A United Nations investigation found evidence indicating that nine UNRWA employees may have been involved in the October 7 attack. European research has documented antisemitic content and the glorification of violence in educational material used in schools operated by the agency. At the same time, UNRWA continues to administer a refugee population that has expanded across generations while lacking a mandate to pursue permanent resettlement or local integration. Against this background, Portugal has continued to increase its financial support, even as the United States, Sweden and Finland have chosen to withdraw direct funding.
Portugal's continued financial support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees has become increasingly difficult to examine solely through the language of humanitarian necessity. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the agency has faced a series of controversies involving the conduct of its employees, the content taught in schools under its administration, and the broader institutional model through which Palestinian refugee status is preserved across generations.
These questions have already led several Western governments to reconsider whether humanitarian assistance to Palestinians should continue to be channelled through UNRWA. The United States halted its funding, Sweden ended its core support, and on August 27, 2026, Finland announced that it would allow its multi-year funding agreement with the agency to expire rather than renew it. Finland had been contributing approximately 5 million euros annually under an agreement covering the years 2023 to 2026.
The Finnish decision is especially significant because Helsinki has made clear that it intends to continue supporting Palestinian civilians through other humanitarian channels. Sweden adopted a similar approach when it ended core funding for UNRWA, and the United States has also continued to direct humanitarian assistance through alternative organizations.
Portugal has taken a different course. While other governments reduced or ended direct support, Lisbon increased its contributions and has repeatedly defended UNRWA as an essential humanitarian actor.
The October 7 investigation raised questions that remain unresolved
When Israel first alleged that UNRWA employees had taken part in the October 7 attack, the accusations prompted an immediate international response. A number of donor governments suspended funding while the claims were investigated.
The United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services subsequently examined allegations concerning 19 UNRWA employees. In nine cases, investigators concluded that the evidence gathered indicated that the employees may have been involved in the October 7 attack. UNRWA terminated their employment following the investigation.
The inquiry did not establish every allegation made by Israel, and UN investigators stated that some of the intelligence supplied by Israeli authorities could not be independently verified. Nevertheless, the investigation produced a finding of considerable gravity. Nine employees of a United Nations humanitarian agency were dismissed after an internal UN inquiry found evidence indicating possible involvement in the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians in the country's history.
That conclusion raises a broader institutional question for donor governments. The issue concerns the effectiveness of UNRWA's oversight mechanisms, the extent to which militant organizations may have penetrated its workforce, and whether the agency's existing screening procedures provide donors with sufficient confidence about the personnel financed through public funds.
These concerns have been central to the Israeli case against continued UNRWA funding. Israel has argued for years that Hamas has established a significant presence within the civilian structures operating in Gaza and that UNRWA has failed to prevent members or supporters of militant organizations from entering its workforce. The UN investigation did not confirm the full scope of those claims, but its findings regarding nine employees ensured that the central concern could no longer be dismissed as an allegation without evidentiary support.
Portugal increased its support while other donors reconsidered theirs
Portugal's response to the crisis differed sharply from that of governments that chose to suspend or terminate support.
In February 2024, then Foreign Minister Joao Gomes Cravinho announced an additional 1 million euros for UNRWA on top of 4 million euros already provided. The following month, the Portuguese government approved an extraordinary contribution of a further 10 million euros.
By July 2024, Portugal reported that it had provided 15 million euros to UNRWA within a period of nine months. The policy continued after the change of government. At a United Nations pledging conference in June 2026, Portugal stated that it had substantially increased its support for the agency, bringing its contribution to more than 16 million dollars over a relatively short period, with an additional payment being finalized.
The contrast with other donor countries has since become more pronounced. The United States stopped its contributions after the October 7 allegations. Sweden announced that its core support would end from 2025. Finland has now decided that its current agreement will expire without renewal.
In each of these cases, the withdrawal of funding from UNRWA has been accompanied by an effort to preserve humanitarian assistance through other channels. This distinction weakens the argument that criticism of UNRWA necessarily amounts to opposition to aid for Palestinians. Governments can continue funding food assistance, medical care and emergency relief while choosing different institutions through which to deliver that support.
Portugal has so far declined to make that distinction in its own funding policy.
Educational material has remained a source of controversy
The concerns surrounding UNRWA extend well beyond the conduct of individual employees. The educational system in which the agency operates has faced years of scrutiny over the content presented to Palestinian students.
UNRWA generally uses the curriculum of the local authority in the territory where its schools operate. In the West Bank and Gaza, this means that Palestinian Authority textbooks form a significant part of classroom instruction.
A major study by the Georg Eckert Institute in Germany, commissioned by the European Union, examined Palestinian textbooks and identified material that presented violence against Israelis in a heroic or legitimizing context. Researchers found examples in which armed attacks were associated with sacrifice, resistance and national struggle, while acts of violence against Israelis were sometimes presented without moral condemnation.
One of the most widely cited cases involved Dalal Mughrabi, one of the perpetrators of the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, in which dozens of Israelis were killed. Palestinian educational material presented her as a figure of resistance and sacrifice.
UNRWA later acknowledged that an Arabic textbook used in its schools contained a portrait of Mughrabi and stated that the content was inconsistent with United Nations values. The agency said the book was withdrawn and replaced with alternative material.
The Georg Eckert Institute also identified examples of antisemitic content. In one case, a religious studies textbook portrayed Jews collectively through hostile historical stereotypes and connected those depictions to the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Researchers described the cumulative message in that material as clearly antisemitic.
The European Parliament has raised similar concerns in resolutions dealing with Palestinian educational material and supplementary teaching content associated with UNRWA schools. Its criticism has focused on antisemitism, incitement and the glorification of violence.
UNRWA maintains that it reviews educational materials, trains teachers in principles of neutrality and provides guidance when local textbooks conflict with United Nations standards. The recurring nature of these controversies nevertheless raises a serious question for European donors. Public funding supports a school system in which problematic material has repeatedly required correction after external scrutiny.
The structure of Palestinian refugee status is central to the debate
The most consequential criticism of UNRWA concerns the institutional structure through which Palestinian refugee status has been maintained for more than seven decades.
When UNRWA began operations in 1950, it served approximately 750,000 Palestinian refugees. Today, around 5.9 million people are registered as Palestine refugees and are eligible for the agency's services.
The expansion is closely connected to UNRWA's registration rules, under which descendants of male Palestine refugees can also be registered. As a result, children, grandchildren and later generations born decades after the 1948 war remain part of the same refugee system.
Supporters of UNRWA point out that descendants can also remain under international refugee protection in other prolonged conflicts. The more significant institutional difference concerns the agency's mandate.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which is responsible for refugee populations in most of the world, is explicitly tasked with pursuing durable solutions. These include voluntary return to the country of origin, local integration in the country of refuge, and resettlement in a third country.
UNRWA has no equivalent mandate. It provides education, health care, welfare and other services pending a political resolution of the Palestinian refugee question. It is not empowered to pursue systematic resettlement or local integration as a means of reducing the refugee population under its care.
This arrangement has produced a system in which the refugee population can continue to expand while the agency remains responsible for serving each successive generation. The institution administers the consequences of displacement without possessing the tools normally used by the international refugee system to bring refugee status to an end.
The resulting structure has long been a central Israeli criticism of UNRWA. From the Israeli perspective, a system that preserves refugee registration across generations also helps preserve the political demand for a mass right of return to Israel, making the refugee issue progressively more difficult to resolve.
There is no public evidence that UNRWA designed this system with the specific intention of increasing its own budget. The institutional effect is nonetheless clear. The agency's continued relevance depends on the persistence of the refugee population it serves, while its mandate contains no mechanism designed to reduce that population through integration or resettlement.
Refugee status has become part of the political architecture of the conflict
The Palestinian refugee issue carries a political meaning that goes far beyond access to welfare services. Refugee registration is closely connected to the Palestinian claim to a right of return for those displaced in 1948 and their descendants.
UNRWA does not itself determine the legal or diplomatic outcome of that claim. Its registration system, however, preserves a large population whose refugee identity remains formally linked to events that took place more than seven decades ago.
This has consequences for the wider conflict. A refugee population that grows from one generation to the next preserves the scale of the unresolved claim rather than allowing it to diminish over time through naturalization, integration or permanent resettlement.
Critics therefore see UNRWA as an institution that has become embedded in the political architecture of the conflict. Its schools, clinics, administrative structures and registration system provide essential services, while also helping maintain a distinct refugee identity that remains central to the Palestinian national narrative.
For Israel, this creates a fundamental tension between humanitarian assistance and conflict resolution. A system designed to maintain refugee status indefinitely can provide immediate social stability while making a future political settlement more difficult.
Portugal has alternatives
Portugal's support for Palestinian civilians does not require continued financial support for UNRWA.
Humanitarian assistance can be channelled through the World Food Programme, international medical organizations, other United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations operating in the region. Governments that have ended direct UNRWA funding have already demonstrated that such alternatives are available.
The United States has continued humanitarian assistance after ending contributions to UNRWA. Sweden has redirected support through other channels. Finland has now announced that it intends to do the same after its current funding agreement expires.
Portugal therefore faces a policy choice rather than a humanitarian inevitability.
Its government can continue to support Palestinian civilians while imposing a different standard on the institution through which that support is delivered. Such a decision would reflect the concerns raised by the October 7 investigation, the repeated controversies surrounding educational content and the structural problems inherent in a refugee system that expands across generations without a mandate for permanent resettlement.
So far, Lisbon has chosen to maintain and increase its support.
That policy now stands in increasingly sharp contrast to the decisions taken by Washington, Stockholm and Helsinki. As more governments conclude that assistance to Palestinians can continue without direct funding for UNRWA, Portugal will face growing pressure to explain why it remains committed to an agency whose institutional record has generated serious concerns among some of its closest Western partners.
The central question for Portuguese policymakers is therefore straightforward: after the findings concerning UNRWA employees, the repeated controversies surrounding its educational environment, the expansion of refugee status across generations and the availability of alternative humanitarian channels, what is the justification for continuing to direct millions of euros through this particular institution?
