What UNRWA Is

What it is

UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. The General Assembly set it up in 1949 with a temporary mandate to provide humanitarian assistance, protection, and education to registered Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. ¹ Every other refugee population on the planet falls under the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which serves all of them. ³ UNRWA and UNHCR are separate bodies, each operating under its own legal and organizational mandate. ¹

The two agencies also do different jobs. UNHCR pursues what it calls durable solutions: voluntary repatriation, resettlement in a third country, or integration into the host community. UNRWA's mandate is assistance, without an equivalent protection-and-solutions role. ² UNHCR ends derivative refugee status when a child reaches adulthood. UNRWA registers descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, and keeps them registered even if they later acquire citizenship somewhere else. ²

The registration definition itself is narrow on its face. A Palestine refugee is a person "whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period of 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict." ² The inherited part is what produces the numbers. Roughly 700,000 people qualified when the agency started. By 2016 the registered figure was above 5.3 million. ² The Congressional Research Service put it at 5.9 million as of 2024. ¹ ADL notes that counting descendants this way is not done for any other refugee group. ³

UNRWA is the biggest humanitarian organization in Gaza, where somewhere between 1.4 and 1.6 million of roughly 1.9 to 2.1 million residents are registered refugees, many of them dependent on aid for decades. ¹ The agency operates shelters, mobile health teams, food and water distribution, and schools. ¹ Its 2024 program budget was $880.2 million, with a further $1.6 billion in emergency appeals, mostly for Gaza. ¹ About 95 percent of that comes from voluntary government contributions and 5 percent from the UN regular budget. ¹

The United States has been the largest single donor since the beginning, more than $7.3 billion since 1950, and close to 30 percent of donor contributions in 2023. ¹ That money has also been switched off before. The first Trump administration suspended it from August 2018 through the end of the term, which is why the ledger shows zeroes for 2019 and 2020. ¹

In January 2024, Israel alleged that 12 UNRWA employees took part in the October 7 attacks. ¹ The Biden administration paused all US funding on January 26, and 15 other donors paused theirs the same month. ¹ The Secretary-General referred the matter to the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, which expanded its investigation from 12 people to 19. OIOS finished in August 2024 and said nine staff would be terminated because evidence indicated they may have been involved in the attacks. In the other ten cases it found no evidence or insufficient evidence. ¹ A separate independent review chaired by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna reported in April 2024 that UNRWA had many mechanisms in place for compliance with humanitarian principles including neutrality, while identifying gaps and recommending fixes. ¹ Most donors resumed. Congress went the other way, prohibiting US funding to UNRWA through March 25, 2025 in the March 2024 appropriations law. ¹

Israel's case did not stop at the 19. It accused UNRWA of employing hundreds of staff in Gaza with links to militant groups. ¹ ADL cites Israeli intelligence claims of more than 450 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members on the payroll in Gaza before October 2023, and an IDF finding in July 2024 that at least 75 of 510 senior education staff had terrorist affiliations. ³ UNRWA's answer was that it shares information with Israel consistently and takes steps to protect its neutrality, and that some employees reported being pressured by Israeli authorities into false statements. ¹

On October 28, 2024, the Knesset passed two laws. One bars UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory and cancels its privileges and entry permits, 92 to 10. The other bars Israeli state authorities from any contact with the agency, 87 to 9. ⁴ Both carried a 90-day delay. ⁴ The second law canceled the 1967 Comay-Michelmore exchange of letters, the arrangement that had guaranteed free movement for UNRWA's international staff and vehicles along with customs and tax exemptions. ⁵ An Israeli official told the Times of Israel that security professionals opposed the bills, but the political cost of opposing them had become too high. ⁴

Why it still matters

The laws took effect at the end of January 2025. As of April 2025, UNRWA was still running in East Jerusalem almost uninterrupted. ⁶ Its logistics center there closed. Six East Jerusalem schools received closure orders and kept operating anyway, as did clinics and the Kalandia Training Centre, which had been handed a 30-day shutdown notice. ⁶ About 800 students were affected out of 105,000 in East Jerusalem. ⁶

The International Court of Justice weighed in on October 22, 2025, in an advisory opinion holding that Israel is not entitled to decide unilaterally on the UN's presence in the occupied territory, that it must not impede UN entities including UNRWA, and that an occupying power has to do more than let aid through. ⁷ The Court rejected Israel's justification based on alleged Hamas infiltration, finding the evidence insufficient to establish that the organization as a whole lacked impartiality. ⁷

The General Assembly renewed the mandate for another three years on December 5, 2025. Ten states voted no, including Israel and the United States, with 14 abstentions. ⁸

The strongest version of the Israeli case is that a single agency has spent 75 years administering a population whose refugee status is inherited rather than resolved, in territory ruled by a group that attacked Israel on October 7, with employees the UN itself terminated over that attack. The strongest version of the other case is that UNRWA feeds and schools millions of people no one else is currently equipped to serve, that Guterres warned the laws would likely prevent it from continuing that work, and that dismantling the agency without a functioning replacement punishes civilians for the conduct of individuals. ^{9 1}

Our view: the neutrality failures are real and the reforms are overdue, and shutting the agency down before something can replace it is not a plan.

The words you'll hear

Palestine refugee. UNRWA's registration category: a person whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1, 1946 and May 15, 1948 and who lost both home and livelihood in the 1948 conflict. ²

Descendant registration. The rule that descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, may register, and stay registered even after acquiring another citizenship. ²

Durable solutions. UNHCR's three-part goal for refugees generally, meaning repatriation, resettlement, or local integration. UNRWA's mandate does not include an equivalent. ²

The Colonna Report. The April 2024 independent review of UNRWA's neutrality mechanisms, chaired by Catherine Colonna, which found extensive machinery in place along with gaps to fix. ¹

OIOS. The UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, which investigated 19 UNRWA staff over October 7 and concluded in August 2024 that nine would be terminated. ¹

Comay-Michelmore letters. The 1967 exchange between Israel and UNRWA that let the agency work in the territories, canceled by the Knesset legislation of October 2024. ⁵