CHRISTIAN Aid, the faith-based anti-poverty charity headquartered in the UK, has instructed its staff not to refer to Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, according to internal documents and communications reviewed by The New Humanitarian.
The directive overrides months of advocacy by staff to bring Christian Aid’s messaging in line with a growing international consensus that Israel’s mass killings and aid restrictions in Gaza amount to genocide.
By Sumulia
It also stands at odds with many of Christian Aid’s Palestinian partners at a time when the organisation is undergoing a major restructuring to outsource programme implementation to local partners.
Christian Aid has raised over £3 million ($4 million) to help its partners in Gaza, assisting over a million people, according to an internal document.
Staff members have alleged that the organisation has censored Palestinian partners’ public statements about the Gaza crisis.
Following a UN Commission of Inquiry’s announcement on 16 September that “Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”, more than 20 major aid organisations acknowledged the findings and called for “urgent intervention”.
While Christian Aid has asked the international community to “do everything in its power” to stop Israel’s bombing of Gaza and allow aid in, the organisation had not – until responding to questions from The New Humanitarian – publicly acknowledged the new report. It has also not changed its language rules, intensifying frustration among staff.
“Christian Aid is a genocide denier,” one staff member said during an 18 September meeting about the organisation’s lack of response to the UN inquiry. The New Humanitarian has reviewed a transcript of the meeting.
“We could have been one of the first organisations after Amnesty and Human Rights Watch to have come out and said this,” another staff member said, referring to the genocide label. “Instead, we’ll probably be one of the last.”
A Christian Aid spokesperson rejected the allegation of genocide denial.
“Christian Aid is an international humanitarian and development charity, not experts in international law,” the spokesperson said. “We therefore actively acknowledge the legal judgements made by experts with regard to both ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’. We also actively acknowledge what the United Nations commission of inquiry said last week, but we are not an organisation that is set up with the legal expertise to make that determination for ourselves.”
Language guide
As scholars and international bodies have deliberated on the question of genocide in Gaza, Christian Aid has acknowledged developments without taking a position.
Last October, the organisation hosted a lecture by lawyer and genocide expert Philippe Sands, who cautioned the audience about the “difficulty in proving genocide” because of Israel’s self-defence claims.
In May this year, after UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher asked the Security Council to prevent genocide in Gaza, Christian Aid called on the UK government to do the same.
But many staff are not content with Christian Aid’s deference to external statements.
In August, more than 120 Christian Aid staffers signed a letter asking their directors to advise the organisation’s board to adopt the terms “apartheid” and “genocide” when describing Israel’s actions in Palestine.
“Our current approach is not working,” reads the letter, seen by The New Humanitarian. “It is our belief that by naming these crimes, we will bring more pressure to bear on those with influence to stop what is happening to Palestinians. Failure to do so makes us at best irrelevant but arguably part of the problem.”
“Don’t use politically loaded terms such as ‘genocide’ which have a specific meaning in international law.”
Signatories did not receive a response to the letter, a staff member told The New Humanitarian, requesting anonymity to avoid professional reprisal.
Instead, later that month, Christian Aid sent staff a document titled “Gaza Appeal Core Script” to guide external communications about the crisis. The script says it is aimed at a Christian audience that has “very high levels of compassion but low levels of optimism”.
“We need to be hopeful, emotional, honest and unifying,” it says.
“Don’t use politically loaded terms such as ‘genocide’ which have a specific meaning in international law,” says a language guide included in the script. “The judgment of the situation needs to be determined by international mechanisms of accountability rather than Christian Aid.”
The language guide also says Christian Aid “has not adopted the language of apartheid, but we are happy to refer to those who do”. It directs staff not to say “ethnic cleansing”, “enemies”, “terrorists”, “murderers”, or “resistance fighters”.
The UN Commission of Inquiry report appears to have given some international NGOs a licence to use the term “genocide”. Save the Children International, for example, recently published a social media explainer saying its own observations are consistent with the commission’s genocide determination.
During their 18 September meeting, several Christian Aid staff stressed the urgency to acknowledge the commission’s findings and proposed an infographic explaining the report’s implications.
A Christian Aid spokesperson who was not attending the meeting sent a message to the participants: “Christian Aid’s guidance on media regarding genocide has not changed. While we can acknowledge what the UN commission of inquiry says, we use media opportunities to speak to our core script.”
Throughout the meeting, the colleagues recounted their months-long effort to push for Christian Aid to acknowledge apartheid and genocide in Palestine. One staff member said the charity had previously received legal advice that the risk of using the term “genocide” was lower for a civil society organisation than for a legal organisation.
“Therefore, there is a legitimacy for us to be able to do that without the expectation that we’d have done the full legal analysis,” the staff member said.
The staff member added that if questioned by a journalist, “I cannot give any answer other than I believe that genocide is happening”. To do otherwise, they said, would be a betrayal of Christian Aid’s partners who call the situation a genocide, including the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, whose July 2025 report refers to Israel’s actions in Gaza as “Our Genocide”.
The spokesperson told The New Humanitarian that Christian Aid has “not received legal advice in this regard” but listens to and considers many opinions.
The meeting attendees resolved to continue asking Christian Aid’s directors to respond to the August letter, though they doubted their chances of success.
“Management has a track history of just sort of burying, pushing things to the side,” another staff member said during the meeting.
The spokesperson said Christian Aid’s board and directors recently agreed on a process to “look at our current positioning – it is right that trustees have the space to have internal conversations in order to reach a decision”.
Mounting controversies
Frustration over Christian Aid’s language directives comes after months of advocacy by staff to keep the organisation’s ongoing restructuring in line with its commitments to “localisation and decolonisation”.
Christian Aid has said that 45% of staff – around 320 people – would be laid off during the change process. An unofficial analysis produced by one staff member, seen by The New Humanitarian, suggests that people of colour and those based outside the UK have been disproportionately affected by staff cuts.
“The new Christian Aid will be more British, more Christian, less queer, less disabled, and more white,” the analysis says.
“We don’t agree,” the spokesperson said. “Christian Aid is fully committed to being a diverse and equitable organisation that provides equal opportunities for all staff.”
They pointed to Christian Aid’s high ranking among dozens of organisations monitored by FAIR SHARE, which tracks the proportion of women and women of colour among the leadership and staff of international social impact organisations.
Staff concerns about the make-up of the workforce have been heightened by a slew of recent internal controversies.
In April 2024, staff complaints led to the resignation of then-board member Giles Fraser. Fraser, a journalist and self-described Zionist, had published an essay days earlier about the “radical anti-Israeli side to Palestinian Christianity”. In the essay, he described a Tel Aviv neighbourhood populated by East African immigrants as “rubbish-filled”, “dangerous”, and home to “raggedy toothless prostitutes”.
“We are grateful for the contribution Giles Fraser made during his time as a trustee,” the spokesperson said. “It was his decision to step back, and we wished him well. As ever, Christian Aid remains committed to working with others to combat poverty and injustice and campaign for change.”
Later that year, after receiving criticism from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, a major donor, Christian Aid, deleted from its website a toolkit developed by a partner organisation to help lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer women affected by conflict.
“Christian Aid’s decision to pander to queerphobic funders, rather than stand by the work of our colleagues… is disgusting and completely contradicts Christian Aid’s proclaimed values,” said an open letter drafted by the organisation’s LGBTQIA+ and allies network.
At least two people involved in developing the deleted toolkit resigned from Christian Aid, according to internal communications seen by The New Humanitarian.
The spokesperson said the deletion of the toolkit “does not reflect any change in attitude of support for LGBTQ+ staff”.
“The toolkit was removed from the website because it was giving the mistaken impression that it was a Christian Aid policy document reflecting a change of practice of not adopting any policy or agenda on issues of gender identity and human sexuality in our work,” they told The New Humanitarian.
The CEOs of both Christian Aid and Christian Aid Ireland met with staff to hear their concerns about the deletion of the toolkit, according to the spokesperson.
“Christian Aid is a diverse, welcoming, inclusive and safe place to work regardless of background or sexual orientation,” they said.
Partners censored
Two staff members in the 18 September meeting said Christian Aid has manipulated statements shared by its Palestinian partners.
“We’ve all got plenty of stories about partners being censored,” one of them said.
In September 2024, Christian Aid’s media and fundraising teams deliberated over a video submitted by one of its partners, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, to be included in a fundraising appeal. In the video, a 15-year-old girl stands among white tents and poses questions on behalf of children in Gaza.
“When will the war end? And if this war were happening to you, would it reach such a level of brutality? Would we see images of your children’s heads being cut off while you are safe in your homes?” the girl says in a cut of the video seen by The New Humanitarian.
A previous cut had included the line: “Is it really so difficult to eliminate Netanyahu’s government?” Christian Aid removed the line with permission from PCHR and from the girl, though the girl reiterated, according to an internal communication, that “her call was to challenge and overcome the current government”.
But even with the line about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu removed, Christian Aid ultimately decided not to publish the video.
“There is some strong content here, but there are parts I’m not happy to put out, primarily the line about ‘heads being cut off’,” one member of the fundraising team said, adding that he was also uncomfortable with the video’s accusatory tone.
Several colleagues protested and asked for the video to be published.
“Appeals are, of course, about fundraising – and that requires thinking about how difficult messaging can land with the target audience,” one staff member said. “They are also an opportunity to stand alongside our partners, and to push the boundaries of what people understand about difficult contexts.”
“By withdrawing the video, it could be construed that we either don’t fully believe that she has seen what she claims to have seen, or we feel the need to sanitise the reality of war,” said another staff member.
“It’s wrong that we’re censoring the real stories and experiences of our partners,” another said.
Staff discontent over Christian Aid’s communication guidelines coincides with the organisation’s phasing out direct implementation to adopt “a much stronger, locally led response” based on a “partner-based approach”.
“We want to work with organisations whose strategies and approaches overlap with ours,” Christian Aid CEO Patrick Watt told The New Humanitarian in June. “That doesn’t mean that everything we do and everything our partners do will be the same. It’s about finding common ground.”
That common ground does not appear to include how to describe what Christian Aid’s partners in Gaza are experiencing themselves. Participants in the 18 September meeting mentioned that partner organisations’ workers were being displaced amid Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza City.
Six partner organisations mentioned in Christian Aid’s 28 August script – the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, Culture and Free Thought Association, Agricultural Development Association, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Women’s Affairs Centre, and Young Men’s Christian Association Palestine – have described the situation in Gaza as genocide or endorsed statements using the term.
The script includes quotes from two of those organisations describing the “horrifying and terrifying” sound of bombs exploding in Gaza and the ensuing “destruction, loss, and profound grief”.
“The memory of loved ones lost, the courage of my colleagues, and the resilience of my people inspire me every day to keep going. It is my way of honouring them, and of holding onto hope,” reads one quote from a PCHR representative.
Neither quote mentions Israel or uses any of the wording prohibited by Christian Aid’s language guide.
Christian Aid’s spokesperson said the organisation does not censor or manipulate partners’ statements.
“Christian Aid’s partnership approach is founded on principles of mutual respect, shared values, and a commitment to empowering local actors,” they said. “When editorial choices are taken, they are made with this approach at its heart and in line with agreed messaging.”
Acknowledge, bridge, control
The day the UN commission released its report, multiple Christian Aid staff members asked in a work chat whether they were still under orders not to use the term “genocide”.
Colleagues then began circulating a new script drafted by a member of the media team. The advice follows the “ABC” method – “a widely used guidance… on how to approach media questions in a way that reflects our values and priorities”, according to Christian Aid’s spokesperson.
It entails three steps: acknowledge, bridge, and control.
According to the guidance, staff are to acknowledge the UN commission’s conclusion that Israel has committed genocide before adding: “This is an issue for international humanitarian law.”
Next comes a bridge statement acknowledging an undeniable “campaign of violence on civilians”.
The third step is to “control” or “pivot” the question by outlining Christian Aid’s previous advocacy for aid access, halting arms sales to Israel, and a ceasefire that would both “end the suffering and see the hostages released”.
The advice concludes: “Return back to what our partners are doing and how supporters can help.”
Edited by 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.
