Refugee Affairs Officer Program in the occupied Palestinian territory to provide protection through monitoring, reporting, and a limited degree of intervention with the Israeli authorities on the ground.210 The Refugee Affairs Officer Program was eventually phased out. Although the Refugee Affairs Officer Program by then “constitute[d] the most expansive protection mechanism ever instituted by UNRWA[,] it was unable to bridge the protection gap in relation to Palestine refugees in the OPT.”211 During the second Intifada of the early 2000s, UNRWA introduced an Operational Support Officers Program to facilitate its emergency activities. Far more limited than the protection-related activities of the Refugee Affairs Officer Program, the goal of the Operation Support Officers Program is “to assist in alleviating the adverse effects that the restrictions imposed by Israeli authorities [are] having upon the Agency’s provision of humanitarian services.”212 The Operation Support Officers Program provides a measure of protection to the extent that it has assisted in the delivery of essential humanitarian aid to the refugees.213 Encouraged by its first donor conference in 2004, UNRWA has included a rightsbased approach to its operations. UNRWA appointed a senior protection and policy advisor to study ways in which it could increase its protection work for Palestinian refugees, in particular refugee children, based on the Convention on the Rights of the Child.214 UNRWA has expressed its intention to continue developing a “protection strategy which focuses on clarifying the actions, rights and legal precepts that are germane to UNRWA’s mandate and to the Agency’s specific operational context […] to maximize the points of intersection between the human development and human rights paradigm.”215 In short, some of UNRWA’s general assistance activities may be considered types 210 The activities under the Refugee Affairs Officer Program are described in UNRWA’s annual reports for the period. See UN General Assembly, Report of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, 1 July 1987-30 June 1988, Supplement No. 13, General Assembly Official Records: Forty-Third Session, (September 16, 1988), para. 52, UN Doc.A/43/13. See also UN General Assembly, Report of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, 1 July 1990-30 June 1991, Supplement No. 13, General Assembly Official Records: Forty-Sixth Session, (October 9, 1991), para. 99, UN Doc.A/46/13. 211 Refugee Affairs Officer Program Guidelines, 3rd ed., 15 March 1989, p.2 cited in Parvathaneni, “UNRWA’s Role in Protecting Palestine Refugees,” 17–18. 212 UN General Assembly, Report of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, 1 July 2000-30 June 2001, Supplement No. 13, General Assembly Official Records: Fifty-Sixth Session, (October 18, 2001), para. 150, UN Doc. A/56/13 (SUPP). 213 UN General Assembly, Report of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for the Palestine Refugees in the Near East, 1 Jan - 31 Dec 2011, General Assembly Official Records: Sixty-Seventh Session, (August 28, 2012), para. 41, UN Doc.A/67/13. 214 UN General Assembly, “Resolution 60/102 - Operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East,” January 16, 2006, para. 6, UN Doc.A/RES/60/102. 215 UNRWA, “Programme Budget 2008-2009,” July 2007. The Palestinian Refugee Problem: An Overview 37