Christian Aid (UK)
Profile
Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
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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 2016/2017 annual report, the organization “worked with 475 partners in 37 countries.”
Funding
- In 2020-2021, total income was £86.4 million; total expenses were £89.2 million, of which £10.4 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 £)
Donor | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 |
---|---|---|---|---|
UK (Department for International Development (DFID)) | 7,200,000 | 3,300,000 | 2,400,000 | 7,500,000 |
European Union | 2,200,000 | 7,400,000 | 4,400,000 | 11,000,000 |
Ireland (Irish Aid) | 1,2000 | 1,000,000 | 4,500,000 | 5,700,000 |
U.S. (USAID) | 3,200,000 | 5,000,000 | 7,900,000 | 2,700,000 |
Scotland | 300,000 | 400,000 | 300,000 | 500,000 |
United Nations | 17,700,000 | 18,800,000 | 9,500,000 | |
Other government and public authorities | 8,600,000 | 12,600,000 | 900,000 | 300,000 |
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 Breaking the Silence. (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 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 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 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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Partners
- Christian Aid describes itself as a “key member of ACT Alliance.”
- The ACT Alliance promotes demonizing rhetoric against Israel; international boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) campaigns; as well as the Kairos Palestine document, which calls for BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) against Israel; denies the Jewish historical connection to Israel in theological terms; and rationalizes, justifies, and trivializes terrorism, calling it “legal resistance.”
- Supported the EU’s decision to label products exported from Israeli communities over the 1967 ceasefire line, calling it “an important measure towards ensuring continued, full and effective implementation of existing EU legislation.”
- Member of ACT Palestine Forum, a coalition for “improving the efficiency and effectiveness of ACT responses through enhanced cooperation and coordination.”
- Advocacy goals include contributing “to a global discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that addresses the consequences of occupation, promotes access of individuals to resources, and ultimately brings an end to the occupation” and targeting “Christian communities on the International level…by stressing Christians’ suffering in the Holy Land and seek to preserve Christians presence in Palestine.”
- Urges “various forms of boycott of settlement products,” accusing Israel of denying “Palestinians their fundamental rights of freedom, equality, and self-determination through military occupation.”
- Published a February 2013 Advocacy Paper, “The ‘Permit Regime’ and Israeli Attacks on Palestinian Freedom of Worship,” alleging that “Under Israeli military occupation, repression has become the worst of history compared to that of South Africa. It’s a sophisticated form of social, economic, political and racial discrimination, strangulation, and genocide, incorporating the worst elements of colonialism and apartheid as well as repressive dispossession, displacement and state terrorism to separate Palestinians from their land and heritage, deny them their rightful civil and human rights, and gradually remove or eliminate them altogether. The ID/permit system is one of many elements designed to make greater Israel an ethnically pure Jewish state.”
- Member of Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA).
- In 2017, launched a campaign titled “#OpenGaza 50 Years Of Occupation. 10 Years Of Illegal Blockade” stating that “collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza must end” and that “Gaza is an open air prison.”
- In August 2015, AIDA launched a campaign to “highlight the displacement of Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” The campaign included a press release of 31 international organizations calling on “world leaders to take urgent action to halt ongoing demolitions and hold the government of Israel accountable for the wanton destruction of Palestinian property and of projects funded by international aid in the occupied West Bank,” as well as two infographics on “Displacement and Replacement…Separating Palestinians Across the West Bank” and “20 Years of Talks- Keeping Palestinians Occupied.”
Funding to Israeli NGOs
2018-2022 amounts based on quarterly financial reports submitted to the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits.
NGO | Year | Sum |
---|---|---|
Zochrot | 2020 | 221,592 |
2019 | 187,727 | |
Adalah | 2022 | 100,648 |
2021 | 428,911 | |
2020 | 196,338 | |
2019 | 105,419 | |
2018 | 28,635 | |
Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) | 2021 | 64,907 |
2020 | 152,898 | |
2019 | 84,412 | |
2018 | 147,606 | |
B'Tselem | 2020 | 409,249 |
All Articles about Christian Aid (UK)
Further Reading
- Major UK Churches Adopt Christian Aid's Anti-Israel BDS Agenda Chanah Shapira, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), November 23, 2011
- Christian Aid Palestinian refugees report 'misleading' Jennifer Lipman, The Jewish Chronicle, July 7, 2011
- Christian Aid denies it is biased in the Middle East Church of England Newspaper, September 14, 2007