Exclusive: The human rights lawyer on the frontline in Gaza

Philippa Greer

Philippa Greer had already accepted the top job in UNRWA’s field legal office in Gaza before the war unexpectedly began a year ago.

The Scottish lawyer was just finishing up her work as a legal advisor to the UN in Afghanistan, eventually travelling directly from Kabul to Gaza in November 2023 — just weeks after Israeli forces invaded the 140-square-mile territory in response to an unprecedented attack by Palestinian militant groups.

Despite having worked in the strip before, Ms Greer was shocked to find “a different Gaza than that I knew”, she tells Irish Legal News.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was originally established in 1949 to support Palestinians who were expelled from or fled their homes during the brutal civil war that led to the creation of the State of Israel — an event which Palestinians call the Nakba, meaning ‘catastrophe’.

Over the following decades, partly as a result of further wars and waves of displacement, the number of refugees it serves has grown exponentially. By October 2023, UNRWA was supporting nearly six million Palestinians across the occupied territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

After a year of Israeli bombardment that has destroyed most of Gaza’s infrastructure and displaced virtually the entire population, UNRWA now plays an even more crucial role, offering a tenuous lifeline to the 1.9 million people forced out of their homes by the war.

“The level of suffering and the humanitarian needs in Gaza today are beyond human comprehension,” Ms Greer says.

Fears of widespread famine led the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to twice order Israel, in January and in March, to take all necessary measures to ensure the large-scale provision of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. Despite these rulings, deaths from hunger and malnutrition continue to be reported across the entire strip.

UNRWA — which operates hundreds of schools and medical centres in Gaza, as well as playing a critical role in providing access to food and water — is “the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza”, Ms Greer explains. “Thousands of Palestinian humanitarian personnel serve their community across the agency’s fields of operation. UNRWA’s humanitarian services are delivered by these heroes on the frontline every day.”

This is dangerous work, to say the least, with some 225 employees of the agency having lost their lives over the past year. Last month, in the deadliest single incident so far, six staff members were killed when two Israeli airstrikes hit an UNRWA school in Nuseirat, where around 12,000 displaced people were sheltering.

Working in such circumstances is, Ms Greer concedes, “extremely challenging”.

“Gaza currently is the most challenging environment that anyone who passes through from the humanitarian space has encountered,” she says. “Yet it is also the most significant experience for me to date as a human rights lawyer, in terms of being exposed to both the worst of humanity and the best of it at the same time.”

Ms Greer could not have anticipated finding herself in the centre of one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters when she decided to study law at the University of Edinburgh.

The first person in her family to graduate from university, she was initially set to train as a solicitor with a Scottish law firm before instead heading to the United States, where she completed a master’s degree at the prestigious Harvard Law School.

She was determined, she recalls, to use her legal education “to serve the public interest”. It was working on death penalty cases in the American Deep South that led her to realise “that I wanted to pursue my career in human rights and international law”.

After a brief stint with an NGO in Pakistan, and after working for the British human rights NGO Reprieve on death penalty cases involving European nationals facing capital punishment overseas, she secured a position working for South Africa’s Chief Justice as a foreign lawyer.

“This experience further drove me to pursue an international legal career, because it exposed me first-hand to how a domestic legal system could progress from one that underpins institutional racial segregation, to later advance a jurisprudence of equality and the fundamental dignity of human beings,” Ms Greer says.

“My interest in international law and human rights was further deepened while working in Tanzania, the Hague and Cambodia for the United Nations, at the international and hybrid justice mechanisms established to seek accountability for atrocity crimes — genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity — in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and Cambodia.

“I later worked at UN headquarters and in the occupied Palestinian territory with UNRWA, and then in Afghanistan at the UN’s Special Political Mission in Kabul.”

Yet Ms Greer — whose previous work for UNRWA saw her spend time in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — does not hesitate to describe her current work in Gaza as “the most challenging yet rewarding part of my career so far”.

Asked to describe a typical day’s work, Ms Greer says: “Regular evacuation orders are issued by the Israel Defense Forces, often impacting numerous UNRWA installations which are serving as designated emergency shelters for internally displaced civilians during the conflict.

“As a lawyer on the ground, I advocate on behalf of UNRWA each day for respect for the inviolability of UN premises and the status of humanitarian locations under international humanitarian law and issue legal démarches.

“I engage with the parties to the conflict on international law matters, including international humanitarian law, UN privileges and immunities and international human rights law.”

She adds: “UN installations have been directly and indirectly hit during the hostilities, humanitarian workers have been killed and injured as a result of the hostilities, UN workers have been detained in Gaza, and humanitarian aid convoys have been directly and indirectly hit during the hostilities.

“The movement and access of humanitarian personnel is severely restricted, which impacts on the UN’s ability to deliver its mandate in Gaza.

“As a lawyer, I work to support all aspects of UNRWA’s humanitarian operations in Gaza to ensure the delivery of its mandate in the middle of a grave human rights and humanitarian crisis and one of the most destructive and deadly conflicts in modern history.”

She describes missions to the north of the strip — where Israeli forces more recently began a renewed offensive — as formative experiences. “Seeing how colleagues have survived with such resilience against all odds, working to serve their community, amid extreme destruction of civilian infrastructure is unbelievable,” she says.

“Working on medical evacuations of wounded colleagues, on cases of humanitarian personnel in detention, and seeing the immense work and miracles performed every day by our colleagues in designated emergency shelters has made the biggest impression on me.”

Despite her harrowing experiences, Ms Greer does not discourage others from following in her footsteps and pursuing a career in international law.

“You must get uncomfortable to do this work, if you want to work in the international field in humanitarian contexts and hardship settings,” she emphasises. “Especially at first, it is not easy — but you will have some of the most fulfilling times of your life and you will not regret it.

“Doing work every day that does not feel like a job, that feels like a purpose and a privilege, is something that you will feel immensely lucky for, especially as time goes on.

“Being able to look back at past experiences and positions and know that there is nothing more that you could have done, for instance to work towards accountability for atrocity crimes, or to advocate for the protection of civilians, is assuring, while you will always continue to learn through your experiences.

“You will learn in this career to never give up, no matter the challenges or obstacles put in your path, and it will change how you view the world.”

• More information about the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) can be found on the agency’s website. Individuals can also donate to UNRWA online.