Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 23rd Feb. Head of an independent review team on UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, Catherine Colonna on Thursday briefed reporters in New York said that researchers have been deployed to the Middle East and requests issued to meet with Israel officials.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed a review team in early February after Israeli allegations that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel in October, the group aims to meet Palestinian Authority officials and may request a visit to Gaza.
Ms. Colonna former French minister spoke outside the Security Council after meeting with Mr. Guterres said that “My goal is to deliver a report that is rigorous and evidence based…and to do our best so we can help UNRWA deliver under the mandate given [to it] by the General Assembly,” she added.
She said that the group began its work on 13 February and expects to have an interim report by late March.
Ms. Colonna noted that its role includes clarifying the process in place at the UN agency to ensure neutrality and how it is implemented.
UNRWA was set up in 1949 serves 6 million Palestine refugees in the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and in besieged Gaza, where many Palestinians urgently depend on the agency for assistance amid Israel’s continued military offensive in response to the October attacks.
According to a joint appeal from UN agency chiefs issued stated that the ongoing war in Gaza has killed 30,000 Palestinians, displaced more than one million and has restricted humanitarian aid from entering the enclave, which now faces severe hunger.
The goal of this “very sensitive” mission is “to find the ways and means to see that UNRWA does everything it can to ensure neutrality, which is one of the basic principles of the agency and a principle that’s difficult to respect in the circumstances – but must be respected”, Ms. Colonna said.
She said the group intends to issue recommendations in its final report, which is expected on 20 April.
Ms. Colonna is working with a team from three research organizations: the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden; Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway; and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.
They are tasked with assessing how its mechanisms and procedures have, or have not, been implemented in practice and whether every practicable effort has been made to apply them to their full potential, considering the particular operational, political and security environment in which the agency works.
She added that a final report will be made public.
