UNRWA, Palestinian children and the two-state diplomacy that works against children’s rights

According to UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini writing on X, “Wherever we work, @UNRWA is dedicated to helping children be children.” He noted the severe disruption of their education for Palestinian children in Gaza. No matter what anyone says, though, colonialism and genocide do not allow children to be children. Operating from within a colonial framework, UNRWA is fighting a lost battle. In October, Israel’s Knesset voted to ban the organisation from operating in the occupied Palestinian territories. In response, all that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres came up with was his “deep concern”. The humanitarian paradigm has even turned its proponents into fools.

“There is no alternative to UNRWA,” Guterres said in October. Oh yes there is. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East was supposed to be a temporary body helping Palestinians until they were able to exercise their legitimate right to return to their country. However, the UN turned it into a permanent fixture to preserve Israel’s existence and colonial expansion. If there is no replacement for UNRWA because the UN decided Israeli colonisation should be given priority, then the UN needs to rectify its decades-old mistake

At the Doha Mediation Forum this week, Lazzarini warned that, “UNRWA’s collapse would deprive at least 50,000 children of education, and half a million Palestine refugees of primary healthcare.” But while UNRWA claims neutrality, and indeed its donors, especially the US, have insisted upon the agency implementing strict neutrality, Lazzarini mentioned the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution as an initiative that “can help to determine a viable political path forward.”

At a time when genocide is being carried out by the settler-colonial state in occupied Palestine, the EU and Arab states are still promoting the two-state “solution” and creating diplomatic careers out of managing the brutal consequences of colonialism.

Palestinian children in Gaza are deeply traumatised

Promoting the failed diplomacy of opportunists will not, however, help children be children. Palestinian children in Gaza are deeply traumatised individuals. Many were even before the current genocide, and the blame lies solely with Israel and the international community which defends Israel’s security narrative, several of which are also major UNRWA donors. Rhetoric such as “helping children be children” glosses over the colonial and genocidal reality that Palestinian children in Gaza are living daily. Gaza is completely unsafe terrain; children have been killed, burnt to death, brutally shredded by bombs, maimed for life and starved. Some have been targeted while carrying the remains of their dead siblings.

There is no normality left in Gaza. If it is still allowed to operate, UNRWA will be facing unprecedented circumstances that should do away with the premise of neutrality. A child living in a non-genocidal context can relate to “children being children”. Palestinian children have faced horrors that most adults in this world will never experience in a lifetime, especially not the diplomats participating in any two-state skulduggery, the perfect veneer for wasting precious time while Israel colonises and annexes ever more Palestinian territory.

UNRWA should take a political stance that makes sense of its mandate

Promoting a two-state “solution” does not help Palestinian children to be children. Instead of hailing initiatives that have gone nowhere over the past 30+ years, UNRWA should take a political stance that makes sense of its mandate. The international community has a duty to eradicate colonialism; the UN has even pledged to do so, apart from Israeli colonialism, of course.

UNRWA can fulfil its mandate if the UN fulfils its duty to eradicate all colonialism and restore Palestine to the Palestinian people. Then, perhaps, future generations of Palestinian children can indeed be children in their own land. Until then, UNRWA will be operating from a political deficit that it fails, refuses or is not allowed to acknowledge, and Palestinian children will never be children in the idealised way that children are imagined to be.

UNRWA, Palestinian children and the two-state diplomacy that works against children’s rights