UN Secretary General Forms Independent External Review Team Against UNRWA, Led By Former French Foreign Minister

UNRWA staff at the Palestinian refugee shelter. (Twitter/@UNRWA)

JAKARTA - UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has formed a team to conduct an independent review of the United Nations Aid and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the UN's main body in Gaza providing humanitarian assistance to Palestinians.

An independent external review will begin on February 14 and will be carried out in conjunction with an investigation conducted by the UN Internal Monitoring Service Office (OIOS), over Israel's allegations of involvement of UNRWA personnel in the Hamas militant group attack on their southern region on October 7, reported CNN February 6.

The team will be led by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna. Later, he will team up with Sweden'stan Wallenberg Institute, Chr. The Norwegian Michelsen Institute and the Danish Institute of Human Rights, quoted by Reuters.

The plan is for the team to submit a temporary report at the end of March and a final report at the end of April which will then be published.

"The cooperation of the Israeli authorities, who made these allegations, will be very important to the success of the investigation," said Secretary General Guterres.

UNRWA itself has fired several of its staff after the allegations were leveled, while a number of its main donors, including the United States, chose to suspend their funding, although the humanitarian disaster in Gaza continued to escalate due to the Hamas-Israeli war.

The agency warned that it was threatened with being forced to stop its services across the Middle East, not just Gaza, by the end of February, if the delay in funding continued. This will exacerbate the crisis in Gaza and Palestinian refugees spread outside Gaza.