UNRWA Officer Examines Challenges of Palestinian Refugee Camps

Left to right: Rami Khuri, and Karen Abu Zayd

On February 12, the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) hosted a lecture by Karen Abu Zayd, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). Entitled "Sixty Years Later: Challenges of Palestinian Refugee Camps within Their Arab Host Communities," Abu Zayd's talk was the inaugural event of the IFI-sponsored research and policy-oriented program jointly managed with the AUB Center for Behavioral Research. Held in West Hall, the lecture delineated public policy and governance challenges of Palestinian refugee camps in the Arab world.

Abu Zayd said that sixty years after the Palestinian "Naqba," there are currently 4.4 million Palestinian refugees worldwide. She noted that the long years of exile can hardly portray a favorable verdict on the way Palestinian refugee camps have been handled by Western state politics.

The extent to which refugee camp management in host countries reflects the standards set by international human rights laws is questionable, she said. Stripped of effective international support, Palestinian refugees have suffered material hardship, substandard living conditions, unemployment, oxymoronically hectic and static political processes, security problems, continual dislocation, as well as helplessness and frustration. Consequently, "their right for return and for self-determination will continue to haunt the conscience of the international community."

Even as she emphasized UNRWA's role in seeking protection and care for Palestinian refugees, Abu Zayd delineated at length the plethora of unresolved challenges faced by Palestinian refugees in Arab host countries. The need to maintain their roots against the distracting effect of refugee privation drives refugees to distinguish themselves from the mainstream communities of the Arab countries that host their camps, often with a degree of hostility.

Abu Zayd conceded that while Lebanon, for instance, openly advocates the Palestinian cause, many Lebanese people view Palestinian refugees as "chronic, long-stayers, competing with the country's citizens over its already limited resources." Sadly characterized by "a belligerent atmosphere," Palestinian camps are often accused of becoming "magnets of statelessness" and bearing a destabilizing influence on the host country and its surroundings.

Abu Zayd noted that the prospects of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have significantly improved under Prime Minister Fouad Al Siniora's government, which has worked to ensure sustainable livelihoods for Palestinian refugees living inside and outside the camps.

Abu Zayd, who previously served for five years as an assistant secretary-general of the United Nations, was appointed Commissioner-General of UNRWA in June 2005. Before joining UNRWA, she worked for the United Nation for nineteen years.