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En 2015, la crise mondiale liee aux refugies a atteint l’Europe. Plus d’un million de refugies et de migrants ont debarque sur ses cotes meridionales, la plupart venant de pays dechires par la guerre comme l’Afghanistan, l’Iraq et la Syrie. La tendance s’est maintenue en 2016, avec plus de 171 000 arrivees au cours des trois premiers mois. Ceci n’est, neanmoins, que la partie visible de l’iceberg. Dans le monde entier, plus de 60 millions de personnes ont ete deplacees par la guerre, les persecutions ou les violations des droits de l’homme. Quelque 86 % vivent dans des pays en developpement, principalement ceux voisins des zones de conflit.

In 2015, the global refugee crisis reached Europe. Over 1 million refugees and migrants arrived on its southern shores, most of them from war-torn places such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The trend continued in 2016, with more than 171,000 arrivals during the first three months. This, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. Worldwide, more than 60 million people have been displaced by war, persecution or human rights abuses. Some 86 per cent of them live in developing countries, mostly those neighbouring conflict zones.

This chapter examines the contradictions between the United Nations's essential humanitarian role in advocating for Palestinians and its failure in the more political process of ensuring their self-determination. The issue of refugees from Palestine has been a compelling political and humanitarian crisis since 1948. In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, about 750,000 Palestinians either fled or were forced to flee from their homes in what would become the state of Israel. UNRWA was created by the UN General Assembly in 1949 to address the needs of the Palestinian refugees until a political solution to their plight could be found. Drawing on experience as a former commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the current United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the chapter reflects on the everyday struggles and resilience of Palestinian refugees and explains why leading UNRWA is one of the UN's most challenging managerial tasks.

In February 2014, I visited the Yarmouk District in Damascus, which is largely populated by Palestinians. I met the Palestinian refugee Um Ahmed at a food distribution center. She and others were receiving food parcels from UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) after months of extreme deprivation in the midst of the Syrian War. She was asking questions: “I am a Palestinian refugee,” she said. “What is our fate?” she demanded, and then added: “What are we supposed to do, where are we supposed to go? What is the solution for us Palestinians?”