Overview

Breaking the Silence (BtS) has been receiving direct and indirect funding from various European governments for many years. In 2014 (latest comprehensive data available), 61% of BtS’ annual budget was from foreign (European) governments (direct and indirect combined). The total income for this NGO in 2014 is listed as NIS 3.8 million (accessed July 12, 2015).

The main governmental direct donors in 2014 were the European Union, the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat (Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and the Netherlands), and Norway.

In addition, in December 2015, following inquiries from NGO Monitor, the EU disclosed that it was providing to BtS an additional €236,000 (~1 million NIS)  in 2015-2017, under a project titled “Educating for Change: Human Rights Education in Israeli Society” (Table 1 below).

NGO Monitor research reveals that most foreign governmental funding frameworks exhibit a lack of transparency and accountability pertaining to process, objectives, and evaluation. The criteria used to approve the grants remain unclear, as is the degree to which these criteria correspond to the official foreign policies of the funders. Similarly, there is little transparency regarding measures used to evaluate the activities of recipient NGOs, in contrast to self-reporting.

Regarding funding sources, Israeli NGOs are legally obligated to report foreign government income. Most of the data in Table 2 below was taken from the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits and Breaking the Silence – not the funders. Our research also shows that, in some instances, the same governments provide funding through multiple channels to BtS (“double dipping”).

Table 1

EU Funding for Breaking the Silence (received by NGO Monitor on December 20,2015)

Table 2

Breaking the Silence funding (in NIS)