Legal briefing on the rights of stateless Palestinians in the UK September 2025 assistance only for reasons of personal convenience, they would not be entitled to protection under the Refugee Convention. UNHCR provides a non-exhaustive list of objective reasons for why an individual may not be able to (re)avail themselves of UNRWA’s assistance, which would bring them within the scope of the second paragraph of Article 1D: (1) termination of UNRWA’s mandate; (2) UNRWA’s inability to fulfil its protection or assistance mandate; (3) threat to the applicant’s life, physical integrity, security or liberty or other serious protection-related reasons; and (4) practical, legal and/or safety barriers preventing an applicant from (re)availing themselves of UNRWA’s protection or assistance.67 Cessation of protection or assistance will therefore not only occur in the case of the abolition of UNRWA, ‘but also the fact that it is impossible for that organ or agency to carry out its mission’ or ‘to guarantee that [their] living conditions in that area will be commensurate with the mission entrusted to that agency’.68 An assessment of whether this is the case must be carried out on an individual basis.69 CJEU jurisprudence, as well as jurisprudence from some UK courts, has interpreted Article 1D as meaning that such protection or assistance must have ceased for reasons beyond the applicant’s control and independent of their volition, and that in cases of ‘mere absence’ or ’voluntary decision to leave’ protection or assistance would not be deemed as having ceased.70 However, such a restrictive interpretation is not in line with the plain language of Article 1D, and risks unduly excluding Palestinians from protection, who wouldn’t otherwise be able to access any form of assistance or protection as refugees. It is imperative that the words ‘ceased for any reason’ are interpreted in line with the plain meaning of the treaty, the principle of good faith in the interpretation of treaties,71 and in line with the object and purpose of the Convention to ensure continuing protection and assistance for Palestinian refugees. Such an interpretation would also reflect the UN’s recognition that most Palestinians are already refugees.72 As such, the key consideration in assessing whether assistance has ceased should be whether the applicant is able to access effective protection, regardless of the reasons why protection or assistance has ceased and regardless of whether the applicant had control over such reasons. Another important aspect that has been rapidly developing in recent case law of the CJEU concerns the threshold by which to determine UNRWA’s inability to fulfil its mandate of providing assistance and guaranteeing adequate living conditions to Palestinians. In the 2023 case, OFPRA v SW, the CJEU acknowledged that the provision of health assistance to Palestinian refugees to meet their basic needs forms part of UNRWA’s mission, ‘whatever the nature of the care or medication needed for those purposes’.73 The CJEU held that the inability of UNRWA to provide such care and assistance cannot be considered to fall outside of its mission in cases where it lacks operational capacity due to, among others, budgetary constraints. Otherwise, this would leave Palestinians receiving UNRWA‘s assistance at risk of being unable to benefit from international 67 UNHCR, Guidelines on Article 1D (fn 14) para 22. El Kott (fn 55) paras 56, 62, 63; See also CJEU, Serin Alheto, C-585/16 (25 July 2018) para 86. 69 El Kott (fn 55) para 64; Serin Alheto (fn 68) para 86. 70 See El Kott (fn 55) para 49-50, 59, 65; CJEU, Bundesrepublik Deutschland v XT, C-507/19 (13 January 2021) paras 70-71; AB and NB (fn 55) para 36; UK Upper Tribunal, SSHD v HMS, PA/00392/2017 (20 December 2018), para 60. 71 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (adopted 23 May 1969, entered into force 27 January 1980) Article 31. See also Katia Bianchini, Protecting Stateless Persons: The Implementation of the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons across EU States (Brill Nijhoff, 2018), 88-93, discussing the correct interpretation of Article 1D of the Refugee Convention and Article 1(2)(i) of the 1954 Convention in accordance with the VCLT. 72 For further details on this argument and reasoning, see BADIL, Closing Protection Gaps (fn 5), Ch 5, S 1.3. 73 CJEU, OFPRA v SW (fn 58) paras 40-41. 68 18