When UNRWA began operations in 1950 it served 750,000 refugees and today it serves 5.9 million so-called “refugees.” Even though the majority of the original 750,000 refugees are no longer alive and most of UNRWA’s beneficiaries today do not qualify for refugee status under the 1951 Refugee Convention because they either have Jordanian citizenship (2.4 million) or continue to live in Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza Strip) under Palestinian rule (2.5 million), the number of UNRWA refugees continues to increase exponentially year after year. This is due to (1) UNRWA’s unique definition of Palestine refugees by which “descendants of Palestine refugee males” are automatically eligible for UNRWA status and (2) its lack of a mandate to resettle refugees or to seek lasting durable solutions for refugees. Thus, while UNHCR - the UN agency responsible for all refugees worldwide other than Palestine refugees - actively seeks to resettle refugees, UNRWA only provides services “pending a just and lasting solution to their plight.”
Aside from the natural inflation of UNRWA’s refugee numbers due to its broad eligibility criteria and problematic mandate, UNRWA further artificially inflates the numbers by failing to remove beneficiaries from its rosters even after they move abroad. For example, in its 2017 annual report, UNRWA admitted that the number of refugees registered in Lebanon included many who had “left the country over the years without notifying UNRWA.”
The eyewitness account below makes clear that even when an UNRWA refugee affirmatively requests to be stricken from the agency’s rosters, UNRWA refuses to comply - “we have no process to delete records.” This reinforces that UNRWA’s refugees numbers are highly inflated and underscores how UNRWA’s approach to Palestine refugees only exacerbates the problem rather than offering any solutions. It is long past time for the international community to recognize what former Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said in 2018 that UNRWA “has become part of the problem. It supplies the ammunition to continue the conflict.”
