UNRWA Claims 41 Reforms Completed. UN Watch Counts 13

A report released by UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization that monitors the United Nations, has intensified the dispute over structural reforms within the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The audit says UNRWA has fully completed no more than 13 of the 50 reform recommendations issued in April 2024 by an independent review group led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna. UNRWA had previously claimed to have completed 41 of those 50 items.

The disagreement has raised broader questions about how the world body monitors operational neutrality in conflict zones. At issue is whether internal administrative milestones satisfy the independent panel’s recommendations or whether UNRWA’s progress metrics overstate actual policy enforcement.

UN Watch reported that UNRWA routinely classifies initial administrative steps as completed structural reforms. Those steps include drafting policy frameworks, initiating pilot schemes, and preparing cost estimates, even when full operational implementation has not occurred on the ground.

The review of UNRWA’s operations began in February 2024, after UN Secretary-General António Guterres received detailed Israeli intelligence allegations that several UNRWA staff members had taken part in the October 7, 2023 attack led by Hamas. Guterres also appointed Colonna to lead an independent review group alongside the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights. A separate inquiry was conducted by the UN’s internal investigative body, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).

When Colonna delivered the final 50-point report in April 2024, she recommended urgent measures to strengthen political neutrality, improve employee vetting, and reform educational curricula. She specifically noted that educational materials in some UNRWA-run schools contained problematic elements, including the glorification of violent struggle, incitement, and maps that did not depict the State of Israel. The report demanded a strict zero-tolerance policy across all facilities.

UN Watch cited UNRWA’s employee vetting procedures as one example of the disputed accounting. The agency listed a “Commercial Vetting Pilot & Costed Plan” as a completed reform, alongside other screening measures. UN Watch said that establishing a pilot framework or implementation blueprint does not amount to a fully functioning, independent background-check system capable of screening all local personnel.

Discrepancies were also identified in educational oversight. UNRWA counted systematic textbook reviews and randomized classroom inspections as completed items, while its internal policy prohibiting problematic educational content remained designated as “in progress.”

“UNRWA is grading its own homework—and giving itself credit for reforms that exist mainly on paper,” UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer said. “A policy is not a reform if it is ignored, unenforced or blocked by staff unions dominated by Hamas.”

Neuer added that the audit highlights substantive operational failures rather than technical disagreements over terminology. “UNRWA says the job is done, yet teachers tied to terrorist organizations remain in classrooms, Hamas-dominated unions obstruct discipline, and children continue to be exposed to incitement. Those are real-world consequences, not technicalities,” he said.

United Nations officials defended the agency’s self-assessment and operational monitoring mechanisms. Speaking at a news briefing at UN headquarters in New York, UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric rejected assertions that the internal monitoring amounted to an administrative exercise. “It is not just checking boxes for the sake of checking boxes,” Dujarric said. “It’s about the implementation of those things.”

Dujarric said UNRWA routinely submits progress reports to the UN General Assembly, holds integrity sessions accessible to all member states, and provides donor governments with direct avenues to evaluate agency practices. On employee background checks and screening procedures, he said UNRWA relies in part on intelligence and security cooperation with host authorities in the regions where it operates.

“We rely on the member states also, where we operate, who have the capacity to check people to do so,” Dujarric said. He noted that UNRWA shares complete staff registries with authorities in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. “If there are concerns, they need to be shared directly with UNRWA. When they are, they take action.”

The accountability dispute has coincided with heightened attention from U.S. lawmakers and political leadership regarding American foreign assistance and intelligence referrals involving UN agencies. President Donald Trump recently amplified a U.S. government investigative report that referred more than 100 current or former UNRWA employees over alleged connections to Hamas, sharing the report on Truth Social in August.

The U.S. government has repeatedly altered its funding posture toward UNRWA under successive administrations. During his first term, in August 2018, Trump halted all U.S. contributions to UNRWA, describing the agency’s operations and financial model as “irredeemably flawed.” President Joe Biden restored U.S. funding in 2021, with Washington providing more than $300 million annually and becoming the agency’s single largest donor country.

Following the October 7 attack and subsequent employee allegations, however, the U.S. government suspended foreign assistance to the agency. In March 2024, Congress passed and Biden signed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024, which legally prohibits any direct U.S. federal funding from being allocated to UNRWA through at least March 2025.

UNRWA was established by UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) in December 1949 following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and officially began operations in May 1950. Unlike the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which oversees displaced persons globally, UNRWA operates under a specific mandate to provide social services, healthcare, and primary education to registered Palestine refugees.

That mandate covers five operational areas: the Gaza Strip, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Because the vast majority of UNRWA’s more than 30,000 employees are locally recruited Palestinian residents rather than international civil servants, internal governance, personnel vetting, and institutional political neutrality have remained central friction points among donor nations and host governments for decades.