Experts charged with investigating the UN's neutrality in the light of allegations that UN employees were involved in the October 7 attacks on Israel have recommended toughening up safeguards in "eight critical areas."
At the same time, their report also said that Israel had so far not provided evidence that certain employees were members of terrorist organizations.
The independent group, headed by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, was set up at the beginning of February.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) - the main humanitarian provider in Gaza - faced a major crisis after Israel accused a dozen of its employees of being involved in the October 7 attacks that left some 1,200 people dead.
Several employees were dismissed in the wake of the accusations. In the days and weeks that followed, 16 donor countries - including the two largest donors, the United States and Germany - suspended or paused funding, leaving it with a funding gap of some $450 million.
After the allegations surfaced, UN Secretary General António Guterres promised a comprehensive review.
Despite rules put in place over recent years, "neutrality-related issues persist," the expert report presented in New York on Monday said.
It pointed to "eight critical areas requiring immediate improvement" in order to maintain the UN agency's neutrality. These included engagement with donors, neutrality of staff and behaviour, neutrality of education, and governance.
When it came to education, for example, the report said that "the presence of even a small fraction of problematic content in textbooks, supplemental material and teaching content remains a serious issue," and recommended reviewing educational content for hate speech and establishing a yearly review.
The measures as a whole "will have a significant impact only with the
support of host countries, Israel and the Palestinian Authority," the report said.
The expert group was created to assess whether UNRWA is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality in its work, rather than look into the specific allegations made by Israel against 12 individual UNRWA employees in Gaza who are said to have been involved in the attack on 7 October
The veracity of those individual allegations is being examined separately in a internal investigation at the UN, but Colonna's report did briefly address the issue.
"Israel made public claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations," it said. "However, Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this."
Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip in 2007 and had control over local authorities. UNRWA's cooperation with those authorities was known and accepted by all stakeholders. Still, the thousands of UNRWA staff there - mainly Palestinian refugees - are obliged to stay neutral.
Recently, UNRWA employees who were imprisoned in Israel stated that they had been put under pressure to falsely admit the organization's links with Hamas.
UNRWA's Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said he welcome's Monday's report.
"Safeguarding the neutrality of the agency is central to our ability to continue saving lives and contributing to the human development of Palestine refugees in the Gaza Strip as it faces an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Syria, Lebanon and Jordan," he said.