While UNDP Gaza leadership continues to communicate publicly about supporting Palestinians to return home, its own long-serving Palestinian staff who fled under active bombardment have already been informed that their contracts will be terminated by the end of the year.
@AlessandroMrakic, the UNDP Head of the Gaza office regularly highlights UNDP’s role in helping Palestinians rebuild their homes.
Jaco Cilliers states that “Gazan residents are eager to return home and rebuild their lives.”
Tom Fletcher praises UNDP-cleared roads that “give us access to people in need of aid.”
All of these messages are accompanied by a growing number of polished photo-ops and high-visibility field posts, yet none of them acknowledge the situation of UNDP Gaza’s own Palestinian personnel, who are part of the Gaza community. These staff delivered UNDP’s mandate from inside Gaza for years. They survived destruction and were forced to flee only when staying meant risking death.
Today, instead of being supported until they can safely return to Gaza and continue their service, they are being informed that their employment will be brought to an end. Many of those affected are women who worked throughout the years when Gaza was most difficult, sustaining essential programmes despite trauma, loss, and danger.
UNDP is presenting itself as a champion of Gaza’s recovery. That narrative is irreconcilable with the treatment of the personnel who built and sustained its presence on the ground. They are not temporary contractors nor external consultants. They are Palestinian professionals who delivered results long before surge deployments arrived, yet they are now being removed as other so called international surge staff fly in to take over the work they carried for years and being compensated generously for it.
Before speaking about helping the people of Gaza return home, UNDP must show responsibility toward its own staff who are the people of Gaza.
What is UNDP doing now, not in public communications, but in its employment decisions, to ensure its Palestinian staff who fled to Egypt are protected, supported, and enabled to return to their posts?
Why is UNDP Gaza punishing its own Palestinian staff for surviving a war?
UNDP leadership owes these staff clear answers and immediate action.
