Palestinians are not subject to the protections and safeguards of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees or the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees."⁵

The U.N.’s Website offers the following to explain the main differences between the UNRWA and the UNHCR: “UNRWA is only responsible for providing services to one group of refugees, the Palestine refugees, in its areas of operation. UNHCR is responsible for refugees worldwide. UNRWA is mandated to provide the Palestine refugees with humanitarian assistance, whereas UNHCR has the mandate to provide international protection to refugees who fall within the scope of its Statute and to seek permanent solutions for the problem of refugees by assisting Governments. UNRWA has a unique role as it is the only UN agency that reports directly to the UN General Assembly, and whose beneficiary population stems from one nation-group.”⁶

For a more detailed side-by-side comparison of these agencies I have created this chart of basic facts:

UNRWA UNHCR

Founded Dec. 8, 1949 Dec. 14, 1950

Staff size 27,000+ 6,689

# of countries operated in 4 + Israeli occupied territories (Gaza + West Bank) 116 ⁷

Annual budget US$ 470.9 million ⁸ Over $1 billion dollars

Sources of funding UNRWA operations are financed almost entirely by voluntary contributions from governments and the European Union, which account for 96 per cent of all income. ⁹

Four per cent of income is from United Nations bodies to cover staffing costs, including the funding of 113 international staff posts by the United Nations Secretariat. ¹⁰ UNHCR is almost entirely funded by direct, voluntary contributions from governments, non-governmental organizations and individuals. There is also a very limited subsidy from the regular budget of the United Nations, which is used exclusively for administrative costs. ¹¹

Refugees resettled or repatriated N/A: The UNRWA is not mandated with permanent resettlement or repatriation. The UNRWA’s goal is simply to provide aid until other parties find the solution. ¹² 50 million ¹³

Number of dependents assisted 4.4 million ¹⁴ 32.8 million¹⁵

Methods of resettlement N/A: The UNRWA is not mandated with permanent resettlement or repatriation. The UNRWA’s goal is simply to provide aid until other parties find the solution. The organization seeks long-term or so-called 'durable' solutions by helping refugees repatriate to their homeland if conditions warrant, or by helping them to integrate in their countries of asylum or to resettle in third countries. ¹⁶

In the aftermath of World War II, UNHCR concentrated on resettling the bulk of the refugees under its mandate in new countries. ¹⁷

When it is sometimes impossible for civilians to go home, UNHCR helps them either to integrate in countries where they first sought asylum or to go to one of some 16 states which regularly accept refugees for permanent resettlement. ¹⁸

	UNRWA	UNHCR
Founded	Dec. 8, 1949	Dec. 14, 1950
Staff size	27,000+	6,689
# of countries operated in	4 + Israeli occupied territories (Gaza + West Bank)	116 ⁷
Annual budget	US$ 470.9 million ⁸	Over $1 billion dollars
Sources of funding	UNRWA operations are financed almost entirely by voluntary contributions from governments and the European Union, which account for 96 per cent of all income. ⁹ Four per cent of income is from United Nations bodies to cover staffing costs, including the funding of 113 international staff posts by the United Nations Secretariat. ¹⁰	UNHCR is almost entirely funded by direct, voluntary contributions from governments, non-governmental organizations and individuals. There is also a very limited subsidy from the regular budget of the United Nations, which is used exclusively for administrative costs. ¹¹
Refugees resettled or repatriated	N/A: The UNRWA is not mandated with permanent resettlement or repatriation. The UNRWA’s goal is simply to provide aid until other parties find the solution. ¹²	50 million ¹³
Number of dependents assisted	4.4 million ¹⁴	32.8 million¹⁵
Methods of resettlement	N/A: The UNRWA is not mandated with permanent resettlement or repatriation. The UNRWA’s goal is simply to provide aid until other parties find the solution.	The organization seeks long-term or so-called 'durable' solutions by helping refugees repatriate to their homeland if conditions warrant, or by helping them to integrate in their countries of asylum or to resettle in third countries. ¹⁶ In the aftermath of World War II, UNHCR concentrated on resettling the bulk of the refugees under its mandate in new countries. ¹⁷ When it is sometimes impossible for civilians to go home, UNHCR helps them either to integrate in countries where they first sought asylum or to go to one of some 16 states which regularly accept refugees for permanent resettlement. ¹⁸

In other words, the UNRWA maintains a staff size of over 4 times more than that of UNHCR and requires half the budget of the UNHCR, but only operates in a measly 4% of the countries UNHCR does and is concerned with only 13% of the number of people the UNHCR handles. The UNHCR has already settled 50 million refugees and is currently responsible for over 32 million people while the UNRWA is focused only on 4.4 million; a population that not only should have been resettled three generations ago, but is exponentially increasing in size thanks to the UNRWA counting descendants of refugees as yet more refugees.

Abandoning the traditional standards historically used for decades by the League of Nations as well as currently in the UNHCR, it is hard to see the reasoning for doing so as anything other than an attempt to artificially magnify the refugee crisis for political reasons.

“… these several hundred thousand Palestinian Arab refugees were no different in character and circumstance from the millions of other world refugees torn in conflict from their homes and homelands. Why, then, was an agency created specifically for Palestinian Arabs while all the other refugees in the world were placed under the … UNHCR? One reason … was the interjection of Middle East politics. UNHCR was essentially non-political, designed strictly to assist refugees as refugees. Middle East governments and Palestinian elites, on the other hand, had a very distinct political agenda for Palestinian refugees.”¹⁹

Rather than pressuring the Arab nations to conform to the way refugees have always been handled, the U.N. completely caved in and allowed them to mold the operational agenda of the UNRWA. “No other refugee agency – not UNHCR nor any of the other refugee agencies that preceded it – allowed itself to be ensnarled by and to be defined by the hosting governments’ political agendas."²⁰

Exactly what these agendas are will be addressed here: Why Are the Palestinian Refugees Still Here?. Fortunately for the world’s humanitarian record concerning refugees, the UNRWA does not handle anyone else.

Footnotes:
¹ Kushner, Arlene. UNRWA: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - A Hard Look at an Agency in Trouble 11-12.
² Gold, Dore. Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos. New York: Crown Forum, 2004. 54.
³ Gottheil, Fred. "UNRWA and Moral Hazard." Middle Eastern Studies. 42. 3 (2006): 413.
⁴ Gold, Dore. Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos. New York: Crown Forum, 2004. 54.
⁵ Wadie, Said E. "Palestinian Refugees: Host Countries, Legal Status and the Right of Return." ⁶ UNRWA Overview <http://www.un.org/unrwa/overview/qa.html> (Site accessed June 27, 2007)
⁷ UNHCR Basic Facts <http://www.unhcr.org/basics.html> (Site accessed July 10, 2007)
⁸ UNRWA Finances <http://www.un.org/unrwa/finances/index.html> (Site accessed July 6, 2007)
⁹ UNRWA Finances <http://www.un.org/unrwa/finances/index.html> (Site accessed July 6, 2007)
¹⁰ UNRWA Finances <http://www.un.org/unrwa/finances/index.html> (Site accessed July 6, 2007)
¹¹ UNHCR. How UNHCR is Funded <http://www.unhcr.org/publ/PUBL/3b5443c04.html>
¹² UNRWA Overview <http://www.un.org/unrwa/overview/qa.html> (Site accessed June 27, 2007)
¹³ UNHCR Basic Facts <http://www.unhcr.org/basics.html> (Site accessed July 10, 2007)
¹⁴ UNRWA - Who is a Palestine Refugee? <http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/whois.html> (Site accessed July 4, 2007)
¹⁵ UNHCR. Protecting Refugees and the Role of UNHCR 2007-2008
¹⁶ UNHCR Basic Facts <http://www.unhcr.org/basics/BASICS/420cc0432.html>
¹⁷ UNHCR Basic Facts <http://www.unhcr.org/basics/BASICS/420cc0432.html>
¹⁸ UNHCR Basic Facts <http://www.unhcr.org/basics/BASICS/420cc0432.html>
¹⁹ Gottheil, Fred. "UNRWA and Moral Hazard." Middle Eastern Studies. 42. 3 (2006): 410-411.
²⁰ Gottheil, Fred. "UNRWA and Moral Hazard." Middle Eastern Studies. 42. 3 (2006): 413
Refuge. Feb. 2003