Activity

• Christian Aid serves as the official relief, development and advocacy agency of 41 sponsoring churches in Britain and Ireland, and is part of the worldwide church community.
• Christian Aid’s activities date back to the 1940s. According to its 2023/2024 annual report, the organization worked with 260 partners in 24 countries, funding 410 projects across Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Funding

• In 2023/2024, total income was £83.3 million; total expenses were £82.4 million, of which £9.9 million was allocated for Asia and the Middle East.
• Donors include the United Kingdom, European Union, Ireland, United States, Scotland, and the United Nations.

Governmental and Institutional Funding to Christian Aid (amounts in £)

Other supporters include (amounts not disclosed): Action Aid, APRODEV, Bread for the World -EED, Church of Sweden, DanChurchAid, European Commission Humanitarian Aid (ECHO), HEKS, International Orthodox Christian Charities, Norwegian Church Aid, Open Society Foundations, Save the Children UK, Switzerland (Federal Department of Foreign Affairs – FDFA), Trocaire, and various UN organizations (including UNOCHA).

Political Advocacy

• Christian Aid has provided funding to a number of highly biased and politicized NGOs active in the Arab-Israeli conflict including Adalah, Zochrot, and B’Tselem. (See table below for further funding information.)
• Assumes a highly biased and politicized approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Its publications systematically ignore Palestinian responsibility in the conflict and minimize Israel’s right to self-defense.
• In March 2024, Christian Aid’s Head of Middle East Policy & Advocacy William Bell published an article stating, “We should all be concerned when Palestinians tell us they fear that ethnic cleansing will lead to a second Nakba, especially when Israeli Government actions and words appear to confirm it…October 7 did not happen in a vacuum. It is critical to grasp that unless Palestinians are afforded the same rights as their Israeli neighbours and treated as equals, then violent conflict will only deepen.”
• In December 2023, Christian Aid published an article calling on the UK government for “support for international accountability mechanisms, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), to investigate all allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity by any party to the conflict, and for the UK Government to contribute funding to an ICC investigation in a similar way to the support provided already by the UK to the ICC’s work on Ukraine.” The article also called for the UK Government to “conduct a transparent review of arms and military components sold from the UK and used by the Israeli military, and to suspend licences and sales until it can demonstrate that no UK-manufactured arms have been used in violation of international humanitarian law in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
• In October 2021, Christian Aid was a signatory on a statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to the statement, “The risk of operations ending for some of those organisations, is an attack on human rights and will leave Palestinian children and others unable to access adequate and essential services… [the UK Government] must now take urgent practical steps to reiterate its public support to Palestinian human rights defenders and humanitarian and development organisations.”
• In April 2021, Christian Aid signed a joint statement welcoming the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch a formal investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the “State of Palestine.” The statement condemned the UK’s opposition to the ICC investigation, stating that “The investigation is the first genuine hope that alleged perpetrators of the most serious crimes will be held to account for their actions…”
• In May 2019, Senior Ecumenical Relations Manager Dionne Gravesande, participated in Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions’ (ICAHD) national conference titled “Breaking the Wall – How To Bring About Change in Palestine.” The conference discussed the “role to rally support for Palestine and educate Britain and Europe about its plight…[and] pave the road towards a new plan for bringing an end to Apartheid, and freedom and justice for Israelis and Palestinians” (emphasis added).
  • ICAHD is highly active in promoting anti-Israel BDS campaigns, and utilizes highly biased and politicized rhetoric, accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide,” “collective punishment,” and “apartheid.”
• In March 2019, during the violence on the Gaza border, Christian Aid was a signatory on a statement accusing Israel of “serious violations” and “potential war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Christian Aid ignored the violent nature of the protests, which have consisted of an organized armed attack on the Israeli border and IDF positions, attempts to destroy and breach the border fence, and sustained arson, rocket, and mortar attacks on Israeli civilian communities.
• In March 2018, as part of the ACT Palestine Forum, published “Water in the Gaza Strip,” which promotes the false allegation of Israeli water discrimination against Palestinians. The report ignores evidence that Israel provides Palestinians in the West Bank with more water than required under the Oslo framework and of poor management by the PA of infrastructure, waste, and theft of up to 50 percent of supplies in some Palestinian areas. In so doing, APF manipulates and distorts water and land issues in order to portray Israel as a brutal regime. (See more on APF below.)
• In February 2018, as a member of the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), published a report titled “50 Years of Occupation: Dispossession, Deprivation and De-development” that accused Israel of “systemic, decades-long squeeze of Palestinian economic prospects and human rights.” (See more on AIDA below.)
• In May 2016, released a video titled “Christian Aid’s work in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.” The video presents misleading and false information about the security barrier and water usage in the West Bank, and adopts a Palestinian narrative of the conflict.
• Co-signed an August 2015 campaign, calling on world leaders “to press the Israeli government to lift the blockade on Gaza,” while altogether omitting that the blockade was implemented in an effort to stop Palestinian terrorists from smuggling of weapons and rockets into Gaza that would later be used to target Israeli civilians.
  • Co-signatories include a number of other highly biased and politicized NGOs active in the Arab-Israeli conflict: Broederlijk Delen, CCFD, Diakonia, French Platform of NGOs for Palestine, Heinrich Boll Foundation Palestine, Medico International, Norwegian Church Aid, Norwegian People’s Aid, Oxfam, Pax Christi, Physicians for Human Rights, Trocaire, Lutheran World Federation, World Vision, and others.
• Contributed to the 2013 Zochrot conference, “From Truth to Redress: Realizing the Return of Palestinian Refugees,” insisting on a “right of return” for 1948 Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants amounts to a call for the elimination of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

BDS Activities

• In January 2025, Christian Aid called on the UK to “challeng[e] the occupation. This includes a ban on any trade and investment with Israeli Settlements…[and] a full arms ban on Israel.”
• In September 2024, Christian Aid Head of Middle East Region William Bell was a signatory on a statement to the UK Business and Trade Secretary calling for an “review of trade relations with Israel, to ensure full compliance with the UK’s international legal obligations and uphold respect for human rights.”
• In April 2024, Christian Aid was a signatory on an open letter to Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch and Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron calling on the UK to “immediately halt arms licences and exports to the Government of Israel.”
• In March 2024, 29 NGOs, including Christian Aid, took out a full page ad in The Times stating, “If we want to ensure that the body of law established after the Second World War to protect us all is respected, MPs should support the suspension of arms sales to those suspected of breaking it, including the Government of Israel.”
• In January 2024, Christian Aid published a letter in The Times affirming that, “Until the UK government calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and suspends its arms sales to Israel, it is complicit in the slaughter of innocent civilians taking place every day in Gaza.”
• In September 2021, Christian Aid published a report titled “Where is Palestine?: A story of loss, inequality and failure” claiming that  the “occupation undermines economic development and dehumanises those under its control.” The report called for the UK, Ireland and EU member states to “End trade with illegal settlements. All Governments should prepare legislation against the importation of products from illegal settlements. A ban on trade with Israeli settlements is not a ban or boycott on trade with Israel; Christian Aid believes it is the role of governments to end trade with illegal entities and ensure businesses under their jurisdiction comply. UNSCR 2334 required all Member States to differentiate between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Trading with them merely sustains their economic viability and helps maintain an illegal situation.”
• In October 2019, Christian Aid organized a side event at the 5th session of the UN Intergovernmental Working Group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises featuring Dr. Susan Power, Head of Legal Research and Advocacy at Al-Haq, who discussed “corporate involvement in Israel’s prolonged military occupation and colonisation.”
  • Al-Haq has lobbied intensively in support of the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel.
• On October 30, 2012, twenty-two NGOs, including Christian Aid, released a report, “Trading Away Peace: How Europe Helps Sustain Illegal Israeli Settlements.” The report repeats the BDS (boycotts, divestment, sanctions) agenda, calling on the EU and national governments to wage political warfare through various forms of economic sanctions on Israel.