The organization of the UNRWA

Contents

1. Organisation and administration

2 . Operations
o 2.1 Education programme
o 2.2 Relief and social services programme
o 2.3 Health programme
o 2.4 Microenterprise and microfinance programme
o 2.5 Emergency operations

3 . Criticism

4. UNRWA relations with Israel

o 4.1UNRWA and the Palestinian curriculum

5. Right to return

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The organization of the UNRWA

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for

Palestine Refugees in the Near East

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The organization of the UNRWA

United
Nations Relief
and Works
Agency for
Palestine
Refugees in
the Near East
(UNRWA) is a
relief and
human
development
agency,
UNRWA Logo
providing
education,
health care,
social services
and emergency
aid to over four
hundred
thousand
Abbreviation :
UNRWA
Palestine
refugees living
Formation :
8 December 1949.
in Jordan,
Lebanon and
Syria, as well as
in the West
Purpose/focus :
humanitarian
Bank and the
Gaza Strip. It is
the only agency
dedicated to
Region served :
Near East
helping
refugees from a
Commissioner-General
Karen Koning AbuZayd
specific region
or conflict. It is
:
separate from
UNHCR, the UN
Parent organization :
United Nations
Refugee
Agency, which
is the only other
UN agency
aiding refugees,
dedicated to
aiding all
refugees in the
world. It was
established
following the
1948 ArabPalestinian refugees
Israeli War by
the United
Nations General
Assembly under
Total 2005 population
4.25 million
resolution 302
of 8 December
(including descendants):
1949. This
resolution also
reaffirmed
paragraph 11,
Estimated original 1948-49
367,000 to 950,000
concerning
refugees, of UN
refugees:
General
Assembly
Resolution 194
and was passed
Regions with significant
Gaza Strip, Jordan, West Bank, Lebanon,
unopposed,
supported by
populations:
Syria
Israel and the
Arab states,
with only the
Soviet bloc and
Languages:
Arabic
South Africa
abstaining.
Religions:
Sunni Islam, Greek Orthodoxy, Greek
UNRWA has had
to develop a
working
definition of
Catholicism, other forms of Christianity
"refugee" to
allow it to
provide
humanitarian
assistance. This maintained that beneficiaries had to have lived in the British Mandate of Palestine
for at least two years before fleeing and must have lost both their home and livelihood as a result of
the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, or be the descendant of someone who had. This definition is critically
different from UNHCR which does not define descendants as refugees. While UNRWA definition is
meant solely to determine eligibility for assistance, some argue it serves to perpetuate the conflict.
Under General Assembly Resolution 194 , of 11 December 1948, other persons may be eligible for
repatriation and/or compensation but are not necessarily eligible for relief under the UNRWA's
working definition. Thus a person who is not or who has ceased to be regarded by UNRWA as a
refugee for the purpose of receiving relief, may still qualify as a refugee by the common definition.
All Palestine refugees who are registered with UNRWA and are in need of assistance are eligible for
help from UNRWA. Based on UNRWA's definition, the number of Palestinian refugees has grown from
711,000 in 1950 to 4 million in 2004.UNRWA provides facilities in 59 recognized refugee camps in
Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It also provided relief to displaced persons
inside the state of Israel following the 1948 conflict until the Israeli government took over
responsibility for them in 1952.

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The organization of the UNRWA

For a camp to be recognized by UNRWA there must be an agreement between the host government
and UNRWA governing use of the camp. UNRWA does not itself run any camps, has no police powers
or administrative role, but simply provides services to the camp. Refugee camps, which developed
from tent cities to rows of concrete blockhouses to urban ghettos indistinguishable from their
surroundings, house around one third of all registered Palestine refugees. UNRWA also provides
facilities in other areas where large numbers of registered Palestine refugees live outside of
recognized camps.
UNRWA has been criticized by Israeli officials, who say that it supports terrorism and militancy. Other
governments, such as those of Bangladesh, Canada, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, the Netherlands,
Norway, South Africa, Turkey, Vietnam, and the Palestinian Authority have praised its work.

1_Organization and administration

The number of Palestinian refugees by country as of 2005 were as follows:

Jordan

Gaza

West Bank : 699,817 refugees

Syria :

Lebanon :

Saudi Arabia : 240,000 refugees

Egypt :

:
:

1, 827,877 refugees
986,034 refugees

432,048 refugees
404,170 refugees

70,245 refugees

UNRWA is a subsidiary organ of the United Nations General Assembly and its mandate is renewed
every three years. It is the largest agency of the United Nations, employing over 25,000 staff, 99%
of which are locally-recruited Palestinians. The Agency's headquarters are divided between the
Gaza Strip and Amman, Jordan. Its operations are organised into five fields - Jordan, Syria,
Lebanon, West Bank and Gaza. UNRWA's Commissioner-General is Karen Koning AbuZayd, a US
citizen, who suceeded Peter Hansen, a Danish citizen in 2005. AbuZaid is responsible for
managing UNRWA's overall activities. Her subordinate in charge of distributing humanitarian aid
and overseeing general UNRWA operations in Gaza is John Ging. Annual funding for UNRWA is on
the order of several hundred million US dollars, the majority of which comes from donor countries.
A smaller amount comes directly from the United Nations. Contributions and pledges in 2003
totalled almost US$440 million; the major contributors (based on 2003 figures) were the United
States ($134 million), the European Commission ($94 million), the United Kingdom and Sweden.

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2_Operations
Services provided by UNRWA include health care, education, relief and social services and microcredit loan programs.
2.1 Education program
UNRWA operates one of the largest school systems in the Middle East, with 663 schools employing
more than 17,000 teaching and support staff. It has been the main provider of basic education to
Palestinian refugee children since 1950. The education program is UNRWA's largest area of activity,
accounting for half of its regular budget and 70 per cent of its staff. Basic education is available to all
registered refugee children free of charge up to around the age of 15. By 2004 there were close to
500,000 students enrolled in 663 schools. UNRWA schools follow the curriculum of their host
countries. This allows UNRWA pupils to progress to further education or employment holding locallyrecognized qualifications and fits with the sovereignty requirements of countries hosting refugees.
In the 1960s UNRWA schools became the first in the region to achieve full gender equality.
Overcrowded classrooms containing 40 or even 50 pupils are common. Almost all of UNRWA's
schools operate on a double shift - where two separate groups of pupils and teachers share the same
buildings. Not all refugee children attend UNRWA schools. In Jordan and Syria children have full
access to government schools and many attend those because they are close to where they live.
UNRWA also operates eight vocational and technical training centres and three teacher training
colleges that have places for around 6,200 students.
2.2 Relief and social services program
In Palestinian refugee society, families without a male bread winner are often very vulnerable. Those
headed by a widow, a divorcee or a disabled father often live in dire poverty. UNRWA provides food
aid, cash assistance and help with shelter repairs to these families. Fewer than six percent of
refugees qualify as hardship cases, with the largest number being in Lebanon where restrictions on
Palestinians entering the Lebanese job market cause severe hardship. Children from special hardship
case families are given preferential access to the Agency's vocational training centres, while women
in such families are encouraged to join UNRWA's women's program centres. In these centres,
training, advice and childcare are available to encourage female refugees social development.
Rations are distributed to families in UNRWA's special hardship category every quarter. The yearly
value of the food is just over US$ 100 per person and most of it is received by the agency in the form
of in-kind donations of basic foodstuff, such as flour, rice and dried milk. Finances permitting, the
Agency also provides small cash grants to very poor refugee families to help with the purchase of
items such as school uniforms and school books or as crisis grants, for example if they lose all their
possessions in a house fire.

Most of the concrete-block shelters in the refugee camps were built by UNRWA in the 1950s to
replace the tents in which refugees had lived since the 1948 war. Others were built after the 1967
conflict. Although most refugees have been able to make improvements and additions to their
shelters over the years, the very poorest refugees often live in shelters that are now in extremely
bad condition. Wet, crumbling walls, leaking zinc roofs and rodent infestation cause additional social
and health problems. UNRWA has been able to repair hundreds of shelters in recent years, often
simply by supplying materials while the families provide their own labour. UNRWA is unable to keep

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up with the growing numbers of special hardship case families who each year join its waiting list for
shelter rehabilitation.
UNRWA created community-based organizations (CBOs) to target women, refugees with disabilities
and to look after the needs of children. The CBOs now have their own management committees
staffed by volunteers from the community. UNRWA provides them with technical and small amounts
of targeted financial assistance, but many have made links of their own with local and international
NGOs.
2.3 Health program
Since 1950, UNRWA has been the main healthcare provider for the Palestinian refugee population.
Basic health needs are met through a network of primary care clinics, providing access to secondary
treatment in hospitals, food aid to vulnerable groups and environmental health in refugee camps.
The health of Palestine refugees resembles that of many populations in transition from developing
world to developed world status. Immunisation program have vaccine-preventable diseases under
control, but there remains a high prevalence of diseases caused by cramped housing and open
sewers in the camps and high poverty levels. At the same time, non-communicable diseases such as
hypertension and diabetes are on the increase. Birth rates are among the highest in the world, with
short intervals between pregnancies. Diarrhea and intestinal parasites are particularly common
among children because of poor environmental health for the one third of refugees who live in
camps. However, infant mortality rates are lower among refugees than the Organizations
benchmark for the developing world. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Al-Aqsa Intifada has led
to curfews and closures which have caused a growth in malnutrition, especially among children and
nursing mothers. The economic hardships in the territory have driven many refugees away from
private health care, increasing the number of patient visits to UNRWA doctors in the Gaza Strip by 61
per cent during the first two years of the conflict.
UNRWA's network of 122 clinics provides free primary healthcare to all registered refugees who ask
for it. The clinics are based inside refugee camps or near concentrations of refugees. In 2003 the
clinics handled 10 million patient visits - averaging more than 110 visits per doctor per day. Medical
services include outpatient care, dental treatment and rehabilitation for the physically disabled.
Maternal and child healthcare (MCH) is a priority for UNRWA's health program. School health teams
and camp medical officers visit UNRWA schools to examine new pupils to aid early detection of
childhood diseases. All UNRWA clinics offer family planning services with counselling that emphasises
the importance of birth spacing as a factor in maternal and child health. Agency clinics also
supervise the provision of food aid to nursing and pregnant mothers who need it and six clinics in the
Gaza Strip have their own maternity units.
UNRWA provides refugees with assistance in meeting the costs of hospitalisation either by partially
reimbursing them, or by negotiating contracts with government, NGO and private hospitals.
The 1.3 million refugees who still live in refugee camps - one third of the total receive
environmental health services from UNRWA. These include such essentials as sewage disposal, the
provision of safe drinking water and disposal of refuse. Large scale projects have been carried out in
camps since 1989, but many still have inadequate infrastructure, including open sewers. A great
many refugee shelters suffer flooding by waste water in winter.
2.4 Microenterprise and microfinance program
UNRWA's microfinance and microenterprise program (MMP) aims to alleviate poverty and support
economic development in the refugee community by providing capital investment and working
capital loans at commercial rates. The program seeks to be as close to self-supporting as possible. It
has a strong record of creating employment, generating income and empowering refugees.

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The MMP was launched in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in June 1991 in response to the high
unemployment and spreading poverty that followed the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987 and the
Gulf War. In 2003 the MMP expanded into Jordan and Syria to allow UNRWA to help entrepreneurs
and the poorest refugees in those fields. Since its inception it has disbursed over 67,000 loans
valued at over US$77 million.

2.5 Emergency operations

Since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, UNRWA has been working to alleviate
the impact of resulting curfews and closures on the refugee population in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. The effect of closures on the Palestinian economy has caused thousands to lose their
livelihoods. It is estimated that more than 50 per cent of the population is out of work -putting over
60 per cent of the population under the poverty line with an income of below US$2 a day. The UN
Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that close to two million Palestinians, 62 per
cent of the population, are considered "vulnerable" because they have inadequate access to food,
shelter or health services. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) reported
a sharp growth in malnutrition and anemia among Palestinian children - marked by stunted growth or
low body weights.
As part of its emergency relief activities, UNRWA provides temporary jobs for unemployed
breadwinners - a program that has allowed the Agency to indirectly support 160,000 women and
children in Gaza alone. UNRWA has also increased its provision of food aid. Before the conflict
UNRWA distributed food to around 20,000 refugee families, it now targets 230,000 families across
the West Bank and Gaza. UNRWA food parcels typically contain 50 kilograms of flour, five kilograms
of rice, five kilograms of sugar, two liters of cooking oil, one kilogram of powdered milk and five
kilograms of lentils.
The Agency assists the almost 30,000 refugees whose homes have been destroyed during military
operations. UNRWA has provided tents, blankets, kitchen kits, medicines and drinking water, as well
as cash assistance to help with renting a new home to those families made homeless. The Agency is
also rebuilding and repairing shelters. The focus of the Agency's rebuilding work has been Rafah and
Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip and in Jenin camp in the West Bank. In Jenin a donation of
US$27 million from the United Arab Emirates Red Crescent Society allowed UNRWA to rebuild the
homes, infrastructure and communal facilities of the camp that were destroyed by the fighting in
April 2002.
UNRWA's health program faces increased demands in the territories because of the injuries, stress
and psychological trauma caused by the conflict. The economic impact of closures is also increasing
the demands made on the Agency as refugees seek care from the Agency rather than from private
providers. UNRWA ambulances and mobile medical teams bring healthcare to communities isolated
by closures for long periods.
The crisis has had a particularly marked effect on the refugee children served by UNRWA's schools.
Teachers and pupils are often unable to reach their schools and thousands of teaching days have
been lost. Schools have come under fire on many occasions and have been used as military outposts
and detention centres. The violent events witnessed by the children have caused emotional and
psychological trauma and many have suffered the loss of classmates or family members.
Examination pass rates have collapsed because of the conflict and UNRWA is running remedial
classes in each school to try to compensate for the time lost to education. The Agency has also hired
teams of trauma counsellors to work with those children who have been emotionally scarred by their
experiences.

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To fund its emergency activities in the West Bank and Gaza UNRWA has launched a series of appeals
for funds. The first of these was a flash appeal in October 2000 for US$4.83 million. In November
2004 UNRWA launched an appeal for US$186 million to cover emergency operations during 2005.
3_Criticism
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There has been extensive criticism of the statistics, data collection techniques, and definitions
concerning Palestinian refugees by the UNRWA. It has been accused of hiring known militants,
perpetuating Palestinian dependency, and demonizing Israel.
Israeli historian Shmuel Katz wrote that the UNRWA is driven by a "vested interest to keep itself in
being and to expand", and accuses it of perpetrating "fraud and deception."
In 2006, the UNRWA drew criticism from the US Congressmen Mark Kirk and Steven Rothman. Their
letter, sent to the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, stated in part: "After an exhaustive
review of the UN's own audit, it is clear UNRWA is wrought by mismanagement, ineffective policies,
and failure to secure its finances. We must upgrade UNRWA's financial controls, management and
enforcement of US law that bars any taxpayer dollars from supporting terrorists." UNRWA responded
by showing the results of its school students in Syria and Jordan, who outperform their peers in hostgovernment schools. UNRWA also mentioned the difficult conditions in which it operates: its refugee
load increased much faster than its budget, while the tightening of the closure regime since the
Second Intifada deeply affected the humanitarian situation in the former Israeli-occupied territories.
UNRWA has also been criticized by some for being the only United Nations special project dedicated
to a specific group of refugees. It has been claimed that this is an example of a United Nations antiIsrael bias, and that the Palestine refugees should be treated equally to all others with refugee status
around the world. Defenders of the UNRWA put forward the specific legal status of the Palestinians in
1948 who, because they were living under the British Mandate of Palestine, were stateless and
therefore not eligible as refugees under the common definition.
4_UNRWA relations with Israel
After Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the June 1967 Six-Day War, Israel requested that the
UNRWA continue its operations there, and agreed to facilitate them. In the years since, relations
between Israel and UNRWA have found themselves subject to the varying intensities of conflict that
have continued to rock the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which started in
late 2000, UNRWA has often complained that Israeli closures, curfews and checkpoints in the West

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Bank and Gaza have interfered with its ability to carry out its humanitarian mandate. The Agency has
also complained that large scale demolitions of Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip have left over
30,000 people homeless. Israel justifies the demolitions as anti-terrorism measures.
Relations between UNRWA and Israel have often been strained. UNRWA has been under routine
attack from the Israeli government and politicians for alleged involvement with Palestinian militant
groups, such as Hamas. For example, the Israel Defence Force released a video from May 2004, in
which armed Palestinian militants carry an injured colleague into an UNRWA ambulance, before
boarding with him. The ambulance driver requested that the armed men leave, but was threatened
and told to drive to a hospital. UNRWA issued a plea to all parties to respect the neutrality of its
ambulances.
On other occasions, UNRWA buildings have been caught in battles between Israel and Palestinian
militants. Several UNRWA employees have been killed or wounded by the IDF. In November 2002 Iain
Hook, a British employee of UNRWA was shot and killed by an Israeli military sniper while working in
the West Bank town of Jenin. In 2004, the IDF opened fire on an UNRWA food convoy. Further strain
has been put on relations by the killing, by Israeli gunfire, of several children in UNRWA schools in
Gaza.

4.1UNRWA and the Palestinian curriculum

In 1998, two years before the Al-Aqsa intifada, US Congressman
Peter Deutsch (D-FL) and other Congressmembers pressured the
State Department to ask UNRWA to investigate evidence that
Palestinian Authority school books used in UNRWA-run schools
contained anti-Semitic statements.
The allegations surfaced in reports compiled by the Centre for
Monitoring the Impact of Peace, an Israeli-American NGO. For
historical reasons UNRWA schools followed the Jordanian curriculum
in the West Bank and the Egyptian curriculum in the Gaza Strip and
this practice continued under the Israeli control of those areas between 1967 and 1994. Since 1994
the Palestinian Authority has progressively been replacing the old Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks
as new PA-produced textbooks become available. The last of the older books was phased out of
UNRWA schools in the autumn of 2004.
In 1999 and 2000, Nathan Brown, Professor of Political Science at George Washington University,
published a study on this subject. Regarding the Palestinian Authority's new textbooks, he states:
"The new books have removed the anti-Semitism present in the older books while they tell history
from a Palestinian point of view, they do not seek to erase Israel, delegitimize it or replace it with the
"State of Palestine"; each book contains a foreword describing the West Bank and Gaza as "the two
parts of the homeland"; the maps show some awkwardness but do sometimes indicate the 1967 line
and take some other measures to avoid indicating borders; in this respect they are actually more
forthcoming than Israeli maps; the books avoid treating Israel at length but do indeed mention it by
name; the new books must be seen as a tremendous improvement from a Jewish, Israeli, and
humanitarian view; they do not compare unfavorably to the material my son was given as a fourth
grade student in a school in Tel Aviv". Brown also described the research into Palestinian textbooks
conducted by the Centre for Monitoring the Impact of Peace as "tendentious and highly misleading".
However, in an exchange with CMIP Brown notes "my criticism that CMIP's work is 'tendentious and
highly misleading' was made before CMIP issued its 2001 report and could hardly have referred
specifically to it."
In 2002, the United States Congress requested the United States Department of State to commission
a reputable NGO to conduct a review of the new Palestinian curriculum. The Israel/Palestine Center

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for Research and Information (IPCRI) was thereby commissioned by the U.S.
Embassy in Tel Aviv and the US Consul General in Jerusalem to review the
Palestinian Authority's textbooks. Its report was completed in March 2003 and
delivered to the State Department for submission to Congress. Its executive
summary states: "The overall orientation of the curriculum is peaceful despite
the harsh and violent realities on the ground. It does not openly incite against
Israel and the Jews. It does not openly incite hatred and violence. Religious
and political tolerance is emphasized in a good number of textbooks and in
multiple contexts." Its June 2004 follow-up report notes that "except for calls
for resisting occupation and oppression, no signs were detected of outright
promotion of hatred towards Israel, Judaism, or Zionism" and that "tolerance,
as a concept, runs across the new textbooks". The report also stated that
"textbooks revealed numerous instances that introduce and promote the
universal and religious values and concepts of respect of other cultures,
religions, and ethnic groups, peace, human rights, freedom of speech, justice,
compassion, diversity, plurality, tolerance, respect of law, and environmental
awareness". However, the IPCRI noted a number of deficiencies in the curriculum, stating "The
practice of 'appropriating' sites, areas, localities, geographic regions, etc. inside the territory of the
State of Israel as Palestine/Palestinian observed in our previous review, remains a feature of the
newly published textbooks (4th and 9th Grade) laying substantive grounds to the contention that the
Palestinian Authority did not in fact recognize Israel as the State of the Jewish people. A good number
[of maps ...] show Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as one geographic entity (without
demarcation lines or differentiated colorings). Historically Palestinian cities (e.g., Akka, Yafa, Haifa,
Safad, al-Lid, Ar-Ramla, Beer As-sabe) are included in some maps that lump together the areas
controlled by the PA with those inside the State of Israel. No map of the region bears the name of
'Israel' in its pre-1967 borders. In addition, Israeli towns with a predominantly Jewish population are
not represented on these maps." The Summary also states that the curriculum asserts a historical
Arab presence in the region, while ignoring any Jewish connection: "The Jewish connection to the
region, in general, and the Holy Land, in particular, is virtually missing. This lack of reference is
perceived as tantamount to a denial of such a connection, although no direct evidence is found for
such a denial." It also notes that "terms and passages used to describe some historical events are
sometimes offensive in nature and could be construed as reflecting hatred of and discrimination
against Jews and Judaism.
5-Right of return
Palestinian leaders claim a right of return for Palestinian refugees. Their claim is based on Article 13
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which declares that "Everyone has the right to
leave any country including his own, and to return to his country." Although all Arab League
members at the time- Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen- voted against the
resolution, they also cite United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, which "Resolves that the
refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted
to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of
those choosing not to return."The Palestinian National Authority supports this claim, and has been
prepared to negotiate its implementation at the various peace talks. Both Fatah and Hamas hold a
strong position for a right of return, with Fatah being prepared to discuss the issue while Hamas is
not.

The Israeli government, with minor variations over time, has generally opposed a Palestinian right of
return and negotiations. This account is squarely at odds with Arab assertions that the Palestinians
were 'forcibly expelled' by Israel. Israel sees that such a right of return would undermine one of the

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most significant characteristics of Israel, which was at the core of its establishment namely that it is
a Jewish state.

Palestinian Refugees in UNRWA Camps(as of December 31, 2006)

Field of
Operations
Jordan
Lebanon
Syria
West Bank
Gaza Strip
Agency total

Official
Camps
10
12
9
19
8
58

Registered
Refugees
1, 858,362
408,438
442,363
722,302
1, 016,964
4, 448,429

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Registered Refugees in
Camps
328,076
215,890
119,055
186,479
478,272
1, 327,772