Finn Church Aid (FCA)

Profile

Country/TerritoryFinland

Activity

  • Finn Church Aid “is the largest Finnish development cooperation organisation and the second largest provider of humanitarian aid.”
  • Operates in 17 countries worldwide.
  • Claims that its “actions are guided by international human rights standards and principles such as equality and non-discrimination, participation and accountability.”

Funding

Governmental and Institutional Funding to Finn Church Aid (amounts in €)

    

Political Advocacy

  • Finn Church Aid funds highly politicized and biased NGOs active in the Arab-Israeli conflict including Sadaka Reut, Rabbis for Human Rights, Arab Center for Counseling and Education, and the Palestinian Counseling Center.
  • In May 2018, as a member of ACT Alliance, released a statement “condemn[ing] the killing of Palestinian people on their own land” following the Great March of Return. The statement 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 a member of the ACT Palestine Forum, published “Water in the Gaza Strip,” which repeats the false allegation of Israeli water discrimination against Palestinians. APF ignores evidence that Israel provides Palestinians in the West Bank with more water than required under the Oslo framework and that poor management by the PA of infrastructure, waste, and theft of up to 50 percent of supplies in some Palestinian areas.
  • Listed as a sponsor of the September 29-30, 2013 conference, “From Truth to Redress: Realizing the Return of Palestinian Refugees,” organized by Zochrot. This event advocated a “one state” framework and included lecture topics on the logistics of materializing a Palestinian “right of return,” which would effectually mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. (See NGO Monitor’s factsheet on Zochrot’s Support for “One State,”May 1, 2014).
  • Was a signatory to the 2012 report “Trading Away Peace,” which repeats the BDS agenda and calls on EU and individual European governments to wage political warfare through various forms of economic sanctions against Israel.
  • Published a 2009 report “Failing Gaza: No rebuilding, no recovery, no more excuses” – together with Amnesty International UK, Trocaire (Ireland), Diakonia (Sweden), Oxfam InternationalChristian Aid (UK), Broederlijk Delen (Belgium), CAFOD (UK), Medical Aid for Palestinians, and others – advancing  the unsupported legal claim that Gaza remains occupied and the false allegation of “collective punishment” in order to “prove” the central thesis that “primary responsibility [for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza] lies with Israel.”

Participation in EAPPI

  • Finn Church Aid is the “Finnish participant” of the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) volunteer program, which claims to “provide protective presence to vulnerable communities, monitor, and report human rights abuses.” Both WCC and EAPPI play key roles in mobilizing church BDS efforts.
    • EAPPI sends volunteers to the West Bank to “witness life under occupation.” Upon completion of the program, the volunteers return to their home countries and churches where many engage in anti-Israel advocacy, including advocating for BDS campaigns in churches, comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany, and other delegitimization strategies.
  • According to EAPPI Finland, “In Finland, the Foreign Ministry is responsible for selecting and coaching the observers. The Church’s Foreign Aid is a partnership between the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Ministry finances Finland’s EAPPI activities with partner organizations. Partner organizations are required to have a clearly defined development cooperation program that is in line with the Finnish development policy objectives.”
  • In 2021, volunteers from EAPPI “turned its focus to advocacy in Finland and abroad, working in cooperation with partners such as the World Council of Churches.”
  • In November 2017, EAPPI arranged a four day event in Helsinki, Turku and Tampere titled “Glimpses of Hope- Life Under Occupation” with speakers from the NGO “Combatants for Peace.”
    • While claiming to “allow each side to understand the other’s narrative,” Combatants for Peace activities reflect a strong affiliation with the Palestinian agenda and narrative, placing most of the blame for the conflict on “the occupation.”
  • In 2016, EAPPI launched a campaign to “shed light into the increasing number of house demolitions in the West Bank, with an appeal for Finnish decision makers to act to prevent the house demolitions.”
  • In a public May 2016 event held in London, an EAPPI activist made antisemitic comments (referring to a ”Jewish lobby” in America), accused Israel of planting knives beside the bodies of Palestinian terrorists, and promoted BDS.
  • In 2015, EAPPI held a photo exhibition in Finland that “depicted life under occupation.”
  • In 2015, EAs “spread the word about a report on operation Protective Edge by the Israeli organisation Breaking the Silence in Finland.”
  • In 2014, Finn Church Aid and EAPPI traveled to major university campuses in Finland, alleging that Israel victimizes and discriminates against the Palestinian population and “vindictively persecutes” Palestinian children.
  • EAs in Finland have been active in lobbying on the issue of the EU’s labelling of settlement products, “appealing also to MEPs, e.g. during the annual EAPPI lobby trips to Brussels, arranged by WCC.”
  • In May 2012, FinnChurchAid and EAPPI launched a campaign to “mark products from the settlements to tell their true origin…The settlements are a key obstacle to peace in the Middle East. They also involve serious human rights abuses.”

Partners

  • Partners with the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI).
  • Finn Church Aid also partners with Rabbis for Human Rights to provide training for “young Israelis on human rights issues before their military service and fosters understanding about the occupation, its implications on people living under such circumstances and minorities’ rights.”
  • Founding member of the ACT Alliance, a coalition of 144 churches and church-related organizations.
    • The ACT Alliance promotes demonizing rhetoric against Israel; international boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) campaigns; as well as the Kairos Palestine document, which denies Jewish historical connections to Israel.
    • 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.”
  • FCA maintains a partnership agreement with the Humanitarian Aid Office ECHO of the European Commission and is a member of APRODEV, the EU lobbying arm of the WCC, which seeks to “support a just peace that ends the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

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