UNRWA Education: Reform or Regression
A joint IMPACT-se/United Nations Watch report, concerning incitement to hate and violence by UNRWA teachers and schools,is being presented on Tuesday, March 14 to Congress. The report uncovers 47 new cases of incitement by UNRWA staff, in breach of the agency’s stated policies of zero tolerance for racism, discrimination, or antisemitism in its schools and educational materials. Teachers and schools at the UN agency that runs education and social services for Palestinians regularly call for the murder of Jews, and create teaching materials that glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis, and incite antisemitism. The report captures evidence taken from inside UNRWA classrooms, showing the teaching of these materials, and revealing how UNRWA’s own content directs students to study specific hateful passages in Palestinian textbooks—which the organization claims teachers are told to skip. The findings also contradict statements and promises made very recently by UNRWA to donor nations and were also submitted to U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield; EU Commissioner Joseph Borell; German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz; UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres; and UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini. UNRWA 2023 Joint Report
Review of 2022 UNRWA-Produced School Materials
This IMPACT-se report reviewed UNRWA-branded school materials produced by UNRWA’s field education departments and staff, labeled for use in 2022. Findings show that the analyzed material violate UN values, and UNRWA’s “zero-tolerance policy for discrimination or for incitement to hatred and violence in its schools, educational materials.” The analysis found that UNRWA-produced and branded content contains material that encourages jihad, violence, and martyrdom, as well as content promoting antisemitism, conflict discourse, hate, and intolerance. The materials also include overtly politicized language violating UNRWA’s stated adherence to UN values and commitment to neutrality. The UNRWA-branded materials analyzed in the report include 590 pages, in 30 documents, spanning six separate grades. They all bear the UNRWA logo, or its name in Arabic. The materials list UNRWA staff, six of whom are supervisors and inspectors, as well as 49 teachers affiliated with over 30 UNRWA schools in three verified UNRWA school districts, who helped write and supervise the reviewed school materials. The findings also show that UNRWA’s supplementary school materials direct students to specific hateful passages in Palestinian textbooks used in its schools. The reviewed institutional material was kept off UNRWA’s new school education portal, where it theoretically exhibits all its self-produced materials. UNRWA 2022 Review
Review of UNRWA-Produced Study Materials in the Palestinian Territories
IMPACT-se’s extensive research of PA school textbooks has consistently shown a systematic insertion of violence, martyrdom and jihad across all grades and subjects, with the proliferation of extreme nationalism and Islamist ideologies throughout the curriculum. Yet, it is this material that is taught in UNRWA-run schools throughout the Palestinian Territories of the Gaza Strip and West Bank as well as Jerusalem. Our research shows that UNRWA, as a UN organization, knowingly produces and teaches material in its Gaza Strip and West Bank schools that are rife with problematic content that contradicts stated UN values. Although UNRWA has claimed in the past that it has devised a methodology to isolate and address problematic content it has not demonstrated how the issue is addressed. UNRWA’s lack of transparency to address such problematic issues make it impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of any efforts it claims to have made. Updated Research of post-November material shows hate remains. January 2021 (Original) Report