The Trump Administration Reverses U.S. Position on UNRWA Immunities

On April 24, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice submitted a letter in a civil lawsuit that maintains for the first time that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is not immune from U.S. civil litigation. The letter reverses the position taken by the previous administration in the same lawsuitFootnote 2 and alters nearly eight decades of U.S. practice concerning the immunities of UN entities that are considered subsidiary organs of UN principal organs and thus part of the United Nations itself. Heretofore, the government stated that such organs are entitled to absolute immunity under U.S. treaty obligations. The new position regards UNRWA as an agency with separate legal personality and hence ineligible for the absolute immunity applicable to the United Nations, and it downgrades the immunities of high-ranking UN officials responsible for UNRWA’s activities. The executive branch’s change of position is significant not only for this lawsuit and for UNRWA, but also for UN-affiliated bodies more generally, and for UN officials, including officers at or above the rank of UN assistant secretary-general who enjoy the equivalent of diplomatic immunities under applicable international law. The reversal implicates questions of the international law of immunities, as well as the constitutional and statutory law of the United States. Specifically, the new position will require U.S. courts to address such issues as: whether the U.S. president has constitutional authority to determine the immunities of an entity created by the UN General Assembly; whether courts should autonomously interpret the applicable treaties and statutes dealing with the immunities of such an entity; what degree of deference (if any) should be accorded to a new executive treaty interpretation, announced for the first time in litigation where the prior administration had twice affirmed longstanding positions on the same questions; and how the relevant statute on international organizations immunity should be interpreted in relation to a subsequent and self-executing treaty on UN immunities.