The legal system to protect UNRWA staff during armed conflicts

Abstract

Abstract : The research focuses on the issue of protecting United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the  Near East staff, which is a very important issue, especially in light of the current exceptional circumstances in which they work considering that the protection of employees will ensure the continuity of the agency’s provision of its basic services to Palestinian refugees in the fields of education, health, humanitarian relief, and others. Accordingly, the research deals with the protection frameworks provided by the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their two Additional Protocols of 1977 in general for the staff of humanitarian organizations, as well as the Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel of 1994, which is concerned in particular with the issue of protection of the staff of the United Nations organization, including those working for Agency UNRWA. In addition to evaluating the effectiveness of UN Security Council resolutions and the provisions of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of 1998 related to protection agency employees from repeated Israeli attacks against them, and discussing the reality of the extent of its deterrence in practice at the applied level, Then the research ends with a conclusion that includes the most prominent conclusions that devote the most important findings, and a set of proposals that we hope will contribute to strengthening the protection of UNRWA staff working in the occupied Palestinian territories.