Talk:UNRWA

Palestine Mid‑importance

	Palestine portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Palestine, a team effort dedicated to building and maintaining comprehensive, informative and balanced articles related to the geographic Palestine region, the Palestinian people and the State of Palestine on Wikipedia. Join us by visiting the project page, where you can add your name to the list of members where you can contribute to the discussions.PalestineWikipedia:WikiProject PalestineTemplate:WikiProject PalestinePalestine-related articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

International relations: United Nations Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject International relations, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of International relations on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.International relationsWikipedia:WikiProject International relationsTemplate:WikiProject International relationsInternational relations articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject United Nations.

Warning: active arbitration remedies

The contentious topics procedure applies to this article. This article is related to the Arab–Israeli conflict, which is a contentious topic. Furthermore, the following rules apply when editing this article:

You must be logged-in and extended-confirmed to edit or discuss this topic on any page (except for making edit requests, provided they are not disruptive)
You may not make more than 1 revert within 24 hours on any edits related to this topic

Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page.

Further information

The exceptions to the extended confirmed restriction are:

Non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace only to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided they are not disruptive.
Non-extended-confirmed editors may not create new articles, but administrators may exercise discretion when deciding how to enforce this remedy on article creations. Deletion of new articles created by non-extended-confirmed editors is permitted but not required.

With respect to the WP:1RR restriction:

Clear vandalism of whatever origin may be reverted without restriction. Also, reverts made solely to enforce the extended confirmed restriction are not considered edit warring.
Editors who violate this restriction may be blocked by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offence.

After being warned, contentious topics procedure can be used against any editor who repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process. Contentious topic sanctions can include blocks, topic-bans, or other restrictions.
Editors may report violations of these restrictions to the Arbitration enforcement noticeboard.

If you are unsure if your edit is appropriate, discuss it here on this talk page first. When in doubt, don't revert!

This article has previously been nominated to be moved. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination.

Discussions:

Moved, 28 October 2014, from United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East to UNRWA, see discussion.
Not moved, 15 February 2024, from UNRWA to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, see discussion.

Archives

Archive 1	Archive 2	Archive 3
Archive 4

This page has archives. Sections older than 14 days may be automatically archived by when more than 3 sections are present.

RFC on telegram allegations

Should the article something similar to the following:

According to UN Watch, during the Israel-Hamas war, some UNRWA workers used an internal Telegram channel with over 3000 members, intended to facilitate their work, to praise and celebrate the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel. According to UN Watch, this included sharing photos of dead and captured Israeli's, as well as calling for the execution of hostages.

12:33, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Survey

Yes. These allegations have been widely covered by reliable sources:

It is a significant viewpoint published in reliable sources; It would be a WP:DUE violation to exclude it.

Note that some of these sources go beyond merely attributing the claims to UN Watch and instead verify some or all of them. BilledMammal (talk) 12:33, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes per BilledMammal who is thorough with research into sourcing as usual JM (talk) 19:07, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No (bot-summoned) WP:UNDUE, WP:RECENTISM and WP:SYNTHESIS. I do not see how this informs readers about UNRWA itself; at best it indicates the opinions of what appears to be a (tiny?) handful of UNRWA employees. If this channel was for work purposes of UNRWA teachers, then were these postings a breach of workplace guidelines? Think of a more extreme version of this ... if two British Army soldiers commit murder, should that appear in the British Army article? By itself, does that give us insight into the British Army? (My answer would be no). Just because information exists does not mean it should be in the article - I do not see reliable sourcing connecting the viewpoints of a small number (whatever "some" means) of employees to something specifc regarding UNRWA. This statement functions as a form of sythesis (essentially guilt by association). Again to use an example, a reliable source reporting British Army soldiers being members of the English Defence League tells us that those soldiers hold far-right views, but it does not indicate that the British Army is far-right, to do so on such sourcing alone would be synthesis. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 04:15, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes -- newsworthy allegations that have been covered by copious amounts of reliable sources. However the wording probably should include some indication about UN Watch's inherent biases. Ideally, if it's possible to use one of the media sources that, as BilledMammal indicates, went beyond UN Watch and did the verification itself, that would be presumably better, especially if we could bypass sourcing to UN Watch at all. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 03:33, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No: Per Goldsztajn. This is hardly core information. Some unsubstantiated allegations about a handful of employees connected with the subject. This only reflects on the subject itself in the most tangential of manners. It is rumour mill stuff. The fact that the proposal is to attribute this to UN Watch is presumably a reflection of the fact that there has been no independent verification of the allegation outside of this advocacy organisation. Perhaps the volume of sources reporting on it makes it due on the UN Watch page as a notable example of allegations put out by that organisation, but not here. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:11, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No - a, wildly UNDUE, a handful of sources covering a partisan organization making some claim in the news is not in any way DUE weight for an organization that has existed for some 74 years. B. several of those sources listed above are unreliable, among them the National Post, i24, Israel National News and Algemeiner. Compared to the coverage of UNRWA as a whole this is a rounding error to 0 in weight of coverage. And it remains an allegation by an organization that itself is unreliable. nableezy - 15:06, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, of course. A handful of UNRWA workers is not UNRWA. This could only be relevant if official involvment of UNRWA was established by reliable sources. Zero^talk 02:58, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. It's attracted coverage, all of which editorially links these messages to the UNRWA. As for arguments about the story's irrelevance to the page because it doesn't pertain to official UNRWA actions, or the relatively small number of implicated persons, I am not convinced. Reliable sources find it relevant to the UNRWA, and we should reflect that. I don't like the proposed wording, though. The agency's response of firing employees needs to be mentioned, and "According to UN Watch..." is not strong enough. It was reported as fact by numerous reliable sources, so the sourcing should be more like the "...exposed by a UN Watch report"-type wordings used in sources (though I find "exposed" too sensationalist). Zanahary (talk) 03:14, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No As can be seen from its article, UN Watch takes a highly biased position as regards the UN in relations to matters pertaining to the AI conflict and cannot be considered reliable for facts in that area imo. Also noted that the reporting of what they have said is mainly from partisan sources even if some of them are nonetheless reliable. If these charges are truly notable, then there ought to be coverage of them from the likes of BBC, WAPO, CNN, NYT etcetera. Selfstudier (talk) 12:48, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Bad RFC RSN for source reliability questions. See UN watch allegations.Selfstudier (talk) 12:38, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a question of source reliability, it's a question of whether the allegations are sufficiently significant to warrant coverage under WP:DUE. Based on how widely the allegations have been covered in reliable sources I believe they are. BilledMammal (talk) 12:44, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, and I guess it would be the same for most editors, I have no objection to citing reliable sources for material. If, OTOH, the reliable sources are citing UN Watch rather than asserting something as fact, I do have some concerns about that. So by all means cite the sources that do not rely on UN Watch and proceed in that manner. Selfstudier (talk) 12:53, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If reliable sources report something, isn't the idea to trust their fact-gathering and editorial processes and treat them as reliable? Zanahary (talk) 07:48, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
mention but wording to be determined. Senorangel (talk) 04:07, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Bad RfC, because its subject matter is, ultimately, the (un)reliability of UN Watch and not the importance/relevance of a given piece of information. (BTW, it doesn't matter whether UN Watch's report has been mentioned in other sources; the issue is the credibility of the accuser). — kashmīrī ^TALK 12:00, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Page inconsistency

Why is it that this article has a title "Torture of UN staff" when all of the citations contain reference to a single report that was produced by UNRWA itself? Shouldn't the title be "Alleged Torture of UN staff?"

As a comparison, in this very same article, whenever the involvement of UNRWA staff in the attack on Israel on Oct 7, the word alleged is included. Isn't this the other way around as it was proven that an UNRWA teacher had indeed participated in the attack, along with others as can be seen here.

At the very least we should edit the title to "Alleged torture of UN staff", wouldn't you agree? 147.235.196.65 (talk) 02:48, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not just the UNRWA report: Countless accounts of Israeli torture in Gaza Iskandar323 (talk) 11:39, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not done. The main title, Torture during the Israel–Hamas war does not contain the word alleged. Also see UNRWA October 7 controversy, which is about a series of evidence-free Israeli allegations made against UNRWA, no "alleged" in that title either. Whether to include words such as accusation/alleged is an editorial decision and there is some inconsistency in the results, I would suggest that it should depend on the relative strength of the evidence, I would rate a UN report higher up the scale than a report by the IDF or Hamas for example. Since changes like this require editorial consensus, best left to extended confirmed editors to decide (WP:ARBECR refers). Selfstudier (talk) 10:51, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Updating UNRWA Budget

The latest detail about UNRWA budget is from 2020. According to UNRWA, their budget for 2023 was $1.05B. Source: https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/2022-2023_programme_budget_blue_book.pdf IdanST (talk) 16:51, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Funding pauses

New Zealand didn't pause or suspend funding to UNRWA. Source: https://www.mfat.govt.nz/assets/OIA/OIA-2024/OIA-29183-Response.pdf. Also, Australia has already announced lifting its temporary funding pause (15 March). Source: https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/media-release/funding-united-nations-relief-and-works-agency-and-additional-support-gaza Jen nia mondo (talk) 06:49, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also Finland (March) and Japan (April). Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/2/japan-lifts-pause-in-funding-for-unrwa-following-canada-australia Jen nia mondo (talk) 23:50, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]