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Friday, February 14, 2014

UNRWA again shows its lack of transparency

Over the past two days I reported about how Hamas complained about UNRWA's "human rights curriculum," and about how UNRWA caved in to Hamas demands and agreed to suspend teaching about "human rights" in Gaza, also mentioning how this curriculum is in fact not about respecting others' human rights so much as it is about how to demand human rights from others.

As usual when a news story makes UNRWA look bad, they do not mention this on their website. On the contrary, exposure of their less savory aspects cause them to perform cover-ups rather than leading to full disclosure.

Given that UNRWA depends on international donors, shouldn't the agency be completely transparent? Not only should it report about Hamas' bullying (if it cared about this so-called "human rights" agenda then publicizing the issue would help,) but all school materials created by UNRWA should be on their website so everyone can see exactly what UNRWA is teaching hundreds of thousands of students.

By contrast, the other UN refugee organization, UNHCR, seems to bend over backwards to provide transparency for researchers.

UNRWA won't become transparent until the donors themselves start to demand answers about where their hundreds of millions of dollars is going. Our taxes ultimately pay for UNRWA's activities, so it is past time for everyone to contact their elected representatives and ask them to demand UNRWA less like a corrupt agency that is trying to hide something.