Introduction

On August 8, 2025, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) released a “backgrounder” identifying NGO and UN agency partners receiving portions of the CAD $74.5m Canada allocated – out of CAD $104.5m committed – to humanitarian aid in the West Bank and Gaza since November 2024. In October 2023-August 2025, Canada contributed over $355 million in aid to the West Bank and Gaza; as such, the figures, NGOs, and UN agencies provided in GAC’s backgrounder do not fully represent total Canadian government funding since October 2023.

GAC asserts that this assistance is “designed to meet the immediate humanitarian needs of Palestinian civilians and to help lay the foundations for long-term peace and stability by supporting the development of institutions and socio-economic conditions necessary for a viable two-state solution.” The department characterizes its partners as “trusted” and “reliable,” citing their “sectoral expertise and operational capacity to deliver.”

However,  the evidence clearly demonstrates that several of these organizations act in ways that directly contradict Canada’s stated values of peace and stability, through documented affiliations with terrorist entities and the promotion of hostile, anti-Israel rhetoric and activities.

Moreover, on October 27, 2023, the Canadian government announced it would match donations, up to $10 million, for the Humanitarian Coalition’s (12 self-described “trusted Canadian humanitarian aid organizations”) Gaza Humanitarian Emergency Appeal. This was part of Canada’s allocation of “$50 million in humanitarian assistance funding announced on October 21, 2023.” On November 15, 2023, NGO Monitor raised concerns, including terror links, regarding some of the Coalition’s NGOs. However, Canada has continued to provide funds to several of these same NGOs.

Partners

Norwegian Refugee Council

GAC Funding Amount in 2025: $3,000,000

  • As extensively detailed in NGO Monitor’s July 2024 report, “Norwegian Refugee Council’s Campaign to Weaken and Circumvent US Anti-terror Policy,” NRC opposes regulations designed to prevent terror groups from diverting aid and actively seeks to overcome or circumvent them. It supports direct engagement with terrorist organizations and resists vetting beneficiaries to determine if they are linked to proscribed groups. 
  • NRC is a key implementer of cash assistance programs coordinated by the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Social Development (MoSD).

UNRWA

GAC Funding 2025: $8,000,000 

Total GAC Funding 2023-2025: $55,000,000

  • In January 2024, Israel alleged that at least 12 UNRWA employees participated in Hamas’ October 7th atrocities, and asserted in March 2024 that “over 450 UNRWA employees are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza.” Additionally, a January Wall Street Journal article, citing Israeli intelligence sources, reported that “23% of UNRWA’s male employees had ties to Hamas, a higher percentage than the average of 15% for adult males in Gaza, indicating a higher politicization of the agency than the population at large.” Furthermore, the PFLP and PIJ each have official unionized bodies of UNRWA employees.
  • A January 2024 UN Watch report revealed “A Telegram group of 3,000 UNRWA teachers in Gaza is replete with posts celebrating the Hamas massacre of October 7th minutes after it began, praising the murderers and rapists as ‘heroes,’ glorifying the ‘education’ the terrorists received, gleefully sharing photos of dead or captured Israelis and urging the execution of hostages . . . UNRWA teachers regularly share videos, photos and messages inciting to Jihadi terrorism, and openly celebrating the Hamas massacre and rape of civilians.”
  • On January 26, 2024, GAC announced that it was halting funding to UNRWA due to “allegations of [the] agency’s staff being involved in Hamas’s brutal terrorist attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023.” On March 8, 2024, GAC issued a statement reinstating support for UNRWA, claiming that the agency “has taken immediate measures to strengthen oversight, accountability and transparency.”

UNICEF

GAC Funding 2025: $7,000,000

According to GAC, its funding to UNICEF, inter alia, “support[s] the needs of children through cash transfers.”

UNICEF cash-assistance programs in Gaza have relied on coordination with the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Social Development (MoSD).  Through this partnership, MoSD provides lists of beneficiaries to UNICEF, allowing Hamas to influence the distribution of funds.

  • In March 2024, UNICEF published an update regarding its cash-assistance program in Gaza, in which it claims to have supported over 540,000 Gazans since the Hamas-orchestrated October 7th massacre.  Crucially, UNICEF boasts that it “maintained and strengthened the partnership with the Ministry of Social Development (MoSD), which helped ensure access to the social registry and resulted in targeting the most vulnerable families.” (For more information, see NGO Monitor’s report, “Hamas Influences UK Funded Gaza Cash Programme”)
  • UNICEF spearheads “consolidated efforts to monitor and report on grave violations against children in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt).” By means of these efforts, the NGO partners with terror-linked anti-Israel advocacy NGOs that receive substantial funding from UNICEF to do so, despite the working group’s standards of its members being “neutral, impartial and independent from all parties to the conflict” (emphasis added).
  • Partners include Addameer and Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P). 
    • In June 2025, the US Department of Treasury sanctioned Addameer for “being owned, controlled, or directed by, or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the PFLP.”
    • On October 22, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defense declared Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P) a “terror organization” because it is part of “a network of organizations” that operates “on behalf of the ‘Popular Front’.” Numerous individuals with alleged ties to the PFLP have been employed and appointed as board members at DCI-P.

Save the Children

GAC Funding 2025: $2,000,000

  • Save the Children runs a number of projects in Gaza and the West Bank, implementing “programs including youth and child participation, food assistance, nutrition support, water, sanitation and hygiene, education, and child protection programmes[.]” Despite a humanitarian mandate, some of these programs include major political and partisan advocacy that fuels the conflict, echoing the Palestinian narrative of victimization and demonization of Israel
  • In January 2025, Yasmin Ghaffar, a member of Save the Children UK’s public affairs team, posted a blatantly antisemitic TikTok video. In it, she asked her followers for recommendations for bagels in New York, specifying, “I don’t want to be giving any of my money to genocidal maniacs,” and adding that she was looking for shops that are either “actively pro-Palestinian” or “known to not be in support of that hell-hole place and Zionism” – clearly seeking to avoid Jewish-owned stores.1

Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations Canada (UOSSM Canada)

GAC Funding 2025: $2,000,000

  • UOSSM consistently pushes aggressively anti-Israel political advocacy, completely inconsistent with its claimed humanitarian mandate.
  • On November 27, 2023, Vice-Chair Dr. Anas Al-Kassem reposted a tweet by notorious antisemite Jackson Hinkle distorting the image of former hostage Maya Regev by implying that she was in love with her Hamas captor. In April 2024, Regev testified that “every girl” held hostage in Gaza “is sexually harassed in one way or another.”
  • On October 17, 2023, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza claimed that an Israeli airstrike hit Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, killing hundreds of civilians. The IDF shared videos, images, and intelligence materials demonstrating that an Islamic Jihad rocket had failed to launch properly (i.e. target Israeli civilians) and instead hit the hospital parking lot. President Biden, amongst others, acknowledged this conclusion.
    • On October 17, Dr. Al-Kassem accused Israel of “hit[ing] the Ahli Christian hospital and kill[ing] 500 people instantly! Shame on this State!!!”
    • On October 18, he reiterated that “It is an Israeli airstrike,” describing the incident as “the ugliest targeting of a hospital ever!”
    • In a video published on Jan 7, 2024, Dr. Al-Kassem says [3:13], “I knew that things will get really bad (sic) since the Ahli Baptist Christian hospital, when it was bombarded. . . . 400 innocent people took refuge to the hospital (sic) . . . I have been, you know, in many Toronto rallies and I spoke that (sic) this is a turning point. If the Canadian government . . . [is] not going to condemn this – I don’t care who did it. I don’t care politically who’s behind it – If they’re not going to condemn it, [and instead] wait to see who did this and who did that, then we [will] . . . see more atrocities and more attacks on medical facilities. And in fact this is what happened, because there was no condemnation of this atrocity.”
  • On October 9, 2023, Dr. Al-Kassem tweeted, “Taking civilian hostages is not acceptable, and must be condemned regardless of who is implicated in such act (sic). That’s why it is outrageous to see politicians not condemning the hostage of 2 million people (sic) in Gaza by Israel forces in the largest open prison the world has known!”
  • One of UOSSM’s ‘partners’ is Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW).
    • On June 19, 2014, Israel’s Defense Minister declared IRW to be illegal, based on its alleged role in funneling money to Hamas, and banned it from operating in Israel and the West Bank. According to news reports, the decision was made after “the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), the coordinator for government activities in the territories, and legal authorities provided incriminating information against IRW.”
    • In January 2021, the US State Department cut ties with IRW due to “anti-Semitism exhibited repeatedly by IRW’s leadership.”
    • Islamic Relief Canada states that it works “alongside the Ministry of Health” in Gaza. This is a Hamas entity.

CARE Canada

GAC Funding 2025: $2,000,000

Ma’an Development Center

GAC Funding 2025: $2,000,000

  • Ma’an consistently employs inflammatory and highly politicized anti-Israel language, including by describing the State of Israel as “the Israeli colonial project” and Gaza as “the world’s largest open-air prison.”
  • In November 2023, Ma’an Development Center was a signatory on a letter to Third States calling to “Recognise Israel’s colonial settlement enterprise as one policy designed to maintain an institutionalised regime of racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people as a whole, and  address the root causes of Palestinian dispossession and domination, and the undermining of the individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people, inherent in Zionist settler colonialism,” and to “Recognise Israel’s judicial system as part and parcel of Israel’s apartheid regime, and provide full cooperation to the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC and the UN ongoing Commission of Inquiry, to ensure justice and accountability.”