The Rights of Palestinian Refugees: What Role for the UNRWA?


by Dina Jadallah
Global Research
December 16, 2009


The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees’ (UNRWA) sixtieth anniversary has now come and gone. Is this a sign of success or of profound failure? And for whom? The answer will vary depending on perspective: UNRWA’s, the refugees, and the states in which it operates. Nevertheless, the continued existence of an agency that was originally intended as a temporary relief and works organization until the legal and political rights of displaced refugees are restored is testimony to the failure of the whole world to address and solve the tragedy of the so-far ongoing Palestinian refugee crisis.

Palestinian refugees, who number 7.2 million worldwide, remain the largest and longest suffering in the world. More than four million of them are registered with the United Nations for assistance. Overwhelmingly, they refuse to give up their inalienable right of return (as per UN Resolution 3236). Their numbers continue to expand due to natural demographic growth. That is compounded by Israeli policies, such as house demolitions, illegal settlements, forced exile, land expropriation, and the construction of the apartheid wall. All of these have added to the numbers. For instance, in 2008 alone, Israel stripped the residency of 4577 Jerusalemites – twenty times the average of the last forty years. (1)

Acting Commissioner General Karen Koning AbuZayd, speaking from the Arab League headquarters in Cairo on December 15, 2009, castigated and urged Arabs to increase their contributions to UNRWA from the current 1% of its operating budget to the historical average of 7.8%. The funding shortfall is all the more pressing because refugees, whose numbers are growing by 3.5% a year, comprise 40% of all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and more than two-thirds of the Gaza population. (2) Given that the budget deficit is only $58 million and in view of the detrimental effect that this would have on the provision of services to the refugees, this is especially galling.

And yet, one may ask, does the international community not bear the primary responsibility for the creation and existence of the Palestinian predicament and refugee crisis? Originally, was not the Balfour Declaration that established the basis for a “Jewish Homelandâ€