The Blogs: UNRWA: Reforms? The Question of Trust Remains

Two years after the Colonna Report, UNRWA says it has significantly strengthened its neutrality safeguards. A new report by UN Watch challenges how much those reforms have actually accomplished. Between Israeli allegations, United Nations investigations, US inquiries, and UNRWA’s own responses, the issue deserves more than sweeping conclusions. The central question is now whether UNRWA has the means to guarantee the neutrality required of it — and whether Israel had sufficient grounds to conclude that the trust required for continued cooperation had broken down.

Since October 7, 2023, the debate over UNRWA has too often swung between two equally simplistic claims.

For some, the presence of members of terrorist organizations among its staff is enough to establish that the agency itself has been infiltrated, or even that it is complicit.

For others, the relatively small number of individually substantiated cases is enough to conclude that Israel’s allegations were largely unfounded.

Neither conclusion withstands careful scrutiny.

Identifying nine employees who may have participated in the October 7 attacks obviously does not justify condemning an institution employing tens of thousands of people.

But that observation leaves a far more important question unanswered:

Did an international organization operating in an environment controlled by Hamas for nearly two decades actually have the means to know whom it was employing, what was being taught in its schools, and what was taking place in its facilities?

That is where the debate now belongs.

Nine Employees Do Not Make an Institution

Start with what has been established.

After Israel made its allegations, the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, OIOS, investigated 19 UNRWA employees.

In one case, no evidence was obtained. In nine others, the evidence was deemed insufficient. In the remaining nine cases, OIOS concluded that the information obtained indicated that the employees may have been involved in the October 7 attacks. UNRWA terminated their employment.

UNRWA subsequently emphasized that the evidentiary threshold required to establish the allegations had not been met and continued to request additional evidence from Israel.

This did not establish collective responsibility on the part of UNRWA.

But neither did it establish that the risk identified by Israel was imaginary.

The more important question therefore concerns not those nine individuals but the system that was supposed to identify such cases.

The Colonna Report: Neither Exoneration nor Indictment

That institutional question was precisely the purpose of the independent review led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna.

Its mandate was not to investigate individual participation in October 7. OIOS was conducting that inquiry separately.

The Colonna review examined the mechanisms and procedures UNRWA had in place to ensure compliance with the humanitarian principle of neutrality.

Its findings deserve to be presented in their full complexity.

The report concluded that UNRWA had a more developed approach to neutrality than comparable UN entities or NGOs. At the same time, it identified continuing problems involving political expression by some employees, certain content in school materials, and the politicization of staff unions.

It issued 50 recommendations across eight areas, ranging from governance and internal oversight to staff neutrality, facilities, education, and unions.

Those findings are not contradictory.

An institution can have comparatively sophisticated rules while still experiencing serious problems enforcing them.

The distinction between rules and effectiveness is now at the heart of the issue.

UNRWA Says It Has Undertaken Major Reforms

It would be inaccurate to claim that UNRWA has done nothing.

One year after the Colonna Report, the agency said it had fully implemented 20 of the 50 recommendations. By the first quarter of 2026, it reported that 40 recommendations — 80 percent — had been closed. UNRWA’s own progress report documents that figure.

The agency points to strengthened investigative and ethics mechanisms, new procedures, additional controls, and greater management accountability.

Those measures should be acknowledged.

But they immediately raise another question:

What exactly does it mean for a recommendation to be “closed”?

Is an Administrative Reform the Same as a Completed Reform?

This is precisely where UN Watch’s new report focuses its criticism.

Its Report Card on UNRWA Reform reviews the 50 recommendations individually and compares UNRWA’s claimed accomplishments with what the authors regard as the recommendations’ intended outcomes.

UN Watch argues that no more than 13 of the 50 recommendations had actually been fulfilled in accordance with their purpose, while UNRWA had described 41 as completed in the documents examined by the organization.

It is essential to state clearly that this is UN Watch’s assessment, not a finding by a court or a UN oversight body.

Still, the disagreement it exposes deserves examination.

UNRWA may consider a recommendation closed once the requested mechanism has been created, a procedure adopted, a pilot program completed, or an implementation plan established.

UN Watch asks a different question: Is the mechanism actually working, and has the underlying problem been addressed?

There is therefore no need to use the word “duplicity.”

The issue can be stated more precisely:

There may be a gap between administrative reform and operational results.

Who Screens the Staff?

UNRWA is neither a police force nor an intelligence service.

The agency itself acknowledges this.

When it dismissed 70 employees in Gaza in June 2026, UNRWA stressed that it did not possess law-enforcement or intelligence capabilities and therefore depended on cooperation from states, including Israel, to protect its operations and neutrality.

That is a reasonable argument.

But it contains its own paradox.

If the agency does not itself possess the means to detect certain clandestine affiliations, how far can it guarantee the neutrality of its personnel?

That question matters far more than whether nine, 19, or some other number of individuals have been identified.

More Than 100 US Referrals: A Warning Sign, Not 100 Convictions

US investigations have changed the scale of the issue, but not the nature of the evidence.

In August 2026, USAID’s Office of Inspector General — a statutorily independent law-enforcement and oversight body — said it had referred more than 100 current or former UNRWA employees to the State Department for independent review over alleged participation in the October 7 attacks and/or affiliation with Hamas. Three former employees had recently been proposed for debarment.

Caution is essential.

A referral for review is not a conviction.

More than 100 referrals do not mean more than 100 terrorists have been proven guilty.

But it would be equally difficult to dismiss an independent investigation of this scale as meaningless.

It raises an institutional question:

Why are outside investigations identifying a substantial number of potentially serious cases that UNRWA’s internal controls had not necessarily detected?

Then UNRWA Itself Dismissed 70 Employees

On June 11, 2026, UNRWA’s acting Commissioner-General, Christian Saunders, announced the immediate dismissal of 70 employees in Gaza.

The agency explicitly stated that the decision was not disciplinary and did not validate the allegations against those individuals.

It said it had acted following a safety and security assessment in order to reduce risks to refugees, staff, and facilities.

That distinction must be respected.

UNRWA did not say: “These 70 people are guilty.”

It did, however, conclude that the risk was serious enough to warrant their immediate dismissal.

That is not proof of guilt.

But it is another element in the crisis of confidence.

Schools, Facilities, and Unions

Personnel are only one part of the issue.

The Colonna Report itself identified problems involving educational materials and the politicization of staff unions. It also recommended stronger safeguards for the neutrality of UNRWA facilities.

Again, responsibilities must be distinguished.

A textbook supplied by a local authority is not necessarily written by UNRWA.

But an agency that uses it in its classrooms cannot be indifferent to its contents.

Similarly, UNRWA does not have its own police force capable of coercively inspecting every facility.

That limitation can be cited in its defense: a humanitarian agency cannot reasonably be expected to perform the functions of a state.

But it also produces the opposite question:

If the agency lacks the means to detect certain serious violations, how far can it guarantee that those violations are not occurring?

That is the fundamental ambiguity of the UNRWA case.

Could Israel Still Trust UNRWA?

This brings the discussion back to Israel’s decision.

On October 28, 2024, the Knesset passed two laws concerning UNRWA.

The first, barring UNRWA activities on sovereign Israeli territory, passed 92–10. The second, prohibiting official Israeli authorities from maintaining contact with the agency and ending the cooperation framework established in 1967, passed 87–9.

Those majorities matter.

They show that the break with UNRWA extended beyond the government or a single political faction.

A parliamentary majority does not, of course, establish that a decision is legally justified.

The real question is different.

Did Israel have to prove that UNRWA, as an institution, belonged to Hamas before deciding that it could no longer trust the agency?

That was not necessarily the relevant threshold for a state responsible for its own security.

Israel could conclude that the guarantees provided regarding UNRWA personnel, facilities, and neutrality were no longer sufficient.

That does not automatically turn every Israeli allegation into an established fact.

Nor does it resolve the international legal disputes created by Israel’s legislation.

But the evidence accumulated since October 7 makes it difficult to argue that Israel’s loss of trust rested on nothing.

What the ICJ Said — and What It Did Not Say

Another distinction is essential.

The International Court of Justice did not adjudicate a lawsuit between Israel and UNRWA.

UNRWA is not a state and was not a party to contentious proceedings against Israel.

The ICJ was asked by the United Nations General Assembly, in the exercise of its advisory jurisdiction, to provide a legal opinion concerning Israel’s obligations in relation to the presence and activities of the United Nations, other international organizations, and third states in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The distinction matters.

An advisory opinion carries substantial legal authority, but it remains advisory. Unlike judgments in contentious cases between states, it is generally not legally binding.

Most importantly, it is not an audit of UNRWA.

The Court is neither an inspection service for the agency nor an intelligence body responsible for monitoring thousands of employees, schools, and facilities.

It would therefore be excessive to treat the opinion as a judgment that “cleared” or “exonerated” UNRWA.

That was neither its purpose nor its function.

When the Court concluded that the claim that UNRWA as a whole lacked neutrality had not been sufficiently substantiated, that conclusion should be read for exactly what it says.

Insufficient evidence to establish an institution-wide failure is not evidence that no failures exist.

Conversely, Israel’s disputes with the ICJ do not justify dismissing the Court’s legal analysis simply because the Israeli government contests it.

The two levels must remain distinct.

The legal question concerns Israel’s international obligations.

The factual question concerns UNRWA’s actual ability to guarantee its neutrality.

One does not eliminate the other.

UNRWA Is Not the Same Thing as Aid to Palestinians

One final confusion should be avoided.

UNRWA and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians are not synonymous.

The agency nevertheless remains a humanitarian operator on a very large scale. Abruptly replacing it would therefore create enormous operational difficulties.

Criticizing UNRWA’s functioning does not mean calling for an end to humanitarian assistance to Palestinians.

Conversely, the need for that assistance cannot make the institution historically responsible for delivering part of it untouchable.

An institution is a means.

Assistance to civilians is the objective.

If trust in the means has been seriously damaged, a legitimate question follows:

How can essential services be preserved while their neutrality is better guaranteed?

That is likely where the real debate over any post-UNRWA arrangement will eventually have to begin.

What UN Watch Actually Concludes

UN Watch does not merely argue that some of the Colonna recommendations have been incompletely implemented.

It contends that UNRWA has overstated the effectiveness of its reforms by too often treating administrative procedures, pilot projects, training programs, or future commitments as completed transformations.

Its authors go further.

They argue that some of UNRWA’s neutrality problems are structural and cannot be solved simply by adding more internal procedures.

That is UN Watch’s conclusion.

It is not the conclusion of the Colonna Report, the United Nations, or a court.

It should be presented as such.

But it should also be available for readers to examine.

Readers should be able to compare the competing accounts directly.

Neither Collective Condemnation nor Willful Blindness

That is probably the most accurate way to frame the case.

Nine employees do not condemn an institution with tens of thousands of workers.

More than 100 US administrative referrals are not more than 100 convictions.

The dismissal of 70 employees for security reasons does not establish the individual guilt of those 70 people.

Fifty recommendations do not prove that everything was defective.

And 40 recommendations declared closed do not prove that all the problems that made those recommendations necessary have disappeared.

But taken together, these developments reveal something that would be equally unreasonable to ignore:

a continuing crisis of confidence in UNRWA’s ability to guarantee its own neutrality.

The agency says it has undertaken major reforms. The available documents show that substantial changes have indeed been made.

Its critics argue that those changes remain insufficient to address fundamental vulnerabilities.

Israel has long argued that the problem is structural.

The facts that have emerged since October 7 do not prove every Israeli allegation.

But they reveal enough genuine problems that Israel’s loss of trust cannot reasonably be dismissed as an accusation without substance.

The reality therefore lies far from either caricature: an UNRWA wholly complicit with Hamas, or an impeccable agency that is merely the victim of a political campaign.

It is more uncomfortable than either.

A humanitarian organization can perform indispensable work while simultaneously suffering from institutional vulnerabilities serious enough for a state to conclude that it can no longer place its trust in that organization.

That is probably where the UNRWA issue now stands.

The question for the agency is no longer simply how many recommendations it can declare closed.

It is whether the reforms it has undertaken can actually guarantee the condition on which its legitimacy ultimately depends: