Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), recently designated by Israel to coordinate aid in Palestinian territory, is at the heart of a lively controversy. While the humanitarian agencies of the United Nations organization are prevented from acting, this organization has been propelled to the forefront of the crisis as a “new model of aid”: its food distributions on the ground, however, end up almost every day by deadly chaos. Within the Geneva humanitarian community, many voices denounce an instrumentalization and militarization of aid. “Everything seems to indicate that this structure is an empty shell, recorded here for humanitarian varnish, but very far from international humanitarian law, of which it does not respect the principles of independence, impartiality and neutrality”alert Philip Grant, director of the NGO Trial International, who seized the Swiss authorities to examine the compliance of the GHF in humanitarian and Swiss law.
Registered on February 12 in the Trade Register in Geneva, before moving on to the status “homeless” when the first doubts arose on the method, the GHF multiplies the sprains: incomplete foundation council (two members instead of the three required), absence of a financial revision body, no physical domiciliation or bank account in Switzerland. In Bern, the surveillance authority for foundations and the Ministry of the Interior have opened an investigation into its legality. The GHF also does not provide any clear trace of its financing. It has published no budget, no list of donors, or financial report, which constitutes a breach of the transparency standards required in Switzerland for the foundations. Arrested, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs-also shaken internally by a sling of diplomats accusing Minister Ignazio Cassis his pro-Israeli positions-indicates that the GHF “Has not yet started her activities and that she is therefore inactive”.
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Source: Lemonde