"When I heard that United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East Commissioner (UNRWA) Pierre Krahenbuhl had resigned, I was shocked. After all, the United Nations does not have the best track record when it comes to investigating corruption allegations against its own agencies, let alone UNRWA, which until recently had airtight immunity from criticism.
For 70 years, UNRWA has been something of a separate entity in the United Nations, one dedicated solely to the issue of Palestinian 'refugees' and operating alongside the agency that handles all other refugees in the world-the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Unlike the latter, however, UNRWA never even tried to solve the refugee problem it was charged with, and in fact seemed dedicated to perpetuating it.
Case in point: When UNRWA was founded in 1949, there were around 700,000 Palestinian refugees in the world. Today, their number stands at 5.7 million.
But UNRWA's data must always be taken with a grain of salt, as it tends to artificially inflate. A census that took place in Lebanon in 2017 found that 300,000 people included in the agency's data simply do not exist and that the true number of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon was 66 percent smaller than stated on its reports.
At the same time, the budgets appropriated to UNRWA put the United Nations' actual refugee agency to shame.
Not only is UNRWA's budget per refugee four times greater than that dedicated to any other refugee, but the agency employs 30,000 people. The UNHCR-which deals with 70 million refugees-employs only 10,000 people.
But it seems that UNRWA's party is coming to an end..."