Since 2000, the United Nations Relief Works Agency (the “UNRWA”), an agency created by the United Nations to assist with the displaced Israeli and Palestine refugees from WWII, claims to have focused its efforts on integrating human rights into existing curricula, supporting human rights-oriented extracurricular activities, and promoting concepts of tolerance and peaceful conflict resolution. However, my research through the Center for Global Justice has found otherwise.
Under the guise of political correctness, UNRWA is using American funds to fund and support educational curricula in its programs and services that endorses violence, anti-Semitism, and acts of international terrorism, citing, of all things, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the “UDHR). Under Article 26(3) of the UDHR, parents have the right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children. Under this subsection of Article 26, UNRWA justifies implementing curricula that contains multiple references to the principles of jihad, sacrifice, and martyrdom, encouraging children to embrace and act upon such principles in their own lives. For example, my research has found that in one ninth grade text, students are asked to memorize a passage reading, in part, “Good morning oh my homeland, morning of glory and red redemption, nourished by the blood of martyrs.” Under this haze of political correctness, UNRWA seems to have forgotten another key document in the “Bill of Rights’ of the United Nations. The Convention on the Rights of the Child provides that “in all actions concerning children … the best interest of the child shall be the primary concern,” that children have an inherent right to life, and that children have a right to education that is directed toward the “development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”[1]
It is saddening and disheartening, if not sickening to say the least, to learn that American dollars are being used to support and fund acts that condone genocide and torture, acts of international terrorism. So, what can I, what can we, do about this?
On its website, the UNRWA notes that the United States is its largest donor, giving over $165 million dollars in 2015 alone, and therein lies the answer we are looking for. What we can do is close the purse strings. Money talks, and if the largest donor pulls out, then the UNRWA will be forced to re-evaluate its stance on what is and is not “politically correct.” Call your congressmen, your senators, and the President and demand that the UNRWA give an account of why U.S. dollars are being spent to fund acts of international terrorism, and I will the do same, all the while I continue to fight on the forefront through agencies like the Center for Global Justice.
International law and its policies reflect an objective moral standard by which society as a whole deems appropriate and necessary. It communicates how people and institutions should interact with one another. It sees the world not for what it is, but for what it should be. It is created and regulated by the law of nature, and it is communicative, stating how governments should address matters of both foreign and public affairs, including public health, safety and welfare.
According the United Nations’ website, their mission is to “[p]romote the rule of law at the national and international level[].”[2] This explains why I volunteered to work for the Center for Global Justice. Through international law, public policy and other institutions such as the CGJ working in this arena, I can impact the world, I can be that warrior for Christ, working to change the world from what it is to what it should be.
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[1] http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx
[2] http://www.un.org/en/ruleoflaw/