UN chief appoints independent panel to probe allegations on agency for Palestinian refugees

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced Monday that he is appointing an independent new panel to determine if the UN's Palestine refugee agency or UNRWA is acting neutrally in its operations, in response to "allegations of serious breaches."

The external review group will be led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, Guterres said in a statement. She will work with three research firms in carrying out the probe: the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.

The panel will be seated Feb. 14, and is expected to submit an interim report to Guterres by late March with a final public report to follow the month after. The oversight comes in response to a request made by UNRWA Commissioner-General Phillipe Lazzarini.

At least 18 countries suspended funding for the agency based on Israel's allegations that a dozen of the agency's roughly 13,000 staff members in Gaza were involved in the Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas.

The UN agency has launched an investigation into the allegations, and Guterres has been engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity to have donors resume funding. The UNRWA said it could shut down all of its operations across the region this month if funding is not restored.

The review panel will conduct its work in parallel with the ongoing investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services. The secretary-general said Israel's cooperation in that internal probe "will be critical to the success of the investigation."

"These accusations come at a time when UNRWA, the largest UN organization in the region, is working under extremely challenging conditions to deliver life-saving assistance to the 2 million people in the Gaza Strip who depend on it for their survival amidst one of the largest and most complex humanitarian crises in the world," he said.

The review group that Guterres is setting up will be tasked with identifying mechanisms and procedures that the UNRWA has established "to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations or information indicating that the principle may have been breached."

It will also seek to determine "how those mechanisms and procedures have, or have not, been implemented in practice," and will "make recommendations for the improvement and strengthening, if necessary, of the mechanisms and procedures that are currently in place."