Claim: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees or UNRWA added a black ribbon on their social media banner images to mourn the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
Fact: The UNRWA added the black ribbon before the death of Sinwar in memory of UNRWA members who have been killed in the conflict in Gaza.
On 17 October 2024, a user on X (formerly Twitter) posted an image (archive) of multiple UNRWA Twitter profile banner heads including UNRWA’s official Twitter, UNRWA Europe, UNRWA Arabic, UNRWA Partners, etc. The image included the text, “Is UNRWA mourning the death of Sinwar?
UNRWA Twitter accounts add black stripe to profile after Sinwar’s elimination.”
The post is further captioned, “UNRWA appears to be mourning the death of Yahya Sinwar. All UNRWA accounts added a black stripe to their profile.”
UNRWA
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was created after the mass displacement of Palestinians following the 1948 War. It was created through the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) and aims to provide direct relief and work programs for Palestinian refugees. Given the ongoing displacement of Palestinians and the lack of a resolution to the refugee issue, the General Assembly has repeatedly extended UNRWA’s mandate, with the most recent extension lasting until 30 June 2026.
As such the UNRWA has maintained a presence in Gaza, and its mission is to assist Palestinians by providing services in education, healthcare, relief, social welfare, camp infrastructure, microfinance, and emergency aid, particularly during armed conflicts.
Since 7 October and the eruption of the war in Gaza, the UNRWA has been under fierce scrutiny and has faced accusations and criticism by the Israeli government for harbouring Hamas terrorists. Most grievously, in January 2024 Israel accused at least 12 UNRWA workers of participating or aiding in the 7 October attack. The accusation led to multiple countries’ suspension of aid to the UNRWA. These accusations were compiled in a dossier and shared with US government officials. On 4 February 2024, The Jerusalem Post reported that Netanyahu called for the end of the UNRWA saying, “We exposed to the world that UNRWA is collaborating with Hamas, that some of its people even participated in the atrocities and abductions of October 7,” and that, “the time has come to begin the process of replacing UNRWA with other bodies”. That same month The Times of Israel reported that Netanyahu also repeated this desire to UN ambassadors, saying, “We need to get other UN agencies and other aid agencies replacing UNRWA.”
The UN began a probe into 19 UNRWA employees alleged to have been involved in the attacks, and concluded in August 2024 that only nine of the investigated UNRWA workers “may have been involved in the 7 October attacks”, and promptly removed them from service. The UN also pushed back on the accusations by claiming that Israel provided none of the evidence to back their allegations and that many UNRWA employees had reported being coerced and tortured into false confessions by Israel.
In a June 2024 op-ed for the New York Times, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini spoke of the genuine consequences of these accusations writing, “at least 197 UNRWA employees have been killed in Gaza. Nearly 190 UNRWA premises have been damaged or destroyed. UNRWA-run schools have been demolished; at least 520 displaced people have been killed while sheltered inside UNRWA schools and other structures. Since Oct. 7, Israeli security forces have rounded up UNRWA personnel in Gaza, who have alleged torture and mistreatment while in detention in the Strip and in Israel.”
Yahya Sinwar
Yahya Sinwar was a Palestinian militant associated with Hamas and was considered to be one of the most influential figures in Palestine. In 2017, Sinwar was elected Hamas’s Chief of the Gaza Strip and on 6 August 2024 he was chosen as the leader of the Hamas political bureau following the assassination of former leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Sinwar has been credited with many key aspects of Hamas, such as founding the Al-Majd security apparatus and helping establish Hamas’s military wing the Al-Qassam Brigades. According to Al Jazeera Sinwar was also seen as the mastermind behind the 7 October attack by Israel.
On 17 October 2024, the Israeli government announced the death of Sinwar after a drone attack during a routine military inspection of a region in Southern Gaza killed him. The Israeli military later released footage from the drone showing Sinwar sitting in a chair with his face covered with a Keffiyeh. On 18 October, Hamas confirmed his death during a televised address.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check first checked and confirmed that the alleged black ribbon was added to several UNRWA social media profiles. Upon confirmation, we set about establishing when and why the ribbon was added. The UNRWA official Facebook and Instagram pages also included the ribbon on their profile pictures. According to Facebook, the profile picture was updated to include the black ribbon on 18 October 2023, a full year before Sinwar’s death.
To confirm when the UNRWA added the ribbon to their X accounts, Soch Fact Check employed the use of Wayback Machine, an Internet archiving site that aims to build a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artefacts in digital form. The site listed over 1000 screenshots captured from the UNRWA webpage with each screenshot dated and marked on a calendar. According to the archive, the UNRWA had been displaying the ribbon as early as 19 October 2023, corroborating the Facebook update time. This was further verified by checking through another archiving tool, called ‘archive.today’, which had a screenshot of the account saved on 23 October 2023. This screenshot included the black ribbon as well.
The UNRWA itself has spoken out against the allegations, with the agency’s Director of Communications Juliette Touma releasing a statement on 18 October 2024, which denied the claim. She clarified that the ribbon was added to pay tribute to the 22 UNRWA members who were killed at the time and the over 230 colleagues who have died since then. “To pay a symbolic tribute, [so] we added a black ribbon to our logo on social media. We have kept it since as the death toll continued”, Touma wrote in her statement.
Thus, the claim is verifiably false.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim was posted on X here, here, here, and here garnering close to 300k views.
Conclusion: The UNRWA did not add a black ribbon to their profiles to mourn the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. The ribbon was added a year prior to Sinwar’s death to pay tribute to UNRWA service members who were killed in the conflict in Gaza.
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