Morality or Mandate in the Disaster Relief Project: The Beginning of the United Nations’ Humanitarian Response to the Palestinian Refugee Crisis, 1948

At the beginning of the United Nations’ response to the Palestinian refugee crisis in 1948, UN field workers in Jordan and Palestine sought to implement and improve an aid distribution scheme marred by UN financial constraints and restrictive distribution policies. In doing so, field workers took actions that exceeded the legal mandate of the UN Disaster Relief Project, the temporary UN agency leading aid distribution efforts. Workers asserted that their positions required moral decision-making that could not be limited by UN distribution policies. They ultimately argued that the UN had the capacity and responsibility to take direct humanitarian actions in order to aid the growing number of Palestinian refugees. UN field workers’ contestation of UN aid distribution policies demonstrates an early break in the UN’s indirect approach to Palestinian refugee aid relief, and it highlights the role of localized humanitarian actors in shaping broader institutional humanitarian approaches to refugee crises.