UN Watch report: UNRWA overstated reform implementation

The Colonna Review was originally commissioned by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres after international donors suspended or paused approximately $450 million in funding.

By JNS

According to a new investigation by the NGO UN Watch, the results of which were released on Monday, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) overstated its completion of reforms promised to donor governments following revelations that employees participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.

UN Watch documented that while UNRWA publicly claimed it had completed 41 of 50 reforms recommended by the Colonna Review, many of them were implemented on paper only.

“UNRWA has graded its own homework and awarded itself high marks,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.

“Issuing a policy is not the same as enforcing it. Closing a recommendation does not mean the underlying problem has been solved.”

UN Watch said UNRWA’s principal terror-screening tool remains a U.N. Security Council sanctions list that fails to include Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Investigators also found that the agency classified Staff Union Statute revisions as complete after transmitting a draft that the unions never adopted.

Additionally, one recommendation was officially closed as unimplementable but still was counted as though it was toward completion.

Educational reforms were measured by administrative procedures rather than curriculum content.

The Colonna Review was originally commissioned by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres after international donors suspended or paused approximately $450 million in funding.

Sixteen donor states took that action after Jerusalem revealed that 12 UNRWA employees had directly participated in the Hamas-led mass murder and kidnapping rampage in the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7, leading to governments announcing the suspension of funding.