Review panel: UNRWA has ‘mechanisms’ to ensure neutrality, ‘critical areas’ that need addressing

Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief

UN workers are pictured at a UNRWA warehouse/distribution centre in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, which was allegedly partially hit by a strike on March 13, 2024. (Mohammed Abed/AFP)
UN workers are pictured at a UNRWA warehouse/distribution centre in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, which was allegedly partially hit by a strike on March 13, 2024. (Mohammed Abed/AFP)

An interim report from the UN’s independent review into allegations against UNRWA has found that the relief agency for Palestinian refugees has mechanisms in place to ensure its neutrality, in addition to deficiencies that must be addressed.

The review group submitted the interim report with these conclusions to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres yesterday.

Next, the panel will develop its final report with recommendations for how UNRWA will address neutrality concerns going forward. The report will be publicized on April 20.

The review group was established following allegations in late January that 12 of UNRWA’s employees actively participated in Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught. Those staffers have already been fired by the agency, though Israel argues that Hamas’s infiltration into the agency runs far deeper.

The panel’s interim report found “that UNRWA has in place a significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the Humanitarian Principle of neutrality, and the group has also identified critical areas that still need to be addressed,” reads a statement from Guterres’s spokesman.

“The review group will now develop concrete and realistic recommendations on how to address these critical areas to strengthen and improve UNRWA,” the statement adds.

The review group is led by former French foreign affairs minister Catherine Colonna, and the panel worked with three research institutes — Sweden’s Raoul Wallenberg Institute, Norway’s Chr. Michelsen Institute and Denmark’s Institute for Human Rights.

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