Published: 3 February 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
TOM WHITE's path has taken him from suburban Sydney to head of the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza. He tells BEN LYNFIELD about the rewards and challenges of his work.
It might sound daunting to be responsible for an area with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, where an overwhelming majority of people live below the poverty line and where armed conflict can flare up at any moment.
But Tom White, the Australian who more than any single individual keeps the Gaza Strip going on a daily basis, is used to challenging assignments. The director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), who has been in his Gaza post for a year and a half, has a wealth of experience to draw on.
For several years, he played a significant role in relief efforts in Afghanistan, supervising nearly a thousand workers from all its ethnic groups, before the fall of Kabul.
White, 51, has earlier roots in UNRWA, an organisation loathed by some right-wing Israelis for what they see as an anti-Israel raison d’etre. He previously served as deputy head of UNRWA in the occupied West Bank. His current deputy in Gaza, Jenifer Austin, is also from Australia.
Gaza is a long way from Sydney, where White grew up. Relatives ran businesses on both sides of his family and he, too, considered a life in commerce, earning a master’s degree in that subject from the University of NSW. But his sense of adventure and desire to see the world got the better of him.
White got his start working for the UN in post-genocide Rwanda in 1995. That was a turning point. “I saw the impact on the civilian population. Something stuck in my mind,” he told The Jewish Independent. He has spent the past 20 years working with or on behalf of refugees in conflict zones, including two stints in Afghanistan, one of them for Save the Children.
His second spell ended six weeks before the fall of Kabul. “We knew things were not good, but no-one predicted Kabul’s fall. Lots of colleagues were trapped there.”
