Dysfunctional UNRWA’s Latest Disgrace

The Trump administration decided last year to cut off U.S. funding for the hopelessly dysfunctional United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). It was a wise decision. A confidential internal report from UNRWA’s own ethics office has chronicled alleged rife mismanagement and corruption reaching the agency’s highest levels of leadership. The report was sent to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres's office last December. The UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) has reportedly undertaken a probe into the report’s allegations, which has not yet been completed.

Members of an “inner circle” in UNRWA’s top management have engaged in “abuses of authority for personal gain

A statement issued on August 1st by the Spokesperson’s Office of the Secretary General said that Secretary General Guterres “is committed to acting, as appropriate, once he receives the findings and recommendations” of the OIOS. The statement went on to say, however, that he “continues to consider the work undertaken by UNRWA as essential to Palestinian refugees” and urges continued support for the beleaguered agency. This is all too typical of how the UN bureaucracy handles scandals within in its ranks. Order internal investigations that, as Code Blue put it, “go on interminably until the scandal fades from the headlines and the original allegations are forgotten.” As reported by Al Jazeera, the leaked 10-page report cited “credible and corroborated reports” that members of an “inner circle” in UNRWA’s top management have engaged in “abuses of authority for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives.” The report claimed that UNRWA’s funding crisis, precipitated by the Trump administration’s withdrawal of U.S. funding, “served as an excuse for an extreme concentration of decision-making power in members of the ‘clique’ and …increased disregard for agency rules and established procedures.” The "inner circle" was made up of Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl, Senior Adviser to the Commissioner-General Maria Mohammedi, Deputy Commissioner-General Sandra Mitchell, and Chief of Staff Hakam Shahwan. The report concluded, according to Al Jazeera, that the individuals' alleged conduct presented "an enormous risk to the reputation of the UN" and that "their immediate removal should be carefully considered." Two of the high-level officials - Deputy Commissioner-General Mitchell, and Chief of Staff Shahwan - resigned in July. Yet another official, Deputy Head of Human Resources Nadine Khaddoura, faced charges of nepotism. She was let go in June and escorted out of the building.

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Alleged misconduct of Commissioner-General Krahenbuhl

Secretary General Guterres decided to appoint Christian Saunders of the United Kingdom as Acting Deputy Commissioner-General of UNRWA to temporarily replace Ms. Mitchell. He did so, according to the statement from his spokesperson’s office, “in coordination with UNRWA’s Commissioner-General,” even though the commissioner-general himself remains under investigation. Indeed, the ethics report dealt in significant part with alleged misconduct of Commissioner-General Krahenbuhl, including excessive travel and favoritism towards his senior adviser Maria Mohammedi, with whom the commissioner-general was said to have had a relationship that went "beyond the professional." He should have been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation, not consulted on replacing his deputy-commissioner who resigned amid the unfolding scandal. In the wake of the public surfacing of the report’s damning findings, the Netherlands and Switzerland suspended their funding to UNRWA. The United Kingdom and Canada are reportedly reviewing their options. Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, called on more member states to suspend funding to the discredited UN agency. "UNRWA has removed itself from the values expected of an international organization, and should not be rewarded for its internal corruption," Ambassador Danon said. He suggested that aid money be “gradually transferred to the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees), instead of helping the UNRWA leadership continue engaging in a series of ethical offenses.” Ironically, UNRWA's own management prepared for its schools’ leaders an ‘ethics and values’ module. It warns, “If a leader flouts their own rules and demonstrates poor values and ethics, they will find it extremely difficult to gain and maintain loyalty and respect from their colleagues. People don’t know what to expect of a leader who isn’t consistent or not sure about the values and ethics they should be working by.”

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Evidently, Commissioner-General Krahenbuhl and members of his senior management team flunked their own ethics test. But the ethical issues UNRWA is facing are only the tip of the iceberg. The organization perpetuates itself on fundamentally false premises. First, UNRWA defines a Palestinian “refugee” in terms of an inherited status that passes from generation to generation ad infinitum. What began as 750,000 Palestinian refugees in 1948 has now turned into at least 5 million. There is an estimated net increase of 1 person every 4 minutes. The funding will never be deemed enough to keep up with the ever-increasing pool of dependent beneficiaries. Second, UNRWA has done nothing to resettle Palestinian refugees and integrate them into other countries’ communities. It would rather join the neighboring Arab countries in relegating the Palestinians to live out their disconnected lives in refugee camps and using them as props for anti-Israel propaganda. By contrast, UNCHR, the UN’s refugee agency for all other refugees worldwide except the Palestinians, considers resettlement of refugees in another country prepared to receive them as “an invaluable tool that offers protection and a durable solution to tens of thousands of refugees every year.” Once a non-Palestinian refugee becomes a naturalized citizen in his or her host country, the refugee status normally comes to an end. No so with the Palestinians. Palestinians living and considered citizens in Jordan can still maintain their registration as “refugees” with UNRWA. Third, UNRWA continues to lull the Palestinians into maintaining their dependence on UNRWA as “refugees” until they are permitted to return to their so-called “homes” in pre-1967 Israel. Israel will never let such a mass "return" happen so long as it intends to remain a Jewish state. As Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis noted in sharply criticizing UNRWA last year, UNRWA is fueling "unrealistic" hopes of return for more than 5 million Palestinians. "It is unrealistic that this dream (of return) will be fulfilled for all," he said. "It provides ammunition to continue the conflict. By supporting UNRWA, we are keeping the conflict alive." It is time to pull the plug on UNRWA and move its functions to agencies that truly want to solve humanitarian problems effectively rather than to perpetuate them.