Other Registered Persons (UNRWA)

Who counts as a Palestine refugee — the 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 residence test, the loss of home and livelihood in the 1948 conflict, the registration of descendants through the male line — is set out elsewhere in this archive. This entry is about everyone else on UNRWA’s books, and about what registration is and is not.

UNRWA’s Consolidated Eligibility and Registration Instructions divide the people it serves into two groups. Those who meet the Palestine Refugee criteria become Registered Refugees. Those who do not are grouped under a second heading: persons who at the time of original registration did not satisfy all of the criteria but were determined to have suffered significant loss or hardship for reasons related to the 1948 conflict, together with people who belong to the families of registered persons. The instructions are explicit that while these persons are registered for the purpose of receiving UNRWA services, they “are not counted as part of the official Registered Refugee population of the Agency.”

The categories are artefacts of the agency’s first decades, and most are closed to new applicants. Jerusalem Poor and Gaza Poor were people whose normal residence until 15 May 1948 was East Jerusalem or Gaza City and who lost work or property and suffered hardship in the 1948 conflict — kept on the relief rolls without fully satisfying the refugee criteria; descendants through the male line may still register, but no new applications are taken. Frontier Villagers were people in towns and villages along the 1949 armistice lines in the West Bank who lost farming land or suffered other hardship — cut off from their livelihood by the drawing of a line, without having moved. Compromise Cases were people of Lebanese origin working in Palestine but not permanently resident there until 15 May 1948; their descendants may not register at all. The fourth category, MNR Family Members, is the one with a living demographic consequence: because eligibility descends through the male line, the husbands and children of a registered refugee woman married to a man who is not a registered refugee are eligible for services but are not registered refugees. Registration in either group can take place only within UNRWA’s five fields of operation.

The distinction between the two categories is administrative, and so is the register as a whole. UNRWA’s definition is operational: it determines who may use a clinic or a school. It is not a determination of legal refugee status, it confers nothing and extinguishes nothing, and it does not extend beyond the five fields — a refugee from Haifa living in Cairo, Santiago or Detroit is not registered with UNRWA and does not appear in its figures, though they are no less displaced. The right of return asserted by Palestinians derives from general international law and from paragraph 11 of General Assembly resolution 194 (III), which resolved that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date. It does not derive from an entry in an agency’s database, and it cannot be cancelled by one.

Sources

• UNRWA Consolidated Eligibility and Registration Instructions (PDF, mirrored by the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit)
• General Assembly resolution 194 (III), 11 December 1948 — United Nations