UN aid workers feel forgotten and in peril as Gaza war drags on

One year after the Hamas militant group attacked Israel, aid workers in Gaza are feeling an increasing sense of despair about the United Nations’ inability to protect its employees amid ongoing war in the enclave.

Nearly 230 workers for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency have died in Gaza following Israel’s counterattack, according to the agency. That number makes up a large portion of the estimated 280-plus aid workers and 885 health workers killed in the densely populated enclave, where civilians have become ensnared in the intense fighting between Israel and the militant group.

For the 13,000 workers of UNRWA in Gaza, the mounting deaths have left them feeling deserted by the international community they thought was there to support them through any crisis.

“Almost on a daily basis, we receive what I refer to as the death list,” said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for UNRWA. “It’s dreadful because I know that whenever I receive that email — it means that we have lost more colleagues in Gaza.”

While the ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza makes any humanitarian work there more dangerous, other external factors are contributing to that feeling of hopelessness: curtailed funding from the U.S. and a growing sense that no country or world body is willing to hold Israel accountable for abandoning past commitments to protect aid workers.

“Doctors try to heal people, and they shouldn’t be killed for the act of healing,” said Mary Lawlor, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders. But when it comes to U.N. member states stepping up to protect them, she said: “the political will is not there.”

During a ministerial meeting on UNRWA hosted by Jordan and Sweden during the U.N. General Assembly in September, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said that the agency is facing an $80 million budget shortfall for this year, while funding for 2025 remains uncertain, in part due to “a significant funding suspension in place.”

While Lazzarini didn’t call out any country by name, his comments were most likely a jab at the United States, which froze its funding for the agency until at least March 2025 over concerns that a number of UNRWA employees participated in the Oct. 7 attacks. It’s unclear when or if the U.S., which is historically UNRWA’s top donor, will lift the prohibition on its funding for the agency.

Israel says it has gathered intelligence showing a “deep and systemic infiltration” by Hamas members into UNRWA. The U.N. has launched multiple investigations into Israel’s sweeping allegations and generally has not been able to corroborate them entirely based on the information Israel has provided so far. One review admitted there were issues with oversight and made recommendations for UNRWA to strengthen its processes to ensure neutrality. Another investigation found that nine UNRWA staffers “may have been involved” in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, leading to their termination.

Those allegations prompted the U.S. and other top donors to suspend funding in January. Most nations, including the U.K., Germany and Canada, have reinstated funding following the recent U.N. investigations. But that still leaves UNRWA far short of what it says it needs.

“Everybody will say that ‘Philippe, we’ll support you, and it’s terrible what happened. … You need more money,’” said Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel during last month’s UNRWA meeting. “The fact is, the ones we need to convince are not in this room.”

The controversy surrounding the agency intensified last month when an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon killed Fatah Sharif, a top Hamas commander who was also an employee of UNRWA. Sharif had been suspended from working at UNRWA in March when the agency first received allegations of his ties to Hamas from Israeli authorities.

Beyond fixing the funding deficit, aid workers say the only hope they see for ensuring the safety of humanitarian workers in Gaza is a successful cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. But a pause in fighting is slow in coming and isn’t something that the U.N. has much power to influence. Even what the U.N. can do — pass resolutions — has only highlighted rifts at the global body that make it difficult to take any meaningful action on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

In 1998, the U.N. adopted a resolution to protect “human rights defenders” by consensus, meaning no member state objected to the resolution. The human rights defender designation is broad, including those who work to provide food, water and housing or serve certain categories of people, including refugees.

Israel is a signatory to the 1998 resolution, and rights groups argue it is failing to uphold that commitment.

“The last thing we need is a slew of new resolutions with governments promising to protect human rights defenders — when they’ve failed to protect [them],” said Brian Dooley, senior adviser at Human Rights First. “Gaza has exposed the weakness of the international community to be able to protect people giving out food, working in hospitals.”

Some aid workers say there have been brief glimmers of hope in recent months. Tammy Abughnaim, a Chicago-based emergency room doctor, went to Gaza in March as part of a Medglobal-coordinated trip to help at the Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Hospitals in the central Gaza city are managed by the Gaza Health Ministry, UNRWA and various NGOs. At the time of her first visit, Abughnaim sensed an optimism among fellow aid workers that the war and resulting humanitarian crisis would soon come to an end.

But when she returned to the region with the humanitarian aid group International Rescue Committee again in July and August, this time to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, the energy had shifted.

“Morale is absolutely dismal,” Abughnaim said after her most recent volunteer visit to Gaza. “The sense amongst humanitarian aid workers … is that we’re [being] punished for doing our jobs.”

Much of the blame has shifted toward Israel for its alleged wartime conduct and lack of accountability. The Israeli Defense Forces says the deaths of aid workers have been unfortunate mistakes that happen during combat.

In a statement, the IDF said it “invests significant efforts and resources … to facilitate humanitarian aid in combat zones,” adding that it has strengthened coordination efforts between IDF and international aid groups after “the tragic [World Central Kitchen] incident,” where seven aid workers were killed by Israeli fire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck a similar tone during his speech at the U.N. General Assembly last month, arguing that Israel is working to provide aid and prevent civilian deaths in Gaza.

“We help bring in 700,000 tons of food into Gaza,” Netanyahu said. “We see this moral confusion when Israel is falsely accused of deliberately targeting civilians. … We do so much to minimize civilian casualties.” According to the IDF, this includes sending phone calls and text messages, dropping leaflets and using non-lethal weapons to warn civilians of impending attacks, though the U.N. has criticized some of these methods in the past as ineffective.

But other issues are at play, argued Nadav Weiman, executive director of Breaking the Silence, a nonprofit that gives a platform to current and former IDF soldiers to recount their experiences of serving in the Palestinian territories.

“How [do] you authorize firing from the air? What is in the target bank of the Israeli Air Force? Who can give an order? What rank can give an order to shoot a missile?” Weiman said.

Soldiers who fought in Gaza have told the group that there isn’t anything in the IDF’s rules of engagement about aid workers, medics, journalists or even Israeli hostages.

When asked for comment, the IDF said that the rules of engagement are classified and cannot be disclosed.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza this year, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, while scores of others have been injured and displaced from their homes (The Hamas-run ministry does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its toll).

Unlike other U.N. agencies, UNRWA’s mandate focuses on a singular group of people. UNRWA was established in 1949 by the U.N. General Assembly to provide relief to Palestinian refugees after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war displaced about 700,000 Palestinian residents. Its mandate has been renewed every three years since then, and the agency employs more than 30,000 people worldwide to help provide education, medical and social services.

UNRWA is also unique in that most of its employees in Gaza are Palestinian. The agency has alleged that its staff are routinely harassed and humiliated at Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, though Israel denies these claims.

Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon said that Israel hoped to bring an end to hostilities in Gaza but condemned those who speak about the conflict without mentioning the Oct. 7 attack, where Hamas militants killed at least 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 250 others.

“Israel’s humanitarian efforts in Gaza have been nothing short of extraordinary,” Danon said at a U.N. Security Council meeting on Wednesday, outlining how Israeli coordination delivered more than 1 million tons of aid. “Israel imposes no restrictions on humanitarian aid.”

In Washington, some lawmakers have voiced support for UNRWA and are hoping to help repair the agency’s ability to provide critical aid services to Palestinians in Gaza and beyond. Last month, Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Andre Carson of Indiana and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois introduced a bill that would restore U.S. funding for UNRWA. The bill, which is now in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, has more than 60 co-sponsors — all of them Democrats. The debate surrounding UNRWA funding has largely fallen along party lines, though Democrats in March signaled an openness to add new conditions to UNRWA funding to minimize potential misuse.

Still, UNRWA workers are worried about Israeli proposals to restrict the agency’s operations, which could deal a devastating blow, regardless of foreign donations and U.N. support.

There are three bills in the Israeli Knesset targeting the U.N. agency that could massively curtail its ground operations: one to ban the organization from operating in Israel, another to strip UNRWA’s staff of legal protections afforded to other U.N. workers and a third that would brand the agency as a terrorist organization.

Meanwhile, the Israel Land Authority said this week that it would seize the land where UNRWA’s headquarters are located in East Jerusalem to build new housing units. UNRWA’s Touma said that the agency learned about this from Israeli media on Thursday and “has not received anything in writing about this matter from the Israeli authorities.”

On Wednesday, Lazzarini warned members of the U.N. Security Council that the proposed legislation aimed at curtailing UNWRA’s operations in the region would set a dangerous precedent for humanitarian aid operations globally.

“These attacks set a grave precedent for other conflict situations when government[s] may wish to eliminate an inconvenient U.N. presence,” he said. “They target not just UNRWA but any individual or entity calling for compliance with international law and a peaceful political solution.”

UNRWA and its defenders say that those responsible for aid worker deaths must be held accountable. But there’s a sense of helplessness as Israel continues its campaign in Gaza and as fears of a larger Middle East conflict grow.

“It’s not something that can be done while the conflict is ongoing,” UNRWA’s Touma said. “I’m sure when the war is over there will be several commissions of inquiry and investigations.”