By Will Worley
MAJOR humanitarian organisations appear reluctant to sever ties with the Boston Consulting Group, the US management consulting firm at the centre of a scandal around its work supporting Israeli war aims in Gaza.
BCG has been accused of aiding Israeli starvation tactics that critics say amount to war crimes and genocide. The firm helped set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israel- and US-backed outfit operating food distribution sites at which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed attempting to access food. It also modelled the costs of relocating Palestinians from Gaza, according to reporting by the Financial Times: Forced displacement is a war crime under international law.
Since the revelations came to light, BCG leaders have fired several employees, said the projects were “run secretly”, and launched an internal investigation, but the fallout continues to ripple through the $36 billion emergency aid sector.
Last week, The New Humanitarian reported that Save the Children International was suspending its relationship with BCG “pending the outcome” of BCG’s investigation. But Save the Children is far from the only humanitarian group with ties to the US-based management consultancy.
The reach of BCG – and other private sector consultancies – has proliferated across the non-profit sector through pro bono or “low bono” services. BCG consultants have worked with UN agencies and major NGOs on everything from policy research to programme evaluations and organisational restructurings. Management consultants commonly sit on non-profit boards.
Responding to questions from The New Humanitarian, several UN agencies and international NGOs said they were “deeply concerned” or “very alarmed” about BCG’s involvement with the GHF.
The World Food Programme said it had started “a comprehensive review” of its work with BCG, as has Plan International, which has suspended talks with the company. But other organisations are taking less decisive action: The World Health Organization (WHO), for example, still has a massive BCG contract pending, and other agencies highlighted their review processes for working with external partners but gave no further information.
The fallout over BCG’s Gaza work has highlighted the extent to which for-profit management consulting firms have influence in the non-profit sector. And it underscores the potential mismatch in humanitarian principles and values in the sector’s growing partnerships with the private sector.
“BCG is only the tip of the iceberg,” Deborah Doane, a partner at Rights CoLab and author of The INGO Problem, which criticises the dominance of big charities in the civil society space, told The New Humanitarian.
“Since the late 90s and early 2000s, the sector has become more and more beholden to management consultants to achieve ‘efficiencies’ in their work,” she said. “This has contributed directly to INGOs moving away from solidarity-based work.”
Many of the aid organisations contacted by The New Humanitarian – six UN agencies, five international NGOs, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Gates Foundation – spoke out against the GHF and Israel’s blockade on aid into Gaza.
But – despite BCG’s critical role in setting up GHF and in drawing up plans that critics say would amount to atrocity crimes against Palestinians – none of the aid groups were willing to break outright with the company, nor were any willing to say how much they had paid for BCG’s services on unrelated issues. The ICRC and the Gates Foundation did not respond at all.
The “prevailing tone” of statements the humanitarian groups sent to The New Humanitarian “suggests a willingness to compromise on principle for the sake of continuity or convenience”, Aarathi Krishnan, CEO of geopolitical risk firm RAKSHA Intelligence Futures, said after reviewing the statements.
“Most organisations are defaulting to procedural reviews and cautious statements, approaching this as a reputational ‘storm in a teacup’ rather than a defining moment for humanitarian action,” Krishnan told The New Humanitarian. “This is a profound misreading of the stakes.”
“A cynical sideshow”
Upon launching in February 2025, thanks to help from BCG, the GHF caused immediate concerns among humanitarians, who worried it would be an ineffective and dangerous way to distribute food to starving Palestinians. That was even before its real-world impact became clear: a highly securitised, dystopian scheme where nearly 700 people have been killed trying to access food.
Tom Fletcher, the UN’s top humanitarian official, described the GHF as a “cynical sideshow. A deliberate distraction. A fig leaf for further violence and displacement”.
Fletcher told the UN Security Council the GHF “sets an unacceptable precedent for aid delivery not just in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories], but around the world”. He urged the UN Security Council to “have no part in it”.
But despite being clear-eyed on the GHF, the UN’s emergency aid coordination body (OCHA), which Fletcher leads, has been a lot less clear about its perspective on the company that set it up. BCG has reviewed OCHA’s working practices, supported some of its major initiatives and participated in various studies, including a joint report highlighting the private sector’s “essential role” in humanitarian work.
“While OCHA has received occasional pro bono support from the Boston Consulting Group, we currently have no active partnerships with them,” Eri Kaneko, OCHA spokesperson, told The New Humanitarian. However, no comment was made on whether OCHA would review its relationship with the company.
Other UN agency relationships with BCG go much deeper and far beyond pro bono.
The WHO, while also critical of the GHF, is still considering whether to go ahead with a $4.295 million contract it has pending with BCG as it restructures amid massive budget cuts, Health Policy Watch (HPW) reported. WHO has already spent $2.849 million on BCG between April and May this year, according to HPW. WHO did not respond to a request for comment from The New Humanitarian.
Meanwhile, WFP lists BCG as a “corporate supporter”, and the company says it has worked with the UN agency for two decades, “on the highest priority topics for the organisation”.
A WFP spokesperson said the agency was unaware of the link between BCG and the GHF “until it became public information” in June. WFP “has begun a comprehensive review of its work with BCG”, said the spokesperson.
Plan International, on whose board sits a BCG staffer, is also examining its work with the company, while giving itself room to backtrack. “Any discussions relating to potential future projects [with BCG] are currently suspended,” said a statement, although the charity currently has “no active work with BCG at a global level”. The statement continued: “This suspension will remain in place while we conduct a new ethical review and await the outcome of BCG’s internal investigation.”
The last time Plan International paid BCG for work was in 2018, but the management consultancy has since worked with them “ad hoc on a pro bono basis”, according to Plan.
Another organisation to condemn BCG was the International Rescue Committee, for whom the company helped – pro bono – to “assess our financial processes, infrastructure, and capabilities across the entire IRC system”, as the charity prepared staff cutbacks last year, according to an email from CEO David Miliband to senior leaders, obtained by The New Humanitarian.
“The IRC does not have current projects with BCG and won’t be starting new projects until they complete their review and assure themselves and us that this won’t happen again,” said an IRC spokesperson.
But IRC refused to provide details on how much work it had done with BCG, and provided no comment on the status of Laurent Desmangles, a BCG senior adviser who sits on IRC’s advisory board.
Leaving the door ajar
While humanitarian organisations were quick to condemn the GHF’s operations in Gaza and to say they were reviewing their ties with BCG in the wake of revelations about its involvement, there is clearly a reluctance to shut the door entirely.
For example, the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, said, “Any future proposals for collaboration or pro-bono support would go through a thorough review process.”
Similarly, the UN’s migration agency, IOM, said: “All ongoing and future partnerships… are subject to rigorous due diligence processes and are assessed with the utmost care.” The agency, which jointly authored a report with BCG, currently has no “formal” engagement with the company.
Even international NGOs that publicly signed a 1 July statement condemning the GHF were reluctant to take a harder line against BCG.
CARE worked with the company on a “market analysis project, most of which was provided in-kind by BCG”, said a US spokesperson, who did not say how much was paid for by CARE. In 2024, the company was also a sponsor of CARE’s annual fundraising gala.
“Currently, CARE does not have any upcoming project plans with them,” said the spokesperson, declining to answer if they would be reviewing their relationship with BCG.
German INGO Welthungerhilfe lists BCG as a corporate partner, with BCG’s consulting at the “core” of the relationship, though its Düsseldorf office “sends a band of its own into the fray” of a festival run by the INGO, according to the charity’s website. Spokesperson Simone Potts said Welthungerhilfe worked with BCG to get “a high discount for services that are otherwise very expensive” and has “no running project supported by BCG”. Again, no comment was made on whether Welthungerhilfe would review its relationship with the company.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has also been a “longstanding partner” with BCG Norway, which the charity’s director of external relations, Sean Nicholson, sought to differentiate between BCG International and BCG USA. “We will await the results of the… investigation announced before we take any decision on future cooperation,” Nicholson added.
A spokesman for UNICEF, meanwhile, said that while “BCG has provided paid, discounted, and pro bono work for the organisation in the past”, the agency was not aware of any ongoing work with BCG. “UNICEF has strong screening mechanisms for both its partners and vendors,” said the spokesperson. “BCG has not been involved with any plans around the restructuring of UNICEF, and there are no plans for such involvement,” they added.
For Krishnan, all these carefully worded statements show a “pattern that is both familiar and deeply troubling”.
“What’s missing in the sector’s response is a sense of moral clarity and the courage to act on it,” she said. “There is a reluctance to draw red lines, to assert that some partnerships and practices are fundamentally incompatible with humanitarian values, even if it means walking away from powerful or lucrative relationships.”
Edited by Irwin Loy and Andrew Gully.
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The New Humanitarian puts quality, independent journalism at the service of the millions of people affected by humanitarian crises around the world. Find out more at www.thenewhumanitarian.org.
