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THE CASE AGAINST UNRWA

How UN schools use our tax money to teach Palestinian children to hate and kill Jews 

New Interactive Platform

The UNRWA Terror Network

As UNRWA mounts a diplomatic offensive to reestablish itself in Gaza after the ICJ dismissal of terror-link accusations, UN Watch unveils the UNRWA Terror Network, an interactive investigative platform exposing the elaborate network of individuals who use UNRWA’s “right of return” mandate to perpetuate violence against Israel. 

The UNRWA Terror Network presents verifiable cases of 490 UNRWA staff who are members of terrorist groups, educators who glorify mass murder, terror leaders influencing UNRWA decisions, and the top UNRWA officials collaborating with them. The database also traces institutional links between UNRWA offices, Hamas-controlled unions, and extremist-aligned NGOs operating under the guise of humanitarianism. 

The end result is clear: corruption within UNRWA is systemic, not accidental. Dive into the network yourself to explore how deep UNRWA’s corruption runs.

Explore the Network

unrwa exposed

Is UNRWA really a "lifesaving" organization? The truth is the opposite.

Mainstream media and influential figures like Justin Trudeau, Jordan’s Queen Rania, Owen Jones, Catherine Colonna and many others mindlessly parrot UNRWA’s false “lifesaving” mantra. UN Watch exposes that the truth is the opposite. UNRWA’s actual purpose is to perpetuate hatred, war and terrorism.

Through consistent monitoring and over a decade of research, UN Watch has developed a clear case setting the record straight – UNRWA is not a partner for peace in the region. 

Take Action

Defund UNRWA

Enough is enough. UNRWA must be dissolved and replaced.

Don’t let your government continue spending your money on the radicalization of Gaza. Humanitarian aid and UNRWA’s toxic mandate must be immediately decoupled. Aid should flow through other agencies which already operate in Gaza, and which are experts at this task everywhere else in the world, such as the WHO, the World Food Programme, or UNICEF.

It’s time to stop the perverse logic of an agency that perpetuates war. It’s time to defund UNRWA.

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LIVE EVENT

International Summit for a Future Beyond UNRWA

The international summit addressed the humanitarian situation in Gaza and planned for a future beyond UNRWA. The goal was to develop a program of action for the international community to fully ensure the humanitarian and other needs of Gazans, while preparing to transition away from a failed agency.

The summit took place as a side event to the 2024 opening of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which gathered the UN’s highest officials, including secretary-general Antonio Guterres, and foreign ministers from around the world.

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Exposed UNRWA Employees and Counting

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UN Watch's Global Campaign

Italian Senate Hearing

UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer addressed the Italian Senate in September 2025 to reveal new evidence against UNRWA’s top educators. He revealed how Hamas leaders have openly controlled UNRWA’s education system for decades. Terror chiefs were employed as school principals, union heads, and senior educators — positions from which they shaped the curriculum, oversaw thousands of teachers, and turned classrooms into incubators of hate.

Rather than promoting peace and human rights, UNRWA handed generations of Palestinian children to extremists who glorify suicide bombers, recruit child soldiers, and call for Israel’s destruction. The billion-dollar UN agency knew about these affiliations and did nothing.

With picture evidence, Mr. Neuer walked senators through the gross and systematic violations of various leading UNRWA Union figures and exposed how they and their successors work on behalf of Hamas to indoctrinate children in violently invading Israel and perpetuating the cycle of violence. 

Dutch Parliament Hearing

UNRWA is in gross breach of the neutrality commitments that it recently made to donors in connection with the April 2024 Colonna Report. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has caved into the demands of a terrorist coalition in Lebanon to reinstate Hamas-linked school principal and union leader Fateh al-Sharif, following a two-month pressure campaign against UNRWA’s senior management in Lebanon.

The report presented to the Dutch parliament details Fateh al-Sharif’s links to Hamas and other terrorist groups, his celebration of October 7th, his incitement to violence, and his coordination of political activities on school grounds involving children.  

Capitol Hill Hearing

UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer addressed U.S. Congress to ask it to take the lead in dissolving UNRWA. During his remarks, Mr. Neuer presented UN Watch’s new report, which details how UNRWA teachers in a 3,000-member UNRWA staff Telegram group cheered and celebrated Hamas’s October 7th massacre.

With credible evidence that at least 12 UNRWA employees participated in the October 7 attacks, 1,200 employees are linked to terrorist groups, and 6,000 have family members with ties to terrorist groups, it is immoral to continue funding the agency with taxpayer dollars.

The real core of the problem is the agency’s mission, which is to perpetuate the war of 1948 and send the message to Palestinians that their true home is in Israel, and where they live is merely a refugee camp. Plenty of other international agencies provide humanitarian aid to every other conflict zone on earth. The time to find alternatives to UNRWA is now.

UN Watch is censored at UN

When UN Watch confronts the UN with evidence of incitement to violence and antisemitism by UNRWA teachers, the UNHRC’s chair moves to stop Hillel Neuer from delivering his speech. For years UNRWA’s response to the allegations has been to silence, deny, and smear UN Watch. 

The agency has not once contacted UN Watch for its evidence. They have never disclosed what disciplinary measures — if any have ever been taken against staff identified in UN Watch reports.  They continually demonstrate that they are not interested in resolving the issue or making effective reforms.

UN Watch has been sounding the alarm for over 10 years

UN Watch has published over a dozen reports over many years exposing the systemic promotion of hatred and violence by UNRWA staff. Such practices constitute a gross breach of UNRWA employees’ neutrality obligations as enshrined in the UN Charter and in UNRWA’s Staff Rules and Regulations. UN Watch has documented over 180 UNRWA employees celebrating terrorism, glorifying nazism and publicly calling for the extermination of Jews. 

Even more alarming, however, is the fact that UNRWA places the education of impressionable Palestinian youth in their hands. UNRWA perpetuates the crisis by allowing hate to be engraved into the minds of children and thereby raising the next generation of terrorists. 

UN Watch Reports on UNRWA

LATEST REPORT

Schools in the Grip of Terror: UN Watch Report Exposes Hamas Capture of UNRWA Education System

UN Watch’s new report reveals how Hamas leaders have openly controlled UNRWA’s education system for decades. Terror chiefs were employed as school principals, union heads, and senior educators — positions from which they shaped the curriculum, oversaw thousands of teachers, and turned classrooms into incubators of hate.

Rather than promoting peace and human rights, UNRWA handed generations of Palestinian children to extremists who glorify suicide bombers, recruit child soldiers, and call for Israel’s destruction. The billion-dollar UN agency knew about these affiliations and did nothing.

Through its domination of UNRWA staff unions in Gaza and Lebanon, Hamas repeatedly blocked efforts to discipline teachers who incited terrorism, resisted attempts to remove antisemitic content from textbooks, and forced out international staff who dared to contradict their agenda.

Donor states funding UNRWA must reckon with this reality: their aid is sustaining a system captured by extremists, not one committed to humanitarian principles.

Full Report

UNRWA’s Rigged “Independent” Review

On February 5, 2024, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced the appointment of an “Independent Review Group” with the stated purpose of assessing whether the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) “is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made.”

A brief examination of all of the parties involved in the review group confirms that they are not unbiased, objective observers. Rather, the review has been rigged since the beginning.

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The UNRWA-Terrorist Alliance

Through uncovered photographic evidence, UN Watch reveals how UNRWA, despite its claims to be a humanitarian agency, has forged an unholy alliance with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist organizations. This secret relationship allows the terrorist organizations to significantly influence the policies and practices of a UN agency with 30,000 employees, and a $1.5 billion annual budget that is funded primarily by Western states.

The report shows how UNRWA’s international officials, and its senior local managers, routinely meet with terrorist groups in Lebanon and Gaza, mutually praise each other for “cooperation,” and describe each other as “partners.”

The terrorist groups frequently make demands of UNRWA and influence its decisions. Moreover, when the terrorists oppose specific actions by UNRWA—such as the introduction of biometric IDs for beneficiaries of UNRWA financial assistance, an ethics code affirming LGBT rights, or suspension of employees for promoting terrorism—the terrorist groups are often able to foil implementation, including by issuing threats.

 

Full report

UNRWA's Terrorgram

UN Watch Uncovers Group Chat of 3000 UNRWA Teachers Showing Widespread Support for Hamas Terrorism

Notwithstanding the repeated denials by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and its insistence that it has zero tolerance for hatred and antisemitism, UN Watch continues to find abhorrent antisemitism and support for jihadi terrorism by UNRWA staff on social media. This report details how UNRWA teachers in a 3,000-member UNRWA staff Telegram group cheered and celebrated Hamas’s October 7th massacre while at the same time asking when their UNRWA salaries will be paid. The UNRWA staff in the group shared photos and video footage of those events and prayed for the terrorists’ success and for Israel’s destruction, in clear violation of UN rules.

This is the latest in a series of reports on UNRWA staff antisemitism and incitement to jihadi terrorism which our research proves is systemic and widespread. Since 2015, UN Watch has exposed over 150 UNRWA staff Facebook pages that contain antisemitism and incitement to jihadi terrorism in blatant violation of UN neutrality. UNRWA’s typical response to our research has been to disparage our human rights organization and downplay the problem as reflecting just a few bad apples. The UNRWA Telegram group featured in this report completely eviscerates UNRWA’s denials and exposes the extent of UNRWA’s failure to do the bare minimum to address its staff’s neutrality violations.

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FACTSHEET ON UNRWA

Methodology & Standards of Documentation

This research archive compiles findings from UN Watch investigations conducted between 2015 and 2026. Documentation standards require evidence from one or more of the following: open-source intelligence (OSINT), official UN oversight reports (OIOS), U.S. government documents, including U.S. GAO audits, court filings, Israeli government intelligence that has been made public, media sources, including Arabic language media, and verified social media content. Note on Agency Responses: Official UNRWA positions are included for context; forensic rebuttals cite the specific evidence that characterizes these responses as insufficient or contradictory to documented facts.

  • Documented Findings: Investigative data shows that over 12% of UNRWA’s nearly 13,000 Gaza staff (1,462 individuals) are members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Among these, 15% of UNRWA’s senior educators in Gaza are members of terrorist organizations.
  • Agency Position: UNRWA maintains that “less than 1%” of staff have been implicated in misconduct.
  • Forensic Rebuttal: UNRWA conflates “dismissed for cause” with “actual membership” in a terrorist group. Intelligence confirms that while only a small number were caught on camera, hundreds remain registered operatives. In addition, UN Watch has documented how Hamas leaders control UNRWA’s education system in both Gaza and Lebanon.
  • Source: UNRWA Terror Network Database | Schools in the Grip of Terror | Israeli Government: The Connection Between UNRWA and Hamas in Gaza
  • Documented Findings: Following the 2024-2025 evidence of terror ties, the U.S. and other donors determined that UNRWAs neutrality mechanisms were structurally ineffective.
  • Agency Position: UNRWA denies these allegations. The UN commissioned an independent review of UNRWA’s neutrality headed by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna. The Colonna report was published on April 20, 2024. It found that “UNRWA has established a significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the humanitarian principles, with emphasis on the principle of neutrality, and that it possesses a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar UN or NGO entities.” UNRWA and some donors interpret this as giving UNRWA a clean bill of health. .
  • Forensic Rebuttal: Despite finding that UNRWA had a “more developed approach to neutrality” than any other UN entity, the review nevertheless issued 50 recommendations for improvement. Several addressed the “politicization of staff unions,” including unions “resisting management disciplinary actions,” using their position to “pressure the UNRWA leadership and influence decisions on service delivery or project implementation,” and exerting undue influence over UNRWA activities through their role in salary negotiations. As of August 5, 2025, UNRWA reported that none of the recommendations relating to staff unions had been implemented.
  • Source: UN Watch: Historic Defeat for UNRWA | Colonna Report | One Year On: Implementing the Colonna Report at UNRWA
  • Documented Findings: Yes. UNRWA uniquely grants automatic refugee status to all descendants of Palestine refugees in perpetuity “until a durable solution is found,”  regardless of where they reside or whether they have citizenship in another country (like Jordan).
  • Agency Position: No, this is not unique to UNRWA. Palestine refugees are treated the same as refugees in other protracted refugee situations which also have multiple generations of refugees. 
  • Forensic Data: While UNHCR does grant refugee status to the dependents of refugees under the principle of “family unity,” this is not automatic and takes into consideration the dependent’s “personal legal status,” particularly if they have citizenship in another country. UNRWA itself acknowledges that most of the 2.4 million registered UNRWA refugees in Jordan have Jordanian citizenship. Under the global UNHCR standard, these do not qualify for refugee status. Another 2.5 million registered UNRWA refugees are Palestinian Authority citizens residing in Palestinian territory, namely the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and accordingly do not qualify for refugee status. UNRWA’s policy of automatically inherited refugee status is political, not legal. It sends Palestinians the message that wherever they reside is not their permanent home, because they retain a “right of return” to the sovereign territory of Israel despite never having lived there. This political message threatens Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and promotes conflict rather than peace..
  • Source: Explainer: UNRWA and the Right of Return | UNHCR Refugee Handbook
  • Documented Findings: Yes. Multiple reports identify textbooks and teaching materials used by UNRWA that glorify “martyrdom,” omit Israel from maps, and describe firebombing Jewish buses as a “barbecue party.”
  • Source: 2023 Report: UNRWA Education
  • Documented Findings: No. While the report found that UNRWA “possesses a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar UN or NGO entities,” it identified many problems with UNRWA’s implementation of neutrality in the field. Among other things, the report recognized that UNRWA staff unions are “politicized” and that the agency lacks the capacity to detect terror misuse of its premises.
  • Source: UNRWA’s Rigged Independent Review  | Colonna Report
  • Documented Findings: The GAO report confirmed that “problematic content” persists in textbooks distributed to UNRWA students. It noted that UNRWA’s mitigation efforts have faced pushback from local teachers, some of whom have had to be reassigned due to their inability to implement the measures. The GAO Report also noted that both UNRWA’s 2022 internal audit and the 2024 Colonna Report likewise found that UNRWA’s curriculum oversight requires improvement.
  • Source: 2026 GAO Report on Problematic textbook Content | Colonna Report
  • Documented Findings: Yes. Reports indicate that UNRWA staff have been caught reselling aid, and Hamas has been documented seizing fuel and supplies from UNRWA warehouses.
  • Source: UNRWA Staff Stealing and Selling Aid
  • Documented Findings: Because the local UNRWA workforce is 99% Palestinian, Hamas has been able to infiltrate and control UNRWA’s senior ranks the same way it controls everything else in Gaza. Thus, Hamas exerts “systemic capture” over the UNRWA unions to control hiring and protect terror-linked employees from dismissal.
  • Source: Schools in the Grip of Terror
  • Documented Findings: A Telegram group of 3,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza who shared photos of the October 7th atrocities and cheered the “martyrs” in real-time.
  • Source: UN Watch: UNRWA’s Terrorgram
  • Documented Findings: UN Watch research demonstrates that the agency is structurally flawed because it is not just a humanitarian organization, but also a political organization with an ideological agenda to preserve and promote the so-called “right of return.”  This refers to the demand that millions of Palestinians—many of whom have lived for generations in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria—“return” to what is now Israel, a measure that would effectively end Israel as a Jewish state. Given the political aspect of UNRWA’s mandate true neutrality is impossible.
  • Source: UN Watch Submission to Independent Review Group, p. 22 | EXPLAINER: UNRWA Exists to Promote the “Right of Return”
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