If UNRWA is a problem, don’t kill its alternative – opinion

A lean, mean U.N. operation is what the White House should want.

By Michael Rubin, Middle East Forum

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is a blight on both refugees and the United Nations system.

Founded in 1949, its own administrators in 1951 recommended that it disband.

While the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) helped settle refugees and prevent permanent refugee crises worldwide, UNRWA did the opposite: It preserved the crisis.

In the 50 years since 1953, UNRWA statistics show the Palestinian refugee population in camps more than quadrupling, while the percentage of Palestinians in camps remained constant.

Arguably, the failure to settle refugees—including in portions of historic Palestine—laid the groundwork for terrorism, war, and the October 7, 2023, disaster.

In addition, by the admission of its former counsel, lax UNRWA rules have enabled the group to hire Hamas terrorists and activists who seek to hijack UNRWA with their own political agendas.

The Trump administration is correct to blacklist UNRWA.

The problem is that the State Department is today elevating petty disputes rooted in its own fumbling personnel and nomination process into a self-defeating crisis.

While the White House wanted—and prematurely announced—a Heritage Foundation scholar as deputy UNHCR commissioner, it ignored repeated requests rooted in common practice to present three candidates capable of acting as a chief operations officer for a multibillion-dollar agency from whom UNHCR could choose.

That scholar is understandably bitter, but his sour grapes are detrimental to Washington’s interests and the White House and State Department’s desire to alter policy.

Traditionally, UNHCR is run by a West European with an American deputy and receives the largest share of its funding from the United States.

For decades, West European stewardship has imbued UNHCR with an attitude that broadened the definition of “refugee” and threatened, like UNRWA, to preserve the problem rather than resolve it.

On January 1, 2026, however, Barham Salih, the former president of Iraq, became High Commissioner. His appointment sent shockwaves through the system.

He was the first High Commissioner who had been a refugee himself and he refused to conflate those temporarily displaced by war with economic migrants.

Put another way, UNHCR could help a refugee escape conflict, but that refugee would have no natural right then to onward travel or to select the country to which they would migrate.

Put in the North American context, if a Honduran refugee fled violence, he might settle in Guatemala or even Mexico but had no right to come to America and seek asylum.

Likewise, a Syrian refugee could settle in Turkey or Lebanon temporarily but could not move into Europe.

UNHCR implemented a “50 by 35” approach: reducing refugee rolls by 50 percent by 2035.

A lean, mean U.N. operation is what the White House should want. In addition, Barham was probably too pro-American for his own good.

With U.S. cutbacks leading it to fall into sixth place among donors, Barham, out of gratitude for America’s traditional largesse, still decided to give the position to an American over European demands that they get the appointment.

The elephant in the room is the juxtaposition between UNRWA and UNHCR. The first is a disaster; the latter, technocratic and productive.

While UNHCR by its charter cannot replace any other United Nations agency that continues to exist, there will be no way to convince the international community to end UNRWA’s multi-decade disaster if there is no alternative in the wings.

In a way, the State Department and Heritage scholar Simon Hankinson are throwing a life raft to Hamas. That is shameful.