Category: International Humanitarian Law

Why UNRWA Is Never Led by an Arab


Leadership, power, and the deliberate exclusion at the heart of the Palestine refugee system

With less than two months remaining in UNRWA CG’s mandate, and as he appears to be leveraging the closing phase of his term to take far-reaching executive decisions that risk dismantling UNRWA, attention is already shifting to the question of succession.

Who will be the next Commissioner-General? A German? An Italian? A Swiss? A British national? An American? A Swedish or Norwegian candidate?

And yet, conspicuously absent from the discussion is any mention of an Arab national or even a candidate from a host country. Why is that?

Why is it that an agency with such a unique mandate, employing approximately 31,000 Palestine refugees to serve nearly five million Palestine refugees across Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan must invariably be headed by a Western European or American Commissioner-General?

Why is it considered inconceivable for an Arab national, more specifically a candidate from one of the host countries, to preside over an agency that operates almost entirely on their territory, serves their populations, and relies so heavily on their political and social environment?

Take, by contrast, one of the five regional commissions operating within the United Nations system: the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). ESCWA serves 21 Arab States across Western Asia and North Africa, and its Executive Secretary has consistently been appointed from among nationals of those very member States. 

So why is UNRWA, an agency operating almost exclusively in the Arab region and serving a Palestinian refugee population, invariably presided over by a Western-led Commissioner-General?

I argue that this is neither incidental nor accidental. It is deliberate. 

The Commissioner-General of UNRWA is appointed by the Secretary-General following consultations with UNRWA’s Advisory Commission, which includes major donors and host countries. No formal vote or approval by the General Assembly is required. The General Assembly is merely informed of the appointment and has no authority to confirm or reject the candidate.

While UNRWA operates under the authority of the General Assembly, executive authority, including appointment power rests with the Secretary-General. This results in a highly centralized process, devoid of any competitive or transparent selection procedure, with no public shortlisting or clearly articulated criteria.

In practice, political considerations such as donor confidence, geopolitical alignments, and host-state sensitivities play a decisive role in the appointment of UNRWA’s Commissioner-General.

UNRWA’s Commissioner-General is, in effect, a political appointment of the Secretary-General, insulated from direct General Assembly approval.

By contrast, in regional commissions such as ESCWA, the Executive Secretary is appointed through a politically negotiated, intergovernmental process, requiring General Assembly approval and explicit regional buy-in.

This distinction goes directly to questions of accountability, independence, and political leverage and is particularly consequential in the current crisis context.

Since its establishment, ESCWA has been led almost exclusively by Arab nationals, appointed from within the region it serves. By contrast, UNRWA has never been led by a Palestinian, a host-country national, or even an Arab national from a major regional donor State. Its Commissioners-General have been overwhelmingly Western, predominantly European and North American.

This raises, once again, the central question: why has UNRWA never been led by an Arab?

There is no legal rule preventing the appointment of a Palestinian, a Jordanian, a Lebanese, a Syrian, or an Arab national from a major UNRWA donor State. And yet, over more than seven decades, no such appointment has ever occurred.

Instead, UNRWA’s leadership has followed a remarkably consistent pattern: Western nationality, diplomatic pedigree, acceptability to major donor States, and a perceived political “distance” from the refugee community.

The underlying reasons are rarely stated explicitly, yet they are well understood within the system.

First, UNRWA is politically inconvenient. It embodies an unresolved refugee question that powerful States would prefer to manage, contain, or quietly sunset. A Commissioner-General drawn from the refugee community or even from a host State would be more difficult to pressure, harder to discipline, and less easily aligned with donor red lines.

Second, funding equals leverage. Unlike other United Nations entities or regional commissions such as ESCWA, UNRWA is funded almost entirely through voluntary contributions. Western donors do not merely fund the Agency; they actively shape its operating space. Leadership, in turn, is selected accordingly.

Third, control is mistaken for neutrality.
Western leadership is presented as “impartial,” while regional leadership is implicitly framed as “political.” This assumption is neither neutral nor defensible: it simply reflects whose politics are normalized.

Fourth, there is an unspoken trust deficit.
Palestinians are trusted to teach, heal, vaccinate, rebuild and increasingly, to absorb institutional collapse. But they are not trusted to lead.

So who, then, controls UNRWA? And does this amount to a form of colonization of the Palestine cause?

If colonization is understood as the systematic removal of decision-making power from those most directly affected, the answer becomes difficult to avoid

UNRWA serves Palestinians, is staffed overwhelmingly by Palestinians, and operates almost entirely in Palestinian camps and communities; yet it has been led, without exception, by outsiders, overwhelmingly Western.

Those who decide are not those who live with the consequences. Indeed, leadership matters: it shapes how crises are framed, how staff are treated, how cuts are imposed, and how accountability is exercised or avoided. This is precisely what we are witnessing today through mass suspensions, terminations, and salary cuts implemented under the current Commissioner-General of UNRWA.

While the Commissioner-General of UNRWA should, in principle, be accountable to the Palestinian communities the Agency serves, the current governance structure ensures the opposite. By reporting directly to the Secretary-General rather than to the General Assembly, accountability flows upward: to donors and political power centers rather than downward to the Palestinian communities most affected by UNRWA’s decisions.

Why is Arab leadership considered acceptable for every United Nations body operating in the region except the one mandated to serve Palestinians?

Three factors are at play: First, a fear of political alignment with the refugee cause. Second, a fear of challenging donor orthodoxy. Third and most consequential, a deliberate preference to keep UNRWA administratively weak and politically contained.

Why? 

Because a strong, regionally rooted UNRWA leadership would be harder to dismantle.

With less than three months remaining in the current Commissioner-General’s mandate, the most consequential question confronting the Secretary-General and host countries alike is not who comes next, but why Arab leadership continues to be excluded.

ESCWA_vs_UNRWA_Leadership_DetailedDownload

Do More Harm: 650 Palestinian Staff Terminated in a Single Day as Lazzarini Accelerates the Dismantling of UNRWA Before His Departure

The Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, is presiding over the deliberate dismantling of the Agency by terminating Palestinian staff en masse under false administrative pretexts in the final weeks of his mandate.

In Gaza today, acting on his direct instructions, letters of termination are being issued with immediate effect to more than 620 Palestinian teachers, staff who were suspended less than a year ago and deliberately placed into financial asphyxiation through so-called “exceptional leave.” They were removed from work, stripped of income, isolated from their duties, and left in enforced precarity. The same justification recycled without shame is nothing but the ongoing financial crisis.

The termination letters that we have seen and verified assert that

“after careful review, the Commissioner-General has decided, pursuant to Staff Regulation 9.1, to terminate in the interest of the Agency the contracts of staff,”

mechanically appending expressions of “regret” before declaring that employment is terminated “with immediate effect.”

These expressions are false. Each of them. The assertions of “careful review,” “regret,” and “the interest of the Agency” are not merely misleading; they are knowingly untrue and will be exposed before the UN Tribunal. The termination notices rely on formulaic language to mask decisions taken in bad faith, in advance, and for an improper purpose.

The invocation of “the interest of the Agency” is being used to justify the unlawful elimination of Palestinian staff. The claim of “careful review” conceals predetermined outcomes since February 2025. The expression of “regret” serves no legal function other than to cosmetically accompany an otherwise brutal administrative act. These terms are, in fact, misrepresentations deployed to manufacture legality where none exists. Their purpose is to insulate them from accountability, judicial scrutiny, and responsibility.

For twelve consecutive years, UNRWA has operated with an annual deficit ranging between USD 100 to 120 million. At no point during those twelve years was the mass termination of Palestinian staff advanced as a corrective measure. Not because it was overlooked, but because it was never a legitimate option.

UNRWA’s deficit is not an anomaly; it is a known, structural, and politically sustained condition. Donor states have long accepted, indeed, engineered a model in which the Agency functions under permanent financial shortfall. Savings measures, austerity cycles, hiring freezes, and programmatic compression have never eliminated that deficit, nor were they intended to. Yet the Agency has continued to operate, deliver services, and fulfill its mandate every single year under those conditions.

Nothing changed in January 2026 except the decision to terminate hundreds of Palestinian staff in Gaza, Jordan, and soon in Lebanon.

The mandate of UNRWA is not discretionary expenditure. It is a legal obligation to employ Palestinian refugees to serve Palestinian refugees across education, health, relief, protection, infrastructure, and microfinance. For those unaware: staffing with Palestinian refugees is not ancillary to the mandate; it is the mandate.

The termination of teachers is therefore not a budgetary adjustment. It is a deliberate act of mandate dismantlement, executed under the false pretense of financial necessity. What is being reduced is not cost, but Palestinian presence.

The Commissioner-General has no legal or moral authority to hollow out the mandate of UNRWA under the guise of financial management. Authority to administer the Agency does not include authority to dismantle it, and the CG’s budgetary discretion does not extend to extinguishing the very purpose for which the Agency exists.

The obscenity of these decisions is entrenched in the hierarchy that sustains them. The Acting Director in Gaza, a white Western European male installed through a procedurally unlawful appointment in direct violation of governing rules, as confirmed by an investigation under the Secretary-General’s authority, continues to occupy his position without consequence, earning over USD 17,000 per month, while terminating Palestinian teachers whose monthly salaries barely reach USD 1,000.

The administration now invokes urgency, inevitability, and the alleged absence of alternatives. None withstands scrutiny. The financial conditions cited are longstanding and well-known, and the timing exposes the design. Terminations are being carried out while collective appeals challenging the unlawful suspensions remain pending before the Tribunal, and while the Commissioner-General is approaching the end of his mandate.

More than 420 of these teachers have already filed a collective appeal with the UN Tribunal, challenging the legality of their suspensions and the denial of their salaries. The Commissioner-General’s sudden acceleration toward termination is nothing but a calculated attempt to render pending appeals moot by invoking Staff Regulation 9.1 and declaring, after careful review, that their contracts are ended in the interest of the Agency. Decisions are being rushed to pre-empt judicial review and to entrench faits accomplis before accountability can attach.

This is, in fact, the opening phase of a broader strategy that extends across UNRWA’s fields of operation, staff categories, and duty stations. The pattern is already replicating.

In Amman last Thursday, the Director of Security, another white Western European male whose appointment was also contested before the UN Tribunal, issued termination letters to 20 Palestinian security staff, barring them from UNRWA premises with immediate effect. Staff were informed that their functions would be outsourced to a private security company in order to “align with the rest of the UN system.”

That justification does not withstand even minimal legal scrutiny.

UNRWA is not a generic UN entity. Its mandate is singular and non-transferable: to employ Palestinian refugees in the service of Palestinian refugees. The outsourcing of Palestinian security functions to private contractors constitutes an ultra vires action. It exceeds administrative authority by displacing Palestinian staff from posts that are integral to UNRWA’s mandate. Procurement is being misused as a vehicle to achieve an outcome that management could not lawfully impose directly: the systematic exclusion of Palestinians from their own institution.

The invocation of “alignment” functions as a pretext to legitimize discriminatory impact, whereby Palestinian staff are removed en masse while senior international positions remain untouched. The financial disparity is undisguised. The Director of Security earns between USD 12,000 and 13,000 per month. The Palestinian staff he terminated earn approximately USD 800 per month. Senior management positions remain untouched; Palestinian livelihoods are declared expendable.

The moral arithmetic speaks for itself.

In Beirut, preparations are underway for the same maneuver. Approximately 100 Palestinian staff are expected to face termination under identical pretexts, using the same administrative language and the same manufactured justifications.

These measures are being executed at the very beginning of the year, and in the final weeks preceding the Commissioner-General’s departure at the end of March, the formal conclusion of his contract. This is the terminal phase of a policy implemented with the knowledge that accountability will soon be evaded through exit.

Following the closure of UNRWA’s Jerusalem headquarters, the dismantling has shifted inward. Field offices and headquarters are now being systematically hollowed out through attrition, termination, and outsourcing. The pattern is consistent, sequential, and intentional. This trajectory mirrors, with precision, the long-articulated objective of the Israeli government: the dismantling of UNRWA not through formal abolition, but through internal erosion: reducing staff, extinguishing functions, and stripping the Agency of its Palestinian core while preserving the façade of institutional continuity.

What is unfolding is a systematic, progressive, controlled disintegration.

When the Commissioner-General assumed office, UNRWA’s staffing table reflected approximately 31,000 Palestinian staff positions, including 13,000 in Gaza. These figures are still cited publicly, with confidence and repetition.

They are false.

Insider data confirms that UNRWA’s staffing has fallen to approximately 23,000 positions. Posts have been abolished incrementally and without transparency, with the most severe acceleration occurring over the past two years. In Gaza alone, staff numbers have collapsed from 13,000 to approximately 9,000, a consequence of deaths caused by Israeli attacks, forced retirements, and now, deliberate mass termination.

The plan is no longer deniable.

UNRWA is being dismantled from within by a senior Western European management cohort that continues to invoke humanitarian language while administering collective punishment against Palestinians, many of whom are simultaneously mourning family members killed by the very government whose political objectives these measures now advance.

No Western European Director or senior official within UNRWA has demonstrated the moral courage to halt these actions. None has objected. None has refused to execute them. These officials retain their positions by implementing decisions without scrutiny or resistance. Their allegiance is not to the mandate, nor to Palestinian refugees, but to institutional survival. In that sense, they operate as mercenaries: well compensated, insulated from consequences, and valued only for their willingness to comply.

As for the Commissioner-General, he has nothing to lose. His term ends in March 2026. His exit is secured. The same is likely true for those closest to him. Decisions are taken with the certainty that consequences will not follow. Quite the opposite: they are likely to be rewarded; absorbed into other senior roles, compensated by Western governments that continue to support Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people, and repositioned within the UN system to carry forward the same discriminatory practices under different institutional banners.

The decision to terminate 650 Palestinian staff in a single day, taken in the final weeks of the Commissioner-General’s tenure, is unprecedented in the history of both the United Nations and UNRWA. Such a measure: massive in scale, irreversible in effect, and executed at the very end of an executive mandate, raises serious questions about the continued propriety of allowing the Commissioner-General to exercise unfettered executive authority. When a senior official accelerates irreversible decisions at this scale immediately before departure, the issue is no longer administrative discretion but abuse of authority in anticipation of exit.

This conduct warrants scrutiny not only of the decision itself, but of the conditions under which it was taken. Reasonable questions arise as to whether assurances have been given, whether consequences have been neutralized in advance, and whether accountability has been effectively suspended. In any other institutional context, such circumstances would trigger immediate restraint, oversight, or the withdrawal of delegated authority.

Where, then, is the Secretary-General of the United Nations in all of this? What justification exists for permitting a departing Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, to take decisions of historic magnitude in the final months of his tenure, with consequences that will long outlast his presence and fall entirely on Palestinian staff?

In mythology, when power abandoned humanity, it was Prometheus who defied it, who stole fire knowing the cost, not for recognition, not for permission, but because survival demanded action. He did not wait for consensus. He acted because inaction meant destruction.

Who, then, will act for Palestinian UNRWA staff?

Who will defy the machinery rather than continue to service it? Who will intervene when legality is being weaponized and procedure is being used to erase livelihoods?

Palestinian UNRWA staff are being erased while the world watches it happen in real time. Some are burying their families. Others are sleeping in shelters. And now they are being told, formally, politely, with immediate effect, that even their livelihoods are no longer allowed to survive.

This is how a mandate is killed: quietly, disingenuously, and from within, by the very official, Mr. Lazzarini, charged with safeguarding it, in direct violation of the oath attached to his office.

So where is Prometheus now? Who will defy power when survival demands it, rather than administer harm in its name?

The humanitarian system rests on a single, non-negotiable premise: do no harm. What is unfolding here is its deliberate inversion: do more harm. Terminate more Palestinian staff. Remove livelihoods. Deepen displacement. Align administrative decisions with the Israeli government’s long-stated objective of dismantling UNRWA and reducing the Palestinian presence in Gaza.

Yes: Do More Harm: Systematically and with Intent: One Termination Letter At A Time.

Not because it is lawful. Not because it is unavoidable. But because those authorizing it are insulated from its consequences, and because they calculate that Palestinian lives, Palestinian labour, and Palestinian rights can be extinguished administratively without cost.

This is how senior officials like Lazzarini participate in erasure: by choosing harm, authorizing it on paper, and enforcing it without ever having to fire a single shot.

Palestinians will remember you because you failed to protect them, failed to uphold the mandate entrusted to you, and willingly chose to inflict harm upon them, no different, in the end, from those who openly act as their enemy.

“Having a Baby in Africa Is Nothing”: The UN’s Moral Collapse

“I would not let the UN teach me morals. Having a baby in Africa is nothing. Where one has a baby, she wanted a baby. How many people have babies here? The UN does not understand that. The UN thinks that she has been victimized by the UN staff who came. No, it’s the opposite.”

This was the shocking statement of a MONUSCO international staff member to the UN tribunal after he was dismissed for sexual exploitation and abuse of a local woman in Goma.

Last week, the UNDT rendered a damning judgment UNDT/2025/089, Compaore v. Secretary-General, which evidences a systemic collapse of compliance with the principle of “do no harm” among UN international staff and highlights the widening gap between the Organisation’s proclaimed norms and its operational realities.

What the Tribunal recounts next reveals a level of predation that documents the institutional inability to give effect to every policy, every training, and every public assertion that the Organisation upholds the principle of ‘do no harm”. 

“The staff member met the local woman when she was selling vegetables on the roadside in Goma took her number and, within days, he was having regular sexual intercourse with her.

He knew that there was a notable status differential between him, an international United Nations staff member and the SEA survivor, a seller on the market in Goma.

The woman earned between USD 10 and USD 25 per month… she was also supporting her ten-year-old son. By contrast, the staff member’s net salary was approximately USD 14,000 per month.

He visited her at her house and started giving her significant sums of money up to half of her month’s earnings as well as promised to help opening her own business…

…when the victim informed him that she became pregnant as a result, he reacted angrily, and called her a ‘prostitute’ and ‘thief,’ telling her to leave his house.

He then took the local woman far to meet with a pharmacist that he knew, using a UN vehicle. At the location of the pharmacist, he asked her to do a pregnancy test, which was positive.

He then asked the pharmacist how they could arrange an abortion even though the local woman informed him that she did not want to abort. He then organized a meeting at a hotel in Goma, during which the pharmacist pressured the local woman to get an abortion; and he gave her US$ 400.00 (i.e. the equivalent of four months’ income or seven months’ rent for her) to financially incentivize her to get an abortion.

After giving her the money for an abortion, he filed a criminal complaint against her, accusing her of harassing him and of claiming money from him. In his complaint, he requested the police to verify if she was still pregnant, while being aware that abortion is a criminal offence in the DRC.

He then made the local woman sign an agreement in exchange of USD 8,000 payment. As part of this agreement, the local woman also signed a letter withdrawing allegations against him which were then pending in the local court.”

I mean if this is the outcome of years of UN training on “do no harm” then we are forced to confront the undeniable truth: something is not merely broken: something is rotten at the core. And perhaps the deeper tragedy is this: people have become so accustomed to this pattern of abuse that they have grown desensitized to it. These cases no longer shock; they are absorbed as routine background noise.

We must ask ourselves: who is reading these stories? Who is outraged? And why is this not shaking the Organisation to its foundations?

What is truly galling is that the international staff member stood before the Tribunal and insisted the relationship was consensual. The Tribunal, drawing on Makeen 2024-UNAT-1461, para. 52, citing Lucchini rejected this narrative entirely, establishing that in the face of glaring economic deprivation and an overwhelming power differential, genuine consent was impossible. Sex in such a situation is inherently coercive and any claimed consent collapses under legal and ethical scrutiny.

The Tribunal also held that the survivor’s “withdrawal of the complaints in domestic proceedings, following an $8,000 financial settlement,” does not absolve the perpetrator nor constrain the UN’s authority to act, since national acquittals do not extinguish administrative responsibility.

The staff member disputed the proportionality of his dismissal, arguing that a mere reprimand or censure would have sufficed. This position attempts to recast predatory conduct as a correctable misjudgment rather than misconduct of such severity that it renders continued employment untenable. It is a defence that collapses on its face when measured against the Organisation’s core obligations and basic standards of conduct.

The problem is just like the genocide in Palestine, people have become used to harm so much that these stories pass almost unremarkable. And the UN surely counts on this. 

Then comes the United Nations General Assembly, A/79/789, “Special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and abuse – Report of the Secretary-General” (17 February 2025). One can clearly notice how its very architecture, dense tables, aggregated indicators, and technical phrasing render the issue abstract, sterile, and distant. It categorizes suffering into percentages and trendlines, burying the human cost beneath methodology. In contrast, when one goes to the UN’s publicly accessible UN SEA misconduct data dashboard, the information is stark: individual dates, victims under 18, allegations of rape, the implementing entities involved. The dashboard is revealing, but almost no one consults it and certainly the Organisation benefits from that neglect.

The Secretary-General’s report reduces survivors to numerical entries processed through a statistical frame that neutralizes emotional and moral response. As with the enumeration of Palestinian casualties, human beings are converted into data units. Numerical abstraction becomes the mechanism of desensitization.

Let me give you a few examples of what the dashboard reveals.
Under the category of UN staff and related personnel:

  • Less than a week ago,  on 20 and 21 November,  two separate allegations were recorded against WHO personnel for sexual exploitation.
  • On 30 October, an allegation was filed against IOM for rape of a child by a UN Volunteer.
  • On 23, 21 and 20 October, three distinct allegations were filed for sexual assault of children under 18 in both IOM and UNRWA.

According to the same data, for 2024, children constituted 15% of victims, and disturbingly, an additional 17% were listed as “victim age unknown.” That alone illustrates how incomplete or deliberately under-specified the reporting is. For the same year, rape accounted for 13% of allegations, and sexual assault 20%. Assistance was provided in only 20% of cases, with the remainder categorized on the dashboard as “victim declined,” “victim did not seek assistance,” “victim unidentified,” or “victim unreachable.” This is the measure in practice of “do no harm” and of the supposed restoration of victims’ dignity.

Then there is the separate category of implementing partners whose personnel are not formally under UN authority but who execute UN-funded projects. 

  • On 4, 8, 9, 19 and 28 November 2025, five allegations were lodged for sexual assault, two involving children under 18 in connection with UNICEF-supported activities. 
  • On 9, 14, 16 and 19 October 2025, another four allegations were recorded, three of which were also for assault of children under 18, again linked to UNICEF-related projects.

I mean yes, these individuals are not UN staff; they are personnel of implementing partners. But the question is unavoidable: is the UN exercising due diligence over the entities it entrusts with its mandate? 

Does the UN engage implementing partners to improve conditions for children, or are these partnerships,  through negligence or indifference, creating new avenues for their abuse?


In 2025 so far, there have been 41 allegations of rape, of which 37 involved children under 18. These were linked to projects implemented for:

  • UNICEF (14)
  • WFP (13)
  • WHO (4)
  • UNOPS (4)
  • UNHCR (3)
  • OCHA (1)

In 2024, children under 18 accounted for at least 28% of all SEA allegations and that figure is conservative, given that an additional 24% of victims were listed as “age unknown.” 

Rape constituted 12% of total allegations that year.

Then there is the category of peacekeeping and special political missions, where rape of children is clearly systemic. It is easier to avert one’s gaze,  but perhaps this is precisely where scrutiny must intensify.

And here I am also analyzing numbers. This is the trap inherent in quantitative reporting: patterns and ratios take over, and the individual victims disappear. Behind each statistic is a life: a child with a name, a family, a history, a future now fractured.

Who explains to a 10-year-old boy that he will be alright after being raped? Who provides care and schooling for a child born of sexual exploitation? Who treats the psychological, physical, and social scars inflicted by those who arrived under the blue flag claiming protection?

Why are we still here? Why are we reading these findings while maintaining the fiction that the UN enforces a zero-tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse? Each year we hear the same prescriptions: more funding, more training, more risk-mapping, more awareness. Yet the same patterns recur.

The Secretary-General’s report to the General Assembly is extensive and data-heavy, but this is precisely the problem: its architecture buries the actual crisis under layers of metrics and operational jargon. And there, almost unnoticed in the middle of the document, sits the real revelation:


In 2024, 64,585 United Nations staff members responded to the annual perception survey on protection from sexual exploitation and abuse. Of those, 3.65% (2,360 people) stated that it was acceptable to pay for sex, and close to 1% (555) indicated that it was acceptable to engage in sexual activity with a child,  with one-third of those respondents occupying supervisory roles.

This alone reveals how embedded and normalized the culture of sexual exploitation and abuse has become within the UN and this does not even account for uniformed personnel, national police contingents, or military forces contributed by Member States to peacekeeping missions.

So why is the situation not improving and in several respects deteriorating? Policies are revised, bulletins updated, special coordination units created,  but the real deficit lies in accountability, and not only accountability for the direct perpetrator.

And what about the perpetrators who are shielded rather than sanctioned? What about the cases quietly buried because they involve personnel with the right connections or the right nationality? What about internal directives to “avoid reputational exposure” that override the rights of victims? 

The UN pursues low-level offenders as symbolic sacrifices while preserving the machinery that protects enablers, decision-makers, and silent bystanders. The Organization reports terminations as proof of resolve, yet accountability is never directed at those within HR, Legal, Ethics, or senior management who intervened to suppress complaints, stall proceedings, or intimidate victims. That is where the deeper accountability lies, and that is precisely where none is exercised.

Why is there no scrutiny of the senior officials who instruct HR and Legal to make cases “go away”? What about the victims who never report, either out of fear or because the system has taught them that nothing will happen? What about the managers whose first instinct is to protect their own reporting profile before the Security Council or the General Assembly? And what of the Legal and HR officers who invoke “insufficient evidence” as a procedural shield as though the absence of formal proof were not itself often the product of investigative indifference or institutional suppression?

The Secretary-General’s own report acknowledges that since 2006, approximately 750 paternity and child support claims arising from UN peace operations have been recorded with over 500 still unresolved. Most Member States have failed to take any meaningful steps toward resolution. Meanwhile, the children born of these abuses, many now approaching adulthood,  remain without schooling, without healthcare, without legal recognition, and trapped in lifelong stigma. They live in conditions of uncertainty and marginalization,  the direct human legacy of UN negligence.

Protracted investigation and disciplinary timelines are cited as “systemic challenges,” but they function as structural impediments to justice. Delays in inquiry, opaque handling of outcomes, and the absence of visible consequences reinforce a culture of impunity and corrode the Organization’s credibility. Even now, there remains no real accountability for those in leadership who failed in their obligation to act. The burden falls only on the isolated offender,  never on those who enabled, ignored, or suppressed the cases.

Alarmingly, in 2024, the internal survey itself recorded a stark indicator of institutional distrust: 6% of UN respondents,roughly 3,700 staff expressed no confidence in leadership’s ability to address sexual exploitation and abuse, up from 3% the previous year.The doubling reflects a measurable deterioration in trust in leadership.

The reality we must confront is this: a child in Bangui may flee from what he perceives as the threat (the militia or armed group) and run instead toward the UN blue helmets, whom he believes to be protectors. But the risk now is that he runs straight into the arms of his abuser. The UN’s personnel (civilian and military) leverage the UN’s image as a guardian and savior to secure access to vulnerable populations. They weaponize the very trust invested in the UN.

This is what makes the situation intolerable: the UN is not a bystander to these violations but the mechanism through which access to victims is enabled. When trust itself becomes the instrument of abuse, the UN mission has already failed at its fundamental duty: protection

UNStaff4Gaza: Memorial Before Justice

On 23 October, UN Staff 4 Gaza issued a press release announcing the launch of a memorial project for UN personnel killed by Israel in Gaza. The group is led by former senior UN staff, many of whom I have worked with.

Before getting into what is fundamentally wrong, on multiple levels, with this action and with this press release, I want to acknowledge what is positive.
It is the first time a public statement explicitly uses the word killed and names the perpetrator, Israel :

“More than 370 members of UN personnel have been confirmed killed by the Israel Defense Forces since October 2023.”


Most others still refer to these colleagues as “dead,” carefully omitting the party responsible. That UN Staff 4 Gaza names Israel directly is due in large part to the fact that its leaders are former senior UN officials; otherwise, they would have been dismissed immediately by the organization. Still, they deserve credit for calling things by their name. The release also correctly states that the majority of those killed were UNRWA staff, not general “UN staff,” a distinction long overdue.

It is precisely because its leaders are former UN staff that they have space for more forceful action and bolder language, unless this entire exercise is simply a PR moment, a gateway to a few interviews on Al Jazeera or other international media, followed by silence.

A memorial has symbolic value, but it falls painfully short of what UNRWA staff killed in Gaza actually deserved. Given the positions and titles these former officials once held, they can do far more. If they genuinely seek to honour UNRWA staff, they can begin by addressing the Secretary-General and the Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, and demand to know why the families of the UNRWA staff killed in Gaza continue to be denied their entitlements.

I doubt the staff who were killed were wondering about a future memorial. Their concerns were very different: If I die, who will take care of my children? Who will support my spouse, my parents? Who will ensure my children have access to education, medicine, stability? That they have enough funds if they choose to escape this hell voluntarily?


No one lies awake at night hoping that their children will one day visit a monument with their name etched on it. They hope their children will survive and be protected.

Many will interpret this as diminishing the efforts of UN Staff 4 Gaza. It is not. I respect most of them, and I know several personally who carry the Palestinian cause with sincerity. This is precisely why their voices, reputations, and platforms matter, and why they should be used for something that will actually serve the families of the UNRWA staff killed by Israel in Gaza, many of whom were killed in the line of service.

There is another point that must be said plainly. If those killed had been American, British, German, Canadian, take your pick, there would already be dozens of committees, campaigns, and advocacy groups demanding justice, pushing relentlessly for reparations, lobbying governments, flooding the media. But when the victims are Palestinian, the system stops at pity. It never reaches action.


This is what a colonial hierarchy looks like: grief is permitted, justice is not.

A brief reminder: the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, gave the bereaved families USD 300 each instead of the USD 126,000 to which they are entitled. And no, the reason is not that UNRWA has a “different set of rules.” The management deliberately excluded the Gaza staff from the annual insurance coverage.

Another reminder: to this day, the Commissioner-General has not released the Provident Fund savings of the deceased staff. These savings belong to the staff and their families, not to the Agency. Nothing prevents UNRWA from releasing these funds or, at minimum, continuing to pay their salaries against their accumulated savings until compensation is properly processed.

If the goal is truly to honour the UNRWA staff killed by Israel in Gaza, then start with real work. 

A memorial is beautiful, but beauty does not feed children, does not pay school fees, does not treat trauma, does not bring stability. What will come next is predictable: the unveiling, the photo ops for senior officials, and another round of speeches, while the families still search for someone willing to raise their case and push it forward.

A memorial may stand in stone, but justice must stand in action. Right now, the former is moving ahead, and the latter is nowhere in sight.

The Legal Erosion of Due Process: How UNRWA’s Leadership Enabled Israel’s Narrative

A Critical Legal Analysis of UNRWA’s Commissioner-General’s Termination of Nine Gaza Staff Members

I. Introduction

When the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was established in 1949, its founding resolution (302 [IV]) mandated an independent humanitarian function, insulated from political interference. The Commissioner-General, as the agency’s head, is bound by the same Charter obligations as all senior UN officials: to act exclusively in the interest of the United Nations, free from instructions from any government.

Yet in January 2024, that principle was dramatically breached.

Following unverified Israeli allegations that several UNRWA Gaza staff members participated in the 7 October 2023 attacks, Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini swiftly terminated nine Palestinian UNRWA staff without any evidence, due process, or hearings. 

By his own admission, the Commissioner-General fired the staff “in close consultation with the Secretary-General” and “in the interest of the Agency,” even as Israel provided no substantiating proof. His actions not only violated fundamental due-process rights under UNRWA’s internal regulatory framework but also handed Israel the rhetorical weapon it had long sought: official confirmation that UNRWA employed “Hamas operatives.” This rhetoric is, of course, devoid of any truth.

Within days, Israeli authorities restricted Lazzarini’s access to Gaza, and later shuttered the Agency’s East Jerusalem office. In effect, the Commissioner-General’s legally indefensible act furnished the pretext for UNRWA’s political dismantling.

This article examines, from a purely legal perspective, how these decisions contravened the UN’s internal justice principles, undermined the agency’s independence, and blurred the boundary between humanitarian neutrality and political appeasement.

II. The Legal Framework

1. Institutional Autonomy under the UN Charter

Article 100 of the UN Charter stipulates that international civil servants “shall not seek or receive instructions from any government.” The corresponding Staff Regulation 1.1 reinforces this duty of independence. The Commissioner-General of UNRWA, although appointed by the Secretary-General, exercises authority delegated by the General Assembly, not by Member States.

The Charter therefore precludes any de facto subordination of UNRWA to a State’s political or security agenda. The Commissioner-General’s legal allegiance is to the UN system’s administrative law and to the staff regulations that safeguard fairness, neutrality, and the rule of law within the Organization, notably Article 100 of the UN Charter and Staff Regulation 1.1(a), which explicitly prohibit any UN official from seeking or receiving instructions from a government.

2. Due Process under the UNRWA Staff Rules

UNRWA’s Staff Regulations and Rules mirror the UN Secretariat’s internal justice framework, anchored in:

  • Presumption of innocence: no disciplinary measure can be imposed without clear, credible evidence. 
  • Right to be heard: staff must be informed of charges and allowed to respond before sanctions are imposed. The UNRWA nine staff did not receive any charge letters setting out the allegations, and they were not afforded any opportunity to respond before being terminated.
  • Standard of proof: allegations must be established on the “balance of probabilities” at a minimum, or “beyond a reasonable doubt” for grave misconduct. In the case at hand, since the sanction concerned staff termination (serious misconduct), the correct threshold to be applied was beyond a reasonable doubt. No standard of proof was applied to the nine staff who were terminated.
  • Proportionality and reasoned decision: sanctions must correspond to proven misconduct, supported by a reasoned administrative decision.
  • Judicial oversight: staff possess the right to appeal before the UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT) and, subsequently, the UN Appeals Tribunal (UNAT).

These guarantees embody the UN’s internal rule of law. They are not optional, even in crises.

3. Role of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS)

OIOS functions as the UN’s independent investigative arm. Its mandate is fact-finding, not adjudication. The final decision to impose discipline rests with the head of entity, here, the Commissioner-General, who must base that decision on verified, corroborated evidence. OIOS does not pronounce guilt; it simply reports findings.

Therefore, when OIOS states that “evidence, if authenticated and corroborated, could indicate involvement,” this signals that proof is incomplete, not that wrongdoing is established. Acting upon such an inconclusive report constitutes a fundamental procedural error.

III. Factual Chronology

1. January 2024: The Allegations

In January 2024, Israeli authorities transmitted to UNRWA a set of allegations claiming that 12 staff members in Gaza were involved in the 7 October attacks. No supporting evidence was shared. Nevertheless, Commissioner-General Lazzarini, in consultation with the Secretary-General, immediately terminated the contracts of the implicated staff “in the interest of the Agency.”

By doing so, he pre-empted both investigation and adjudication, effectively presuming guilt. The act bypassed all procedural steps mandated by the Staff Rules; notification of charges, opportunity to respond (OTR), due process, hearing in case of termination, and proportional review.

2. March–April 2024: Expansion of the Investigation

As further unverified allegations surfaced, additional staff were placed under OIOS investigation. The UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) later investigated a total of 19 UNRWA staff members after Israel provided information on an additional seven individuals in March and April 2024. 

The Commissioner-General maintained the summary terminations, justifying them as necessary to protect UNRWA’s reputation and reassure donors. Yet this justification itself contradicts the raison d’être of due process: protecting institutional integrity through law, not expediency.

3. 5 August 2024: The Commissioner-General’s Statement

Upon OIOS’s completion of its review, Commissioner-General Lazzarini issued a formal statement:

“In nine other cases, the evidence obtained by OIOS was insufficient to support the staff members’ involvement… For the remaining nine cases, the evidence – if authenticated and corroborated – could indicate involvement… I have decided… these remaining nine staff members cannot work for UNRWA. All contracts… will be terminated in the interest of the Agency.”

This language exposes the legal incoherence of the decision. “Could indicate” is a hypothetical, not a factual conclusion. Terminating staff on that basis amounts to administrative arbitrariness.

Moreover, Lazzarini acknowledged that Israel had not provided evidence despite repeated requests, yet proceeded regardless. The decision therefore lacked the essential element of facta probata (evidence proven).

The dismissals triggered a cascade of political repercussions: Israel restricted the Commissioner-General’s entry to Gaza, forced closure of UNRWA’s Jerusalem field office, and intensified its campaign to defund the Agency. Ironically, Lazzarini’s decision, intended to preserve UNRWA’s credibility, supplied Israel with the official validation it had long sought: that UNRWA employed Hamas affiliates.

5. 24 and 30 October 2025: The United Nations’ Spokesperson’s Clarification on the Record

More recently, during the 24 October 2025 noon briefing, the Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General stated:

“There were a small number of UNRWA staff members who were credibly linked to Hamas, and we have fired those personnel.”

On 30 October 2025, during the noon briefing, the UN Deputy Spokesperson had to retract and publicly correct this statement:

**Clarification

“I have a clarification to make.  In the noon briefing on Friday, 24 October, responding to a question about allegations against UNRWA personnel by the Israeli authorities, I said that “there were a small number of staff members of UNRWA who were credibly linked to Hamas and we have handled that situation and fired those personnel”.

This was incorrect.  The outcome of the OIOS [Office of Internal Oversight Services] investigation into these allegations did not qualify them as credible.  Instead, OIOS said that the evidence that it obtained — if authenticated and corroborated — might indicate that the staff members may have been involved.  The Government of Israel, to date, has not provided additional elements to corroborate or authenticate the claims, although it has been asked to do so repeatedly. Furthermore, the International Court of Justice last week ruled that the State of Israel’s claim that UNRWA is infiltrated by Hamas was not substantiated, nor were allegations that UNRWA is not a neutral organisation.”

This clarification is decisive. It formally admits that no credible evidence existed. The nine staff members were therefore dismissed unlawfully, in violation of both internal due-process guarantees and the principle of presumption of innocence.

IV. Key Legal Issues Emerging from the Record

  1. Absence of Evidentiary Basis
     The Commissioner-General’s reliance on speculative OIOS language (“if authenticated and corroborated”) fails the basic evidentiary threshold required for termination. Without authenticated proof, the decision is ultra vires, beyond his lawful authority. Further, in cases of serious misconduct where the contemplated disciplinary measure could be termination, the threshold of evidence required is beyond a reasonable doubt.
  2. Violation of Due Process
      By acting before investigation and denying staff the opportunity to respond, the Commissioner-General contravened the UN’s procedural guarantees under Chapter X of the UN rules on disciplinary process, as well as Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (right to a fair hearing).
  3. Subordination to a Member State’s Allegations
     The Commissioner-General’s actions reflected de facto compliance with Israeli political pressure, contrary to Article 100 of the Charter and Regulation 1.1 of the Staff Regulations prohibiting receipt of instructions from governments.
  4. Public Defamation and Reputational Harm
     His statements, and their immediate media amplification, effectively branded UNRWA staff as terrorists. Even absent evidence, the public perception of guilt caused irreparable reputational damage to the Agency and the individuals concerned.
  5. Institutional Accountability Vacuum
     Despite the subsequent UN clarification and ICJ ruling dismissing Israel’s claims, no remedial action, such as reinstatement or compensation, has been taken. The absence of corrective measures perpetuates impunity within the UN’s leadership structure.

From a legal standpoint, the only appropriate remedy would be the immediate reinstatement of the nine unlawfully dismissed staff, or at the very least, an accountability review into the Commissioner-General’s conduct to restore institutional integrity.

UNRWA Is Not Hamas.

It is a United Nations agency operating under the authority of the General Assembly, employing doctors, teachers, engineers, and social workers, all of them refugees themselves, who serve under UN rules of neutrality and oversight. The attempt to recast this humanitarian institution as a militant organization is a political Israeli fabrication, and the Commissioner-General’s unlawful dismissals gave that fiction an undeserved aura of legitimacy

Beyond the procedural irregularities, the broader consequence is reputational and structural: the very act intended to protect UNRWA from political attack became the instrument that enabled it.

The Commissioner-General’s actions have contributed to fuel the narrative of Israel about UNRWA staff linked to Hamas. Contrary to his statements, the CG failed to protect UNRWA from reputational risks. Quite the contrary, it was his acts that led to an irreparable reputational damage by linking, incorrectly and unlawfully and outside any regulatory framework, the dismissal of these staff to Hamas- a damage that may prove be very difficult to repair.

The UN’s Gag Order: Staff Threatened for Speaking on Israel

On 21 September 2025, one day before the opening of the General Assembly marking the 80th Anniversary of the United Nations, the Secretary-General sent a broadcast to all UN Secretariat staff in which he threatened disciplinary action against staff who express personal views, whether in public statements, private fora, or on social media, if those views are deemed inconsistent with the Organization’s official position.

The broadcast, titled “Guidance on Personal Communications – Reminder”, reiterates staff duties under Staff Regulation 1.2(f) and the UN Ethics Office’s 2025 Guidance on Political Activities. It cautions staff to exercise restraint in their personal communications, including on private social media, reminding them that any expression, whether through posts, likes, or shares, must not conflict with the Organization’s interests or adversely reflect on their status as international civil servants. Crucially, it directs staff to ensure their communications on current crises and political matters are “consistent with the position of the Organization and the statements of the Secretary-General.” The warning is clear: non-compliance may trigger disciplinary proceedings, leading to sanctions

The SG’s message in the broadcast was unambiguous:

“Failure to do so can result in the initiation of a disciplinary process, which may result in disciplinary sanctions being imposed.”

This comes as no surprise, as the Secretary-General bends yet again to Israeli and U.S. pressure to muzzle the voices of UN staff. This manufactured silence projects a false image of consent, an image designed to shield Israel from the reality of staff dissent.

Over the past weeks, many staff have confided in me that they are retreating into silence, not out of conviction, but out of fear. Fear of losing their jobs, their salaries, their stability. I understand this deeply: they have families to sustain, obligations they cannot abandon, and many are already serving in conflict zones, enduring hardship and danger as part of their daily reality

What is new, however, is the extent to which the United Nations is willing to bend to external pressure, prepared to silence and even dismiss its own staff in order to appease two Member States, one of which is openly and actively committing a genocide and boasting of it at the podium of the General Assembly.

In 1994, during the genocide in Rwanda, there was no social media, and staff openly debated opposing views. Neutrality as a principle of international civil service already existed, but there was no talk of staff being disciplined for expressing opinions or engaging in such debates. This rigid and punitive interpretation has only been aggressively imposed in the past decade, mainly under pressure from Israel and the US.

Neutrality as a principle of international civil service already existed, but there was no notion of staff discipline being invoked against those who spoke their mind. That rigid and punitive interpretation of neutrality is a more recent phenomenon one that, over the past decade, has been aggressively driven by Israel and its donors.

In my twenty years of service across the UN system, deployed around the globe and responsible for enforcing compliance with the Code of Conduct, I had never encountered neutrality being used in this way. Not once did it become an issue with staff until I joined UNRWA. It was there that neutrality began to be systematically weaponized, not as a principle of balance, but as a tool to silence and punish dissent

It began with UNRWA, where students were forbidden from drawing maps of Palestine or their homeland under the pretext of neutrality, with U.S. donors threatening to cut funds unless such drawings were erased from UNRWA school halls. From there, the campaign escalated into systematic monitoring of UNRWA staff social media accounts, with weekly reports sent to management demanding disciplinary action. Many staff were dismissed as a result. And today, that same model is being extended to UN Headquarters staff in Geneva, New York, and across the system.

What began as pressure on one Agency has now become institutionalized across the entire United Nations system. This latest broadcast to all Secretariat staff is nothing more than the UN-wide extension of that same playbook: the silencing, disciplining, and dismissal of staff under the banner of “neutrality.”

So, under this broadcast, if a staff member states that Israel is killing thousands in Gaza, starving millions, or violating international humanitarian law, they risk being accused of breaching neutrality and subjected to disciplinary action even dismissal.

And yet, let us pause here and recall the Secretary-General’s own words. The SG is not only a political figure. He is also the Chief Administrative Officer of the United Nations, and from that very position, he has spoken those exact words at the podium of the General Assembly.

On 22 September, in his remarks to the General Assembly marking the 80th Anniversary of the UN, he declared:

“As we meet, civilians are targeted, and international law trampled in Gaza.”

And on the same day, at the High-level International Conference on Palestine, he went further and said :

“….nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people or any form of ethnic cleansing. 

The systematic decimation of Gaza.

The starvation of the population.

The killing of tens of thousands of civilians, most of them women and children, and hundreds of our own humanitarians.

Nothing can also excuse developments in the West Bank that pose an existential threat to a Two-State solution.

The relentless expansion of settlements.

The creeping threat of annexation.

The intensification of settler violence.

All of it must stop.

The situation is morally, legally and politically intolerable.”

Scathing remarks; brave even. So why is the Secretary-General allowed to voice what his conscience compels him to say to remain sane, while staff are forbidden from saying the very same words, under threat of dismissal?

The answer is straightforward: because the vast majority of UN staff oppose this genocide. If their voices were heard, public opinion would turn even more decisively against Israel. Proof of that is already visible in the General Assembly, where the mass walkouts during the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech spoke louder than any resolution.

One thing is certain: this is an extremely dangerous trend. The UN is now actively muzzling the voices of its own staff. By silencing its own staff, the United Nations entrenches complicity at its core.

Here is the catch: this broadcast, titled ‘Guidance on Personal Communications – Reminder’ (full text above), explicitly instructs staff that any personal communications, even on private social media, must align with the official position of the Organization. That ‘position,’ of course, is articulated by the Secretary-General himself, and his own words on 22 September leave no ambiguity about what that position is.

This is the contradiction in plain sight: staff are being threatened with dismissal unless they align their views with the Secretary-General’s official position, yet when they do exactly that, they are still silenced. 

Why can the Secretary-General, as Chief Administrative Officer, speak publicly and denounce ethnic cleansing, starvation, and the trampling of international law, yet staff who echo his very words are punished, investigated, or even dismissed? 

This contradiction institutionalizes censorship at the very heart of the United Nations and signals a dangerous erosion of the independence of its international civil service.

If the Secretary-General may speak truth to power, why are staff denied that same right?

Irreconcilable UN Directives (UNDSS Communique of 12 October 2023) – Palestinian UNRWA Staff Punished for Complying with UNDSS Instructions

Today we expose the lies.

For months, UNRWA staff, mostly Palestinian teachers, mostly women, have been unlawfully deprived of their salaries after having fled the brutal genocide in Gaza.

But today, after we obtained and verified the UNDSS communiqué, we publish proof that the United Nations itself encouraged UN Palestinian staff to leave Gaza to a third country.

On 12 October 2023, the USG UNDSS (Department of Safety and Security) issued a binding UN communique to all UN staff in Gaza:

“UNSMS organizations will support, to the extent feasible, locally recruited personnel, who hold relevant documentation, to travel to a third country.”

The following day, 13 October at 03:27 hrs, the Designated Official sent a message to local staff:

“All staff to move with their own transportation south of Wadi Gaza, move to friends or family if you can or continue to KYTC; take supplies with you for several days.”

The UNRWA staff obeyed. They fled under bombardment, paying thousands in “coordination fees” up to USD 45,000 to cross Rafah, and continued working remotely from Egypt.

And yet, for following these very instructions, UNRWA cut off their salaries.

This is an unlawful inversion of authority: one UN hand ordering evacuation, the other punishing compliance. A betrayal of staff, a breach of duty of care, and a stain on the Organization’s legitimacy.

Read my full open letter to the Secretary-General below

I invite colleagues, journalists, and all who stand for justice to read, share, and expose this truth and demand accountability from the Commissioner-General of UNRWA.

open letter to SG UNDSS communique 251125Download

Dont Look Away

This picture is published with the explicit consent of Nadia, the widow of Ahmad, an UNRWA staff member killed by Israel on 29 May 2025 on Al-Tina Street in Khan Younis, in front of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation parcels of death.

Ahmad was no stranger to service to Palestinian refugees. For 19 years, he worked as a psychosocial support officer in UNRWA’s Education Department, walking alongside the children of Gaza through their trauma. When the war erupted on 7 October 2023, Ahmad and Nadia were forced to flee their home more than 19 times, moving from the north to the south, governorate to governorate, under bombardment. Yet every day, Ahmad continued to report to duty. He never stopped serving.

In May 2025, while UNRWA salaries were suspended until 2 June, Ahmad went to check on the humanitarian parcels being distributed. He stopped to speak with a US army officer about the impossible conditions his people faced. Moments later, as he walked away, an Israeli sniper’s bullet pierced his chest. He was killed instantly.

His death reached Nadia not through the Agency he had served for nearly two decades, but through a photograph posted anonymously on Facebook. This is how she discovered her husband had been reduced to a martyr without a name.

Nadia is left with four children, stripped not only of a husband and father but of the family’s only income. Ahmad’s monthly salary was $1,200, their livelihood. When she reported her husband’s death to UNRWA management and sought the compensation to which she was entitled, the Agency offered no support; instead, it immediately cut off Ahmed’s salary, thereby exacerbating the family’s already meager financial situation and deepening her suffering and that of her children. And UNRWA’s position to her was blunt: no family of a staff member killed since 7 October 2023 has received compensation.

Under the UN Malicious Acts Insurance Policy (MAIP), every UN staff member killed in an act of war is entitled to compensation, which for an UNRWA national staff is approximately $123,000. This is not discretionary. It is a right enshrined in the UN rules. Every UN organization pays annual premiums to enroll its international and national staff in this policy. 

Every UN organization, except UNRWA for its Palestinian staff. 

UNRWA International staff are covered. 

UNRWA Palestinian staff are Not.

This is systemic discrimination, sustained knowingly and purposefully by the Commissioner-General. It is an unlawful exclusion of more than 550 Palestinian families from the protections guaranteed by the UN Charter itself.

In addition, Ahmad’s Provident Fund savings, likely between $40,000 and $60,000 remain frozen. These funds belong to him and to his family. Nothing prevents the Agency from releasing them or, at the very least, continuing to pay his salary against the balance of his own savings until proper compensation is processed. This is a basic fiduciary obligation.

The Commissioner-General, Lazzarini, holds the authority to establish exceptional rules in response to exceptional circumstances. There is no circumstance more exceptional than Palestine today, only yesterday formally acknowledged by the United Nations as a genocide. Yet this authority has not been exercised to protect the very staff who continue to serve under fire, or the families of those who have been killed.

Instead, Lazzarini chose to invoke “exceptional rules” to suspend the salaries of more than 500 Palestinian teachers who fled Gaza to Egypt in a desperate attempt to survive. He acted swiftly when it came to punishment, but stands idle when faced with the obligation to ensure dignity and justice for the families of the slain hiding behind vile bureaucratic walls. This selective application of authority reveals not only negligence but a grave breach of duty. 

This is now a matter of the Commissioner-General Lazzarini’s willful breach of duty and abdication of his duty of care toward Palestinian staff, committed openly and brazenly in the midst of a genocide. Why is the Commissioner-General allowed to inflict more suffering on Palestinian staff than Israel itself? 

Nadia gave me this picture to show the world what UNRWA will not say: Israel killed her husband, and the Organization he served abandoned her and her children to starve, under Lazzarini’s watch, while the Secretary-General looks away.

To speak for Nadia is to speak for the 550 families of UNRWA staff killed by Israel and betrayed by the Organization they served.

#SpeakForNadia

UNRWA Cuts Salaries of 480 Women Who Escaped the Bombs

Open Letter
To the Executive Directors of UN Women, UNICEF, and UNFPA

Nadine Kaddoura

Founder @CERTIORARIS and former UN Senior Staff

15 September 2025

To:
Ms. Sima Bahous, Secretary-General of the United Nations

cc:

Deputy Secretary-General, Ms. Amina J. Mohammed

Ms. Catherine Russell, Executive Director, UNICEF 

Ms. Diene Keita, Executive Director of UNFPA

Ms. Reem Alsalem UN Special Rapporteur, Violence Against Women and Girls

I am writing to alert you that 480 UNRWA women teachers have been unlawfully placed on special leave without pay after having fled under the bombs from Gaza to a safe haven outside the occupied palestinian territories, on their own.

In total, 584 staff have been affected, of which 480 are women.

480 women.

That means more than four out of every five staff punished by this measure are women. A shocking 82 per cent.

This level of disproportionate harm to women constitutes a glaring violation of women’s rights and requires immediate corrective measures and urgent redress, consistent with the mandates of your offices.

These women fled Gaza alone, with no support, under conditions of extreme hardship. Many had lost family members, seen their homes destroyed, and were left without access to basic healthcare or food to care for their children or themselves. Neither UNRWA nor any other agency offered them safe shelter, not even a tent.

Not even a tent.

With no protection, they had no choice but to seek safety and urgent medical care on their own.

They continued to work remotely from Egypt, fulfilling their duties despite everything. Yet the Commissioner-General decided unlawfully to place them on exceptional leave without pay for a full year.

The testimonies of these UNRWA women are unbearable. Some are now forced to clean homes in Egypt just to provide food to their children. Women in conflict and displacement, when stripped of income and social protection, face heightened risks of violence, including sexual violence and exploitation. Displacement, combined with economic insecurity, deepens their vulnerability. Women who cannot provide for their children are more easily coerced, more likely to be subjected to abuse in exchange for the bare necessities of survival. Refugee women denied access to jobs or financial services are left even more exposed, more susceptible to violence, abuse, and exploitation. Economic empowerment in such contexts is not simply about income. It is a tool of protection. The provision of salaries, support, and protection services is what now stands between these women and exploitation.

No explanation can soften what you will read next. I leave you to judge for yourself, in their own voices, below.

Testimony 1 – UNRWA Gaza Female Teacher

“After ten years of IVF, I finally had a baby but he was a child with special needs. When the bombing started, I ran with him to Egypt to keep him alive. My husband stayed behind to care for his parents. A few days later, they were all killed, my husband and his parents. Now it is just me and my baby. UNRWA cut my salary, and I cannot pay for kindergarten or for the care my child with special needs requires. I don’t know how I am supposed to manage.”

Testimony 2 – UNRWA Gaza Female Teacher

“My daughter was badly injured and had to go through more than seventeen operations. I brought her out of Gaza on a medical care option so she could be treated, but I had to leave my other children behind. They depend only on me and on my salary. Instead of helping me in this situation, UNRWA put me on unpaid leave for a whole year even though I kept working remotely with full dedication while caring for my daughter in hospital. How am I supposed to feed my other children in Gaza if I don’t even have my salary of 1,000 USD? What should I do? Tell me! What should I do?”

Testimony 3 – UNRWA Gaza Female Teacher

“I fled Gaza with my three children, running from the hell we were living through. When UNRWA cut my salary, I had no choice but to leave my children at home alone while I went to clean apartments for strangers just to bring them something to eat. How can I call this survival? What kind of life is this for me and for my children? Where is my dignity?”

Testimony 4 – UNRWA Gaza Female Teacher

“I left Gaza with my husband so he could receive cancer treatment. Six weeks later, he died. Now my children are still in Gaza, with no one to provide for them. They are living in tents, searching for food, suffering from malnutrition, and needing urgent care. And I have no salary to provide for them. Tell me, how am I supposed to keep them alive from here?”

In addition to the inherent right to protection and dignity, this decision directly contravenes United Nations General Assembly Resolution 64/290 (2010) on the right to education in emergencies. That resolution, grounded in international human rights and humanitarian law, explicitly recognizes education as lifesaving and fundamental during armed conflict. It affirms that education plays a critical role in preventing abuses against affected populations, including sexual violence, exploitation, trafficking, and the worst forms of child labour.

Further, the Incheon Declaration (2015), endorsed by UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, UNHCR, UN Women, and UNFPA, established the global Education 2030 Agenda. Paragraph 25 clearly affirms that “education in emergency contexts is immediately protective, providing life-saving knowledge and skills and psychosocial support to those affected by crisis.”It also stresses that education equips children, youth, and adults with the tools to withstand and prevent disaster, conflict, and disease.

Women who once taught children in Gaza now find themselves silenced, cut off from their salaries, and forced into conditions of exploitation simply to feed their families.

I leave you with the image of Ritaj, a young Gazan student, sitting among the rubble with her calculator and notebooks. She went out of her building to find connection and to sit for her exams, despite being displaced and having lost her home. Even in destruction, she carried with her the tools of learning, the last anchor she had.

This picture, besides being a testament to this girl’s courageous determination, is also the clearest proof that education in emergencies is life-saving, it is protective, and it is dignity itself. To strip women teachers of their salaries in this context is to sever the very lifeline that allows children like Ritaj to hold on to hope.

I ask you, as women leading entities with clear mandates to protect women and safeguard their rights, including the right to education and the rights of children, to take immediate corrective action. 

Under your mandates, you hold a direct responsibility to these Gazan women and their children. Failure to intervene and redress this situation would constitute not only a breach of that responsibility but also a denial of the protection your offices are obliged to uphold. 

I urge you to exert all necessary pressure to rescind this unlawful decision and to restore the rights and entitlements of the UNRWA women affected by this unlawful decision.

Nadine Kaddoura

Founder CERTIORARIS; and;

former United Nations senior staff

Open letter to ED UNWomen, UNICEF and UNFPA 15092025Download

UNRWA Under Siege from Within: The Commissioner-General’s War on His Own Palestinian Staff

In the past year, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has made himself directly complicit in stripping Palestinian staff of their rights, protection, and dignity.

Here is the record:

🔴 1. At the start of the Gaza war, he ordered international staff to evacuate UNRWA facilities and abandoned the Palestinian staff with nothing but a two-word text: “Good luck.” That message exists. We have the proof.

🔴 2. UN rules guarantee national staff relocation within the duty station and 30 days of DSA. In Gaza, the safe haven was Rafah. He excluded them, denying protection. As a result, hundreds were killed.

🔴 3. UN rules entitle all staff to death/disability compensation in acts of war. Each family should have received ~$123,000. Lazzarini willingly excluded Palestinian staff while fully covering internationals. He then handed grieving families $300. Not just a deliberate act of degradation, but a total disregard for Palestinian staff rights under UN rules.

🔴 4. Over 550 UNRWA staff have been killed by Israel. Their provident fund savings (between $50k–$100k each) remain blocked by UNRWA. Lazzarini hides behind “legal impediments” while surviving families barely struggle to survive.

🔴 5. Lazzarini instructed the suspension of salaries of 650 education staff who fled Gaza after their homes were bombed and their families slaughtered. This means over 5,000 dependents cut off from their only lifeline.

A few days ago, after Israel ordered the displacement of over one million Palestinians from Gaza City, the UN Spokesperson, reporting on OCHA’s tracking admitted they had monitored the movement of about 10,000 people to the south.

The Spokesperson also said that for the vast majority, leaving was “simply not possible,” with transportation costs exceeding $1,000. Lazzarini does not get to decide the fate of UNRWA national staff. This money is not his. It is the hard-earned savings of staff who gave more than 20 years of their lives to the Agency. He has no right to hold his own staff hostage when those funds could mean the difference between staying trapped under the killing machine or escaping with their children and saving their lives.

And yes, many will come and attack, thinking that the Agency is bankrupt. That is simply not true, and they do not have the right information and that is part of the problem. Lazzarini and the Western-led management continue to hide the truth, and people believe what they say. This money sits in the savings of the Agency, built over more than 20 years, and it does not depend on donor or external funding. These are the life savings of Palestinian staff who gave decades of their lives in service.

No Commissioner-General has the right to steal them.

The problem is not UNRWA as an organization. The problem is a Western-led senior management, imposed and sustained through external political influence, that has become nothing less than an accomplice to Israel, advancing its strategy to dismantle the Agency and to strip Palestinian staff of their rights under international law.

The remedy is clear: UNRWA must be decolonized. Its governance must be returned to those it was created to serve, free from foreign control and political manipulation. Anything less perpetuates illegality, denies staff their rights, and turns the Agency into an instrument of oppression rather than protection. Decolonization is not optional. It is the only lawful path forward.

And one must ask: why are Arab senior officials not leading this Agency, while it remains in the hands of Western-led, U.S.-backed appointees?

What legitimacy can an Agency claim when its leadership is imposed from outside, serving foreign agendas instead of its own staff and the people of Palestine?

Answer that, before you speak of neutrality or reform. And to Lazzarini: stop evading your responsibilities. Do what is right, for once, by the very staff whose rights you have trampled.