Ambiguously apolitical. Policy formulations and enactments in UNRWA’s education program for Palestinian refugees, 1964-2004

Jo Kelcey

Since 1950 multiple generations of stateless Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank have depended on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for their education. As a UN agency UNRWA follows international norms and positions its education program as apolitical. Yet as recent attacks on the agency have made clear, the context it operates in is anything but. This book project examines the factors that shaped UNRWA's education assistance between 1964 and 2004, a tumultuous period of Palestinians' struggle for self-determination. I use archival research to examine the interests and power dynamics that informed UNRWA's educational decision making and oral histories with retired Palestinian teachers to understand how these decisions were transformed and enacted in classrooms. By foregrounding the complexities and contradictions inherent in UNRWA's education assistance this project sheds much needed light on UNRWA's expansive and longstanding education program at a time of unprecedented threat to the agency and the Palestinians it serves. The scale, scope and longevity of UNRWA's program in a region beset by conflict also makes this history extremely valuable for understanding the possibilities and limitations of international education assistance in conflict-affected societies more broadly. In particular this case reveals how international education assistance is often entwined with political interests that may advance the very injustices it purports to address.

About Jo Kelcey

Jo Kelcey is an Assistant Professor of Education at the Lebanese American University. Her research focuses on the history and politics of international education assistance and explores how policy actors, education leaders and teachers navigate complex crises. Her recent work has been published in the Harvard Education Review, the Journal of Refugee Studies and Archival Science. In addition to her academic writing she has contributed articles and analysis to media outlets including the Washington Post, the Conversation and Al Jazeera. She is a former recipient of the P.E.O International Peace scholarship and was a co-PI on a Spencer Foundation racial equity grant. Jo received her PhD in International Education from New York University in 2020.