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News > Palestine

Accusations of Ethical Abuses Face UNRWA Top Officials

  • Pierre Krähenbühl, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine.

    Pierre Krähenbühl, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine. | Photo: Reuters

Published 29 July 2019
Opinion

The United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services launched an investigation over the accusations.

Several high officials of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) were accused of serious ethical abuses of power including nepotism and retaliation, according to a confidential and internal ethics report obtained by the Agence France Presse (AFP). 

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The report described a senior management team practicing “nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other abuses of authority, for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent, and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives”.

UNRWA’s top chief, Pierre Krähenbühl, was accused of naming a woman with whom he was romantically involved as an adviser, both of them traveling all around the world in business class.

Another staff member not named by AFP was accused of manipulating the system in order to find well-paid jobs for her spouse, while another official whose identity has not been revealed neither, was described in the review as acting like a “gangster.”

The United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services launched an investigation after receiving the report and Krähenbühl has asked his staff to fully collaborate to the investigation, according to the UNRWA. 

“If the current investigation, once it is completed, were to present findings that require corrective measures or other management actions, we will not hesitate to take them,” said Krähenbühl who did not comment on the allegations he is himself facing. UNRWA said that Krähenbühl could not make public comments during the inquiry on the accusations concerning him.

The UNRWA was created in 1949 with the goal of supporting and protecting the Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from their homes in the aftermath of the 1948’s Nakba. The agency works at providing education, health care, and social services to the refugees and their descendants. It employs about 30,000 people, mostly Palestinians, but it has been threatened with closure after the Trump administration decided to cut financial aid, slashing $300m in annual donations in 2018.

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