UNRWA in the Shadow of Counterterrorism: Balancing Humanitarian Mandates and Donor Constraints

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East operates in an extremely complex legal and political environment. External factors such as counterterrorism law, donor expectations and security concerns significantly affect the implementation of its mandate, making it essential for the Agency to take them into account. A central commitment of UNRWA is to maintain neutrality while providing its assistance to Palestinian refugees. This commitment has become increasingly difficult to uphold, as the Agency must balance its humanitarian mandate with the constraints imposed by the states that finance it. This thesis examines how UNRWA navigates donor counterterrorism regimes while implementing its mandate and maintaining neutrality. It highlights three main pressures. The first is the expansion of global counterterrorism frameworks after September 11, 2001, which criminalise support for designated actors and transfer legal and reputational risk onto donor-dependent organisations. The second is UNRWA’s reliance on voluntary contributions from donor states, which makes it highly vulnerable to shifting donor priorities and funding conditions. As a result, donors increasingly treat neutrality not only as an ethical principle, but as documented compliance proven through screening, monitoring and reporting. The third pressure is Hamas governance in the Gaza Strip, where ordinary humanitarian work depends on local administrative and security structures linked to an authority designated as a terrorist organisation by several major donors. In response, UNRWA navigates these pressures mainly through the bureaucratisation of neutrality, adjusting its procedures, monitoring systems and staff practices to produce continuous evidence of compliance. This strategy, especially visible after the crisis following October 7, 2023, helped UNRWA preserve operational continuity and donor relationships. However, the study argues that it cannot secure stable and demonstrable neutrality, because the standard imposed by donors is structurally unmeetable in the environments where UNRWA operates.