ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Omar Yousef Shehabi

Omar Yousef Shehabi is an acting assistant professor at NYU School of Law and a JSD candidate at Yale Law School. Before coming to NYU, he served as a legal officer with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), a legal officer with the United Nations Secretariat, Office of Administration of Justice, and a legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team in permanent-status negotiations with Israel.

POSTS BY Omar Yousef Shehabi

09 February 2024

Omar Yousef Shehabi

UNRWA as Sui Generis

Since UNRWA preemptively disclosed Israel’s claim to have evidence that 12 UNRWA employees participated in the 7 October 2023 attacks, at least 16 donor states and the European Union, which collectively supply the vast majority of the Agency’s budget, have suspended their contributions. This poses an existential threat to UNRWA, the largest provider of humanitarian assistance in Gaza. This post explains how the current episode displays the unsatisfactory sui generis status of UNRWA’s Palestinian staff, and forms part of an ongoing and largely successful attempt to position UNRWA as a compromised, sui generis UN organisation which constitutes an outlier in the law and practice of the United Nations. Continue reading >>

22 October 2017

Omar Yousef Shehabi

The Kurdistan Independence Referendum and Constitutional Self-Determination

Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) held a non-binding independence referendum on 25 September 2017. Voters were asked: ‘Do you want the Kurdistan Region and the Kurdistani areas outside the region’s administration to become an independent state?’ Voting occurred in Kirkuk and the Kurdish-controlled parts of other territories in northern Iraq whose disputed status is recognized in the Iraqi constitution. In retrospect, Kurdish leaders seem to have overreached politically, as the Iraqi armed forces and allied militias have in recent days seized Kirkuk Governorate from Kurdish control. But was it legal overreach? Continue reading >>

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