I bow out of my role for the organisation at a perilous time for the international law. There are consequences not just for Palestinians, but the wider Middle East.. It is incomprehensible that a UN entity has been allowed to be crushed as Unrwa has, in violation of international law, with total impunity, and with staff and Palestinian communities paying an unacceptable price
This month I will conclude my tenure as the commissioner-general of Unrwa – the United Nations agency that has provided essential, public-like services to Palestinian refugees across the Middle East for more than 75 years. As the world struggles to emerge from the quagmire of Gaza and the US-Israeli war against Iran threatens to engulf the entire region, I am profoundly concerned about the future of Palestinian refugees and the multilateral system at large.
Having endured more than two years of relentless physical, political and legal attacks, most fiercely in Palestine, Unrwa has reached breaking point. The risks to Palestinians’ rights and the stability of the region are immense.
In December 2023, amid the escalating brutality of the war in Gaza, I wrote to the president of the UN general assembly that in my 35 years of working in complex emergencies, I had never had cause to report the killing of 130 personnel, nor to predict the killing of many more. I did not imagine then that the number of colleagues killed would triple – the death toll is now more than 390 – or that so many others would sustain life-changing injuries, or be arbitrarily detained and tortured.
Hundreds of Unrwa premises in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. The parliament of Israel adopted legislation to end the agency’s presence in occupied East Jerusalem, including by forcibly shutting schools and health clinics, and cutting off the supply of water and electricity to our premises. The Unrwa headquarters in East Jerusalem was seized, looted and set on fire, with senior Israeli officials celebrating the destruction on site and online. A deputy mayor of Jerusalem even threatened to “annihilate and kill all members of Unrwa”.
It is incomprehensible that a UN entity has been allowed to be crushed as Unrwa has, in violation of international law, with total impunity, and with staff and Palestinian communities paying an unacceptable price.
A well-orchestrated disinformation campaign by the Israeli government alleges agency-wide neutrality breaches and claims that Unrwa is no longer operational in Palestine, where it remains a major provider of primary healthcare, education, clean water, sanitation and hygiene. These malicious assertions, which have been repeatedly debunked, are intended to erode international support for the agency, weakening Palestinians’ rights within final status issues in the Israel-Palestine conflict….
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After the truth-shower 