• Ms. Colonna’s previous role overseeing France’s significant financial and political support for UNRWA means that her impartiality in evaluating the agency is compromised. Her leadership of the Review Group constitutes a violation of the legal principles and UN standards of conduct relating to conflict of interest and the requirement for impartiality in UN audits, investigations, and reviews.
• France is UNRWA’s fourth-largest donor and a commission member overseeing UNRWA’s work. Any adverse finding about system-wide failures at UNRWA would therefore implicate herself and other French officials who failed to exercise their fiduciary oversight duties. There is a clear conflict of interest, and Colonna’s leadership of the group violates the U.N.’s own standards of conduct for investigators.
• In addition, the three institutes staffing the Colonna Group were selected by UNRWA because of their history of embracing UNRWA’s narrative and talking points, strongly advocating funding for the agency, and dismissing evidence of pervasive incitement to terrorism among UNRWA staff.
• For example, in 2022, the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) of Norway, one of the three institutes in the Review Group, published a major report about UNRWA which completely dismissed allegations of UNRWA teachers promoting terrorism—documented in
UN Watch reports that show screenshots of UNRWA teachers on social media calling to slaughter Jews—as “unfounded claims.”
• CMI’s lead expert on UNRWA, Kjersti Berg,
suddenly deleted her Twitter account yesterday after UN Watch exposed how her life’s work is devoted to denying UNRWA’s
documented terror ties.
• The head of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, another member of the Review Group, has for years publicly advocated funding UNRWA and dismissing allegations of the agency’s terror ties. He and his colleagues have also portrayed Israel as uniquely evil, accusing the Jewish state of committing “apartheid” and “genocide.”
• The Danish Institute for Human Rights, the third member of the Review Group, has demonstrated a sharp pro-UNRWA and anti-Israel bias in the pronouncements of its board members and senior staff.