← Migrant Odyssey
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Foreign.
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Welcome to another episode of Migrant Odyssey. I'm Stephen Barden. Today's guest probably wouldn't normally be called a migrant, although he certainly worked in enough countries to qualify for that title. More important, Lex Tackenberg has devoted over 40 years of his life to refugees and the displaced. In that time, he spent three decades working for unrwa, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees. He worked in the field in the West Bank, Gaza and Syria as director of Operations in Amman. In Jerusalem, he worked as general counsel for the organization, and finally as unrest chief Ethics officer, when others would be happily retired. Lex Tackenberg has done nothing of the sort. He's currently a senior advisor to an organization called the Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development, ard, which is based in Amman in Jordan. He is a non resident professor at Fordham University, is a guest speaker in God knows how many countries, has written some 25 publications, and is in the process of writing two books, the first being his memoir of living in the levant for those 30 years. And the second is what he calls a guide on organizational ethics for people working in multilateral organizations. Lex welcome to Migrant Odyssey. Now this podcast is dedicated to my guests personal stories and personal journeys. So although I'd really like to hear about UNWRA and your work with it, could we start with your story, please? What was it in your life that triggered this lifelong dedication to the legal, human and ethical rights of refugees, and particularly of course, to the Palestinians?
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Well, first, thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. In my case, the journey to Palestine started with more general work in the protection of refugees and asylum seekers. I studied international law at the University of Amsterdam. And in my sort of final stages of my, of my master studies, I, I became an academic assistant of the professor of International Law at the time and, and was introduced to issues of refugee law, first through a moot court competition and then subsequently to a summer course on international refugee law at the University of Thessaloniki in Greece. And when I returned from that course in the Alton, my professor at some point took me apart and said, Mr. Tekenberg, he was very formal, there's going to be others. A vacancy at the refugee work in the Netherlands, at one of the organizations dealing with refugee work in the Netherlands. And they're looking for a legal officer. And I, I think you, you should apply. You have really the kind of profile that it takes to, to do that job. And then I, I said, thank you, professor, but, but I still have a year and a half under my contract with you, and I still have to write the thesis. And, and isn't it a bit early? Mr. Tekenberg, you must apply for that position. Okay, Professor, I will. I will do so. So I applied, and a bit to my surprise and shock, they invited me for an interview. And what I didn't know at a time was that he was a member of sort of an advisory council of that organization. So he had sort of strongly recommended me. So I was hired and still, you know, had to, to, to thesis on the side. But ended, ended in a fascinating job. And in five years, I was really introduced to all aspects of refugee protection work. First in the Netherlands and then in a sort of a Western European context. I was introduced to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and other international networks. And in my fifth years, I started sort of thinking, well, this is a wonderful field to work in, but I'd like to continue to work in this field internationally. And so I started looking for opportunities. And obviously the logical candidate was unhcr, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the general UN refugee agency. But at the time, they were sort of shrinking. You know, UNHCR expands and shrinks with sort of the evolving situation and funding, et cetera. So one friend who had a year earlier joined UNHCR told me, well, there is not so much opportunity with us, but UNWRA is looking for people with a bit of a refugee protection background for a new program in the occupied Palestinian territory, and why don't you apply for that? And it was before, before the time of Internet, and there had not been a formal vacancy announcement. But I followed the advice of my friend and sentenced kind of open application to UNRE headquarters, which at a time was still in Vienna, and was invited, I mean, at some point, after a few months, someone called me, I think it was on a Tuesday, saying, well, we're interested in your profile. We need someone at short notice. Can you start next Monday in Gaza? And then I said, well, I'm very flattered, but my wife is about to give birth to a second child, and I have really some projects that I must finish at the Refugee Council. And they said, don't worry, we're building up a roster of people for this program. Why don't you come to Vienna for a formal interview? If both of us are interested, we put you formally on the roster. And that's how. About a year after that phone call, I, I joined unrwa, initially in the west bank, not in, in Gaza, in a program, indeed a protection program, a kind of pioneering protection program that UNRWA had established in response to the sort of first larger scale outburst of violence after then 20 years of occupation. The first intifada, as it is called. And that triggered significant interest at the top of the un, even the Security Council issued. If we think about the Security Council's reaction to the current war in Gaza, something unsinkable. But the Security Council adopted a resolution calling, amongst other things on the Secretary General to explore new ways of providing protection to the civilian population in Gaza and the west bank, making use of the resources in existing agencies. And to make a long story short, that triggered kind of a program in UNRWA to mobilize international observers, but in such a way that it would not lead to an objection of Israel. You know, it was not introduced as a new program, but just people to sort of help UNRWA to carry out its operations under those difficult circumstances that existed in the, from, from 1988 onwards. And so I joined that program. It was, we were called Refugee Affairs Officers and it was essentially an international with a Palestinian colleague sort of being out in the fields at refugee camps and be present at places of confrontation and by simply being present with the UN flag, you know, a UN marked vehicle and an international with a walkie talkie that already had a kind of moderating effect on the, on the, on the confrontation and also provided UNWRA an accurate vehicle for sort of reporting, accurate reporting on what was happening on the ground at the time. There was this interesting in, at the UN top in New York. So that's how I started and got into, into UNRWA initially on a five month contract and the five months became 31 years.
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Lex, you were, you were 30 years old, weren't you, when you went into the West Bank? You were, you were, I had, I.
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Had just, I had just turned, I had just turned 29.
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Yeah, so. So in our turn, you were a kid basically. What was that? And it was your first time in a place of conflict, right?
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Absolutely.
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Tell me something about what that young man saw and what he felt as he was going, because I assume, you know, although you were a moderating effect, it was also there was a fair amount, a huge amount of violence fact at the time. And the Israelis were not very happy for you to be there. So what was that like through the eyes of that young man? What was that like for you and what you saw?
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Well, before my departure, I was a bit sort of anxious. The intifada in 1988, it started in December 87. So during 88 it was sort of sort of frequently front page News in mainstream media in the west, including the Netherlands, and my colleague at the refugee council were a bit sort of nervous about what this young man would expect. So they gave me some training in dealing with cultural differences and how to deal with Israeli soldiers at checkpoints. I remember that. And so I got a little bit of coaching by colleagues that had seen a bit more than me. And so I arrived there in early February 89 in beautiful spring weather. The initial impressions were like, this is a warm blanket. You know, it feels a bit like being on a, on a page holiday, going around touring. And then, and then one of the first thing I realized, yes, there was, there was an uprising ongoing. There was indeed there were outbursts of violence, but they were quite localized at, at a time. The sort of, the scale of the violence, the magnitude of the violence was not as it has evolved in later years. On the Palestinian side, there were Shabab Palestinian Jews throwing stones, by and large, occasionally a Molotov cocktail. On the Palestine, on the Israeli side, there were soldiers that were primarily shooting back with rubber coated bullets, sometimes with canisters with rubber coated bullets. They were even, you know, at some point, you know, having stone throwing machine or water cannons. It was not as, as lethal as it turned out later during the second intifada and in sort of the war since, since the turn of the century. So it was possible by having a presence of, of international officials, we were sort of encouraged to look a little bit official. I was often wearing a tie. You know, it had an impact on the soldiers, were definitely not comfortable to see us. And it had an impact. And it was a program that by and large, you know, was well received also by the Palestinian population. You know, yes, there were a lot of. Even though the, the violence was often not lethal, there were a lot of Palestinians that were nevertheless killed or injured or losing eyes or otherwise, you know, a lot of arrests. So there was an appreciation by the Palestinian community for their sort of being UN eyes and ears who were, who were specifically positioned in the fields to sort of, you know, be a witness to be a presence to, to report. It would often happen that, you know, if the, if the, if the, if the youth were sort of intent on having a confrontation with, with soldiers, they would sort of barricade the roads. But when we would sort of appear a refugee camp, they would open it up. They would appreciate that there would be an international presence there. So that these were my, some of my initial impressions. Nothing too dramatic, nothing talking. But at the same time, I also realized we had to be Careful with the Israelis. I mean they could be, you know, even, even at the time there was only, yes, there was still more respect for an international presence for un, the blue flag of the un but there were limits to it. So we had to, you know, exercise restraint and cautious and be careful, not sort of provoke a situation or make, make our presence, you know, be ourselves a catalyst for, for intensification of the, of the confrontations.
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Lex UNRWA has always been, has always been held in some suspicion if you like, particularly by those nations who feel it's their moral duty to support Israel, right or wrong. That must have made it very difficult when you became more senior in terms of trying to get support and alliances outside.
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Well, UNRWA has been many different things to different people, to different stakeholders. When it was the Americans who were instrumental in the initial establishment of UNRWA as an attempt to deflect attention away from the initial quest for a solution to return by means of return of the refugees to their original homes, as was recommended by the UN mediator for Palestine. And then after the mediator was assassinated, nominated for making that recommendation. His recommendation was sort of taken over by the UN General assembly at a time and in late 48 in the famous Resolution 194. And then when the Americans who were chairing a so called UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine that took over the role of the UN mediator tried to sort of convince Israel to take refugees back, they quite rapidly discovered that, you know, this run, this was a red line for the, for the new Israeli, for the, for the government of the, of the neo Israeli state, as they were, you know, keen on, on establishing a firm Jewish majority and refugee return would run counter to. So the Americans shifted gears in the summer of 49 and were looking for an approach to integrate the refugees into the host countries, territories and host countries where they had ended up in the Gaza Strip, in the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon predominantly. And they needed an agency to manage that. At the same time, the initial relief effort, initial humanitarian effort after 48, after May 48 was implemented by a number of international NGOs and towards the end of 49 those NGOs informed the UN that they were no longer ready to continue that as went beyond their capacity. So the US took the lead to create a relief and works agency, relief as a term standing for humanitarian assistance, as continued to be required and works as large scale public work schemes to try to integrate the refugees into the economies of the host countries and then eventually to legally integrate them into the societies, so that pressure on return. So that's how UNRUS started. These large scale work schemes were met by suspicion by both the host countries and refugees themselves, so never got off the ground. But the refugees continued to be there and needed humanitarian support. And so the relief became an expanded humanitarian operation, including basic education, comprehensive primary health care services, later also vocational training, ongoing relief and social services, and in later years, support for improving refugee camps and infrastructure works, microfinance protection, and whenever there was renewed conflict, also emergency services. So that became UNWRA's sort of, you know, modus operandi after the initial years of its establishment. So on the one hand, for the Americans and even, you know, for the Americans funding the agency, this was part of their sort of cushion of support for the newly established State of Israel. You know, by taking care of flashpoints and potential resistance, they saw it as an extension of their support to Israel initially. Israel had not so much to do with UNRA before the Six Day War. It's only after it occupied the Gaza Strip and the west bank that Israel came in direct contact with unra. And it was Israel, it was actually the then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, that proposed to the Israeli government, to the Israeli Cabinet to request UNRWA explicitly to continue its humanitarian operation once, because under international humanitarian law, otherwise Israel would be obliged to provide such services to the occupied population. And also because UNRWA was by and large seen as being sort of a moderating, a moderating factor. You know, yes, resistance came from the refugee camps, but even realizing that, you know, the refugee camps were potential hotbeds for resistance, you know, making sure that at least the population at large was fed, educated and provided with health care, you know, would generally be seen as a moderating factor. So that's how the UNRWA Israel relationship started. And it became a bit of sort of a hatred love relationship over the years with, on the one hand, the Israeli security establishment sort of seeing UNWRA as this stabilizing factor. But on the other hand, they also realizing that UNRWA's workforce, you know, the educators, the medical staff, the social workers, the counselors, the logistical support staff, et cetera, the engineers, were all Palestinian refugees themselves. So it was only 1% of the staff that was made up of expatriates. So it was not really seen as sort of a neutral UN agency from that perspective. And that also extended when Israel had criticism of the agency's neutrality that was also picked up by a number of the Western donors. So, yeah, that gives you a little bit of the atmosphere in which UNRWA was, was required to operate.
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So how did, how did UNRWA and how did you know? Because I assume you were also involved part of this. How did you make sure that there was a sort of not, not a neutrality because you were there to look after the Palestinians, but also that there was not that it did not do the things that the Israelis accused UNRWA of doing.
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UNRWA was put in a more defensive position with respect to neutrality. Following the 67 war. It started with scrutiny of the textbooks that UNRWA was using in its schools. These were textbooks of the host countries. Upon the recommendation of UNESCO in the early days, genre was decided to follow the curriculum of the host countries in its schools to facilitate upward mobility. When kids came out of the primary basic and primary cycle, they could continue in the secondary cycle. And for those talented enough to go to university in host country universities. And so UNWA was using the local textbooks. And textbooks always sort of are never neutral and reflect sort of the state of affairs that a country is in. So the Egyptian and Jordanian textbooks being used in Gaza and in the west bank, you know, reflected the absence of peace. And so Israel sort of demanded sort of a censorship of the textbooks. And Israel got involved in that, not just because of unrwa, but also because it directly administered the education for non refugee children in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank. So that was the first area of, first bone of contention and forcing UNRWA to partner with UNESCO in a kind of censorship exercise that in many ways continues until the very moment, you know, has been in place for half a century. And then gradually, UNRA also, sorry, Israel, also accused UNRWA personnel of being involved in sort of of acts of terrorism or involvement with terrorist organization. Initially, the different factions associated with the PLO during the civil war in Lebanon and in the west bank and Jordan, the lead up to Black September. And in much later years, the involvement of staff in Gaza and to a lesser extent in the west bank with Hamas became an issue. So in the decades that I worked with the Agency, I've seen the Agency sort of develop a robust sort of neutrality framework that after some of the earlier Gaza wars was sort of formalized in a written document sort of summarizing all the different steps the agency takes in terms of hiring staff, in terms of training staff, in terms of standards of conduct, in terms of social media training and other neutrality related trainings. True neutrality of installations, neutrality of vehicles, neutrality of operations, all the different measures that the agency took and recognizing. And I Mean the US and Israel and some Western donors required UNRWA to take measures to prevent being involved in sort of terrorism and terrorist acts and support of terrorism. And UNWRA always pointed out that, you know, there is no international definition of terrorism. These are all national list and standards. But as a humanitarian actor, like other humanitarian agencies both in the UN and outside the un, UNRWA is held by the four humanitarian principles which include, you know, neutrality in addition to humanity, operational independence and, and impartiality. And, and so UNRWA has sort of framed its operations and couch humanitarian management in the framework of humanitarian imperative. And that's how it has also explained it through its staff. Yes, the staff are. Palestinian refugees are part and parcel of the unresolved conflict. Many of them are victims of human rights violations at the hands of the Israeli occupation. But as an organization, we have to maintain neutrality, neutrality to maintain the trust of our donors, to safeguard the security and protection of our staff and the people we're trying to help. So that gives you sort of an insight in how UNRWA has dealt with that sort of difficult challenge. And UNRWA has been under more scrutiny than any other UN agency operating wherever in the world with respect to this neutrality requirement. And independent reviews have assessed that UNRA safeguards and management of neutrality goes beyond anything that other agencies have in place.
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And you must have dealt with both the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority and I assume logically the various governments of Gaza, both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas later on at least UNRA must have. What was that like? Because you had. It must have been very difficult trying to work with all of those three. And they were all warring in many senses, weren't they? Because Hamas was warring with Palestinian Authority and Israeli was war warring with both of them. And you know, that must have been very difficult on the one hand. And then I just want to add a little more complication to that one is that unrwa, when it's working with Palestinians outside Gaza and the west bank, when they do do that, when they worked in Amman and places like that, there must have been a conflict there as well, because the Palestinians wanted to go back home. And therefore any infrastructure, any permanent infrastructure that you were trying to put up would have caused them to think, what on earth are you doing? You're trying to stop us going back home. Lots of complications, right? Lots of conflicts.
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Well, I mentioned that, you know, UNRWA represents different things to different stakeholders in the other host country. I worked for quite some time in Syria and indeed there this expectation that yes, the refugees are there, they are hosted, but they are entitled to return. This is firmly enshrined in international law. So our operations in Syria were constantly sort of looked against the perspective from both refugees and hostess authorities as to, you know, does this not jeopardize the right of return? Does this not amount to permanency, to integration, to touting in Arab, which is sort of settlement. And in particular work that I was involved with myself also as a senior manager when I was deputy field director then field director in Syria to more structurally improve living conditions for refugees that were still accommodated in very substandard condition in some of the refugee camps in, in army barracks that had been turned into refugee shelters when the refugees first arrived in the early 50s. And initially the government was quite sort of reluctant and refugees were reluctant to embark on more systematic improvement of housing conditions. But then we sort of made clear that, you know, even, even improving housing would not jeopardize the rights of the refugees to return. Even if refugees get a better situation in the present, doesn't take their future or their historic. Doesn't jeopardize their historic claims and. Right. So I have never, you know, I worked my initial 17 years in field management and went to headquarters in 2000, 2005. So I never was involved in managing Gaza and the west bank during the Hamas years. I was there after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and that was initially a period of hope. We really sort of, in hindsight naively thought that the Oslo Accord would be the prelude to a more permanent political settlement leading to the establishment of Palestinian state. I was in Gaza during the Arafat years from the summer of 94 until I moved to Syria in early 2000. And yeah, that was a period of sort of nation building, of, of possibility, even of some projects where Palestinians and Israelis would come together as doctors, as educators, as social workers. Quite a promising period. I celebrated my 40th birthday in Gaza and it was possible at a time to bring some Israeli friends who would get an escort by Palestinian police from the main checkpoint with Israel to my residence in Gaza at the time and spent a couple of hours there and then they were escorted back. So it was quite a different period. It was sort of trying to figure out the modus operandi with the Palestinian Authority for a big UN agency to decide how UNWRA's continued existence would fit with the desire of the Palestinians to establish. Establish some sort of a government and how the refugee, our support for the refugees would fit into that. So it was a very different era. And Things started to change after the turn of the century when the second intifada started, which was much more violent and where Palestinians also had had guns and through the imports of small arms that Israel had allowed to support the Palestinian Authority. And that's when things started to deteriorate. And then when Hamas sort of won the elections in 2006 and took control of Gaza and you know, when the elections were then announced in the west bank and you know, the, the PA prevented Hamas from being part of the new government there. Yeah, then sort of there was this schism and, and, and then when Hamas engaged in armed attacks on Israel and, and that triggered the various wars. Yeah, that made the situation much more complicated for, for, for the, for the colleagues and put much pressure on this sort of neutrality management. And then as humanitarian actors do, for humanitarian operation to function, you have to engage with whoever has authority on the ground. So the UN authorized, even though there was sort of a no contact policy instilled by Western donors and UN leadership with, with respect to political engagement with Hamas that had been, you know, you know, was, was, was seen as a terrorist organization by, you know, Israel and Western number of Western countries. You know, there, there had to be contact with the de facto authorities. And, and by and large that, my understanding is that went quite okay, subject to obviously the difficulties and the, you know, the fallout of the different wars when pressure on Hamas was put up by Israel and then, you know, UNWRA had to become involved in recovery and reconstruction operations. And then the challenges were also that UNRWA was criticized for its local staff unions being sort of seen as being affiliated with Hamas or being populated with staff that were sympathetic to Hamas. And so this added an extra layer of complexity to an already different, difficult humanitarian sort of situation to be managed.
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Yeah. And inevitable, I imagine. So was that the background to your being appointed chief ethics officer to sort of get everything into line and to make sure that it was clean internally and externally? Was that what it was all about?
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Yeah, I mean, it was not a reaction per se to the sort of these specific unwrapped challenges. What happened after the UN Convention Against Corruption was adopted is that, you know, member states were sort of demanding from the un, you know, act as you preach. You know, you're preaching, you're preaching member states who take serious measures against corruption and to promote integrity. So make sure you also have internally your house in order. And in 2008, the, the UN established, you know, UN Secretariat established an ethics office. And then a year later, the funds and programs coming under the authority of the Secretary General were also instructed to establish an ethics office. And at that time I was UNWRA's general counsel and was sort of initially designated ethics officer in addition to my other functions. And that sort of coincided with a period that I, for medical reasons wanted to sort of take a step back from sort of senior, from senior leadership. So I sort of was asked whether I would be willing to set up a full fledged UNRWA ethics office. And so I took that opportunity. And of course as UNRWA Chief of Ethics I focused on the generic integrity challenges that the large organization has. Preventing conflicts of interest, training staff about sort of integrity standards of conduct, developing an UNRE specific sort of ethics handbook, as we, as we did. But then of course I also played a key role in the neutrality related aspects of ethics training. I developed an elearning course on neutrality and social management, sorry, on social media because during one of the wars pro Israeli organizations discovered that a number of UNWRAP personnel had resorted to social media to ventilate anger with what had been happening in Gaza. And a small number of them in doing so had so sort of crossed the border of what was sort of acceptable and you know, resorted either to anti Semitic tropes or to calling for violent resistance. And of course for UNWRA staff this was really, for UNRAT is embarrassing. And so then the organization, you know, decided to train the entire workforce on responsible use of service social media. And that was, that was something that I was instrumental in developing and you know, a combination of e learning of in person training for managers, you know, for a couple of thousand managers in unwra. So those kind of things.
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B
Yes, it strikes me as somebody who's, who's been fascinated by organizations and worked with organizations all my life, that in an organization such as unrwa, which is so deeply involved in trying to, to make the lives of people better, if you like, that the model of neutrality is one that is possibly out of date. If it means you call it out, the breaches you call it out wherever you are, then that's right. That is neutrality, isn't it? It's almost equity, isn't it? It's that equity, that balance that you basically see. Say I will call it out wherever it is, whether it is in my own people, whether it is in the people that I'm looking after, or whether it is the people I'm protecting my people from, if you like, in other words, the Palestine, unrwa, the Palestinians and Israel call it out. That I assume is the model you're talking about is it.
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A
That's the starting point. But, but especially after I sort of left unrwa, I also realized, and as we have seen, that Israel has, and pro Israeli organizations and governments have sort of instrumentalized antisemitism to sort of silence criticism of Israel. You know, neutrality in the UN context and in particular, how it has been applied to UNWRA has also been to sort of silence UNRWA from being more vocal with respect to Israeli violations and sort of silencing Palestinians from speaking out, including Palestinian UNWRA staff from speaking out, et cetera. So, yeah, it started from that, as I said, from the humanitarian principles, but it has effectively been sort of instrumentalized to sort of help, help, you know, silence criticism of Israeli practices. And that's very clear. You know, it has almost been weaponized. And I've even realized myself, as someone who has written, as an academic during my three decades with the agency, how, in retrospect, I was still part of a kind of humanitarian framing that prevented you, that constrained my thinking about the conflict, the place of the UN in the broader question of Palestine and so forth. It took several years after my retirement before I became sort of more. I was able to express my real views on the matter more articulately and coming more from a position of principal principle.
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B
Yeah. Can I bring it up to date, just briefly, because again, as I. I know you're going off ardd. What is it? What does it do, and what are you doing there?
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A
ARDD is a Jordanian NGO dealing with social justice issues in Jordan and, and by extension in the Arab world. It started, started very, very simply as an organization providing legal aid to refugees and other migrants in the kingdom. It was established by two Jordanian Palestinian sisters, both lawyers who had done some work with Oxfam and who realized with the Iraq Iraqi refugee crisis that a lot of Iraqis needed legal aid that was not provided by existing humanitarian organizations or not in sufficient quantity and quality. So they decided to establish their own NGO, and they quite rapidly became a implementing partner of UNHCR, providing legal aid. We're talking 2008 Iraqi crisis, as I mentioned. Then, quite rapidly they saw that, you know, you cannot pursue social justice only through the court. You also have to engage in advocacy, in building capacity for people to claim their right, in doing research, in doing networking partnerships. And this coincided with sort of the Arab Spring. And they realized that, that a lot of that more structural work you could also only do in a regional setting, you know, working in partnership with similar organizations in other Arab countries. And so the name of the organization changed from Legal Aid Jordan to Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development. And it's almost like a mission statement, the renaissance that stands for sort of peaceful transformation. Bose, you know, renaissance in Arabic, Al Nahda was sort of Bose transformation that the Arab Spring aspired to achieve, but also referring to an earlier period of renaissance in the 18th and 19th century from where the organization took inspiration. And they sort of started to work towards this transformation in the direction of democracy and development by dealing with the various building blocks, access to justice, including gender justice, social protection, gender and youth empowerment, migration, forced displacement, statelessness. And then when they, you know, they gradually added, after the organization was a decade old, they also added a think tank. And when the think tank was added, they recognized that, you know, the unresolved question of Palestine was one of the open wounds in the Arab soul and psyche preventing this, this broader Arab transformation. And at that time, I had become friends with the founder of the organization. And so it was at a time the Trump actually pulled for the first time funding from UNWRA in 2018 and had just a few months earlier decided to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and sort of stirred up the whole status quo with respect to the Palestinian, Israeli conflict that I was asked to help sort of develop a modest program on the question of Palestine, an initial workshop on sort of the truth Trump or the US sort of attack on UNWRA at the time. And from that workshop we established a program for reflection. We created a global network on the question of Palestine with Palestinian, Arab and international experts working on the broader Palestinian question. And especially one of the initial objectives was to get the question of Palestine back also onto the Arab agenda. You know, as much as it had fallen off the international agenda before the attacks of 7 October 2023, it had also fallen off the Arab agenda. You know, there was sort of the push towards normalization. So one of the objectives was to get, you know, Arab intellectuals, you know, more engaged on the Palestinian question. So that has been my role. I'm remotely coordinating that program on the question of Palestine as part of this broader organization. It's a very well managed local organization that has developed a great reputation to implement projects on time and within budget. And as a result of that, it has managed to get a good portfolio of different donors. It was also affected by the Trump assault on usaid, but not only for one of their programs, they have a good diversified portfolio of donors and it's really a privilege to work for the organization. We have just Opened also a affiliate NGO in Europe, Euro main initiative for democracy and development. So it's sort of a sister, you know, it's a daughter of ardd. We just had an inaugural workshop in Amman and a lot of interest from also Western governments in what we're trying to do. Offering a kind of platform for dialogue that contrary to a lot of the existing main app programs, is not originating in Europe, but ra originating in the Arab worlds and in the main region itself. So, yeah, that gives you a bit of a flavor what ARD does. And so ardd almost from its establishment has had a very strong link with issues of migration and forced displacement.
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B
So it's clearly a perfect subject or perfect subject of interview for this podcast, isn't it?
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A
Well, that's what I believe. And I think I've mentioned to you in one of our earlier connections that it would be great for you to talk with the founder of ardd, Samar Muhareb, who is a true visionary Arab leader. I think you would find it interesting to hear from her.
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B
I would love to. I would love to. So I'm looking forward to your introduction. Introduction to her.
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A
With pleasure, with pleasure.
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B
Lex, thank you so much. This has been a delight. The pressures of trying to keep so many different interests and so many different conflicting interests going, if you like, or managing those when you were at UNRA must have been extraordinary. Your dedication has been extraordinary and, and is well documented. Thank you very much and we, we will hopefully keep in touch.
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A
Thanks again for the opportunity. It was. It was my pleasure and I look forward to staying in contact.