Its Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, was founded in 1949, working in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, caring for the 700,000 Palestinians who were forced or fled from their homes with the creation of the state of Israel.
Now, says the agency's head, the lifesaving assistance on which two million Gazans rely could be about to end, as several Western governments suspend their funding over allegations that some UNRWA staff were involved in the 7 October attacks on Israel.
The mission currently runs shelters for the displaced and distributes the only aid that Israel is allowing in - but it is much more than that. UNRWA provides key infrastructure and tools of daily life that Gaza has sorely lacked through its seemingly endless cycles of violence, siege and impoverishment.
It runs medical and educational facilities, including teacher training centres and almost 300 primary schools - as well as producing the textbooks that educate young Palestinians. In Gaza alone, it employs some 13,000 people. As the biggest UN agency operating in Gaza, it has been key to humanitarian efforts.
And it has also become something of a political football, kicked by various sides over the years. Its very existence is criticised by Israel as entrenching the status of Palestinians as refugees, encouraging their continued hopes of a right of return to land from which they were driven in 1948 or during successive wars.
The fate of refugees has been a core issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Many Palestinians harbour a dream of returning to historic Palestine, parts of which are now in Israel. Israel rejects that claim and has often criticised the set-up of UNRWA for the way it allows refugee status to be inherited.
'Hate and intolerance'
Moreover, Israeli governments have long denounced the agency's teaching and textbooks for, in their view, perpetuating anti-Israel views.
In 2022, the Israeli watchdog IMPACT-se said UNRWA educational material taught students that Israel was attempting to "erase Palestinian identity, steal and falsify Palestinian heritage, and erase the cultural heritage of Jerusalem", adding that the agency promoted "anti-Semitism, hate, intolerance and lack of neutrality".
The European Commission identified what it called "anti-Semitic material" in the schoolbooks, "including even incitement to violence". The European Parliament has called repeatedly for EU funding to the Palestinian Authority to be conditional on removing such content. UNRWA has previously said that reports made about its educational material were "inaccurate and misleading" and that many of the books in question were not used in its schools.
