Towards a Shared Practice of Encampment: An Historical Investigation of UNRWA and the UNHCR to 1967

Abstract

This article reconsiders refugee studies’ longstanding commitment to the notion of a near-total separation between the UNHCR and UNRWA through an historical investigation of both organizations’ early approaches to refugee encampment. Without disputing the importance of the historical and institutional divisions between the two, it seeks to point out that with respect to the practice of encampment, the two agencies gradually drew nearer to each other during their first two decades of operation, as the UNHCR extended its reach into the decolonizing world and UNRWA expanded its operations across the Middle East. The parallels became particularly clear in 1967, when the ‘Protocol on the Status of Refugees’ formalized the UNHCR’s encampment-focused expansion into the decolonizing world at roughly the same time that the second Arab-Israeli war created the conditions for UNRWA to enshrine encampment as a more or less permanent institutional strategy.