The international histrionics about the Israeli Knesset’s vote to ban the activities of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) have spread. Among those perpetuating the idea that UNRWA cannot be replaced are Representative Rashida Tlaib, U.N. secretary general António Guterres, the U.S. State Department, and a range of U.N. officials.
The view that UNRWA cannot be replaced is a shibboleth of the strain of ideological multilateralism that views the agency’s role in October 7 as bad but not disqualifying. “UNRWA is the principal means by which essential assistance is supplied to Palestine refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. There is no alternative to UNRWA,” Guterres said this week. State department spokesman Matthew Miller called the agency “irreplaceable.”
But there are frameworks under which the U.N. could continue to provide humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in a post-UNRWA future. It can lean on the various U.N. agencies that operate across the globe without UNRWA’s strange mandate to serve the nationalist aspirations of one people. Former Trump administration officials Richard Goldberg and Bonnie Glick sketched out the contours of a plan to replace UNRWA, and ultimately transition Palestinians away from dependency on the U.N., in a report several months ago for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. That plan, in short, leans on the U.S. Agency for International Development, in addition to the U.N.’s Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), World Food Programme (WFP), and Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Rather than to just trust “international civil servants” to do their due diligence again, it would create an “international trust for Gaza” led by USAID and OCHA to oversee the following activities:
USAID, working with OCHA or another organization with a Middle East presence, could coordinate shelter, non-food items, and livelihood issues (the latter directly through USAID, DFC, and/or the World Bank); food security, emergency telecommunications, and logistics through the WFP; healthcare through the WHO; nutrition through UNICEF; water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) through UNICEF; and education through UNICEF, ensuring appropriate textbooks and teaching materials.