• United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres announced the appointment of Ian Martin of the United Kingdom as head of strategic assessment, as part of his UN80 initiative, of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The strategic assessment includes:

i) Review of UNRWA’s impact for Palestine refugees.

ii) Implementation of its mandate under present political, financial, security and other constraints.

iii) Consequences and risks. 

• He has further been tasked with identifying options for action, by Member States and/or the United Nations, and considering overall UN mandates provided by the General Assembly and the Security Council.

• Israel has banned UNRWA from operating on its territory, but its Palestinian staff have still been key to delivering aid and running medical clinics in Gaza, even though Israel has cut off all humanitarian deliveries since March 2.

• Israel alleged that 19 out of UNRWA’s approximately 13,000 staff in Gaza took part in Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel, which killed about 1,200 people and set off the war in Gaza. 

• UNRWA said it fired nine staffers after an internal UN investigation concluded that they could have been involved, although the evidence was not authenticated and corroborated. 

What is the purpose of UNRWA?

• Created in December 1949, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is a relief and human development agency which supports more than five million registered Palestinian refugees, and their patrilineal descendants, who fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1948 Palestine war as well as those who fled or were expelled during and following the 1967 Six Day war.

• The UNRWA has been providing health, education, relief and social services, as well as emergency humanitarian assistance, across its five fields of operation — Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and the Gaza Strip — since 1950. 

• It also provided relief to Jewish and Arab Palestine refugees inside the State of Israel following the 1948 conflict until the Israeli government took over responsibility for Jewish refugees in 1952.

• In the absence of a solution to the Palestine refugee problem, the UN General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA’s mandate.

• The refugees and their descendants number about six million, and in Gaza they are the majority of the population. 

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