Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies UNRWA and Palestinian Refugees promote Palestinian refugee rights in any of the negotiations. UNRWA, on the other hand, has been excluded from even an ‘observer’ role in situations like the post-Madrid and the Oslo process. This reflects both political failure by states, and the limitations of UNRWA’s mandate. The full scope of the Palestinian protection gap includes the weak legal framework in the Arab world. None of the Arab host states is a party to the Refugee Convention or a regional convention with refugee protections (such as in Africa or the Americas). Hence, no treaty guarantees refugee rights in the territories where the majority of Palestinian refugees reside. The Arab states are not parties to the 1954 Convention on Stateless Persons, with its important rightsprovisions for which UNHCR is the monitoring body. UNRWA would have no authority to monitor or implement the Refugee Convention or the Stateless Persons Convention in any case. The Arab states are parties to many individual human rights conventions, but UNRWA has limited capacity to monitor, intervene, file reports in the treaty bodies, or pressure for compliance concerning the Arab states’ implementation of these treaties vis-à-vis Palestinians in their territories—a role even more constrained by its budget than perhaps the flexibility of its mandate. Although the Arab states are parties to the 1965 Casablanca Protocol, a region-wide treaty guaranteeing basic rights to Palestinians, they have widely disregarded their Protocol obligations (Akram and Rempel 2004, 164). UNHCR does not have treaty-based authority to 25