NGO Monitor
13 August 2009
Oxfam Novib in the Netherlands receives nearly €130 million annually from the Dutch government – approximately 70% of this NGO’s budget – primarily via co-financing subsidies (2007, 2008). And from here, the funds are distributed to a number of highly politicized NGOs active in the Arab-Israeli conflict. For example, Oxfam Novib partnered with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) on a “lawfare” project (funded by the EU), designed to “[c]ontribute to the abolition of the death penalty...via extrajudicial executions” by the Israeli military. PCHR has led the “prosecution of Israelis suspected of committing war crimes” such as the “universal jurisdiction case in Spain.” Oxfam Novib also lobbied “EU ministers of Foreign Affairs to shelve the plans for intensifying relations between Europe and Israel.”
In 2007-8, Oxfam Novib donated $987,818 to Human Rights Watch (HRW) – which makes the Dutch government one of HRW’s major donors, and is inconsistent with this NGO’s claim that it “accepts no government funds, directly or indirectly.” In addition to HRW and PCHR, Oxfam Novib also funds Adalah, an Israeli-Arab NGO that was centrally involved in preparing a pseudo-academic publication entitled “Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel´s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law.”
The discovery of the close links between Oxfam Novib and the Dutch government comes after the exposure of Holland’s funding for the activities of the NGO “Breaking the Silence.” According to Ha’aretz, the embassy in Tel Aviv provided €19,995 for a report based on anonymous claims alleging human rights violations by the Israeli army, without the knowledge of the Dutch Foreign Minister. (The Jerusalem Post reported the amount as €19,999.) If the amount had been €20,000 “it would have required approval from The Hague,” perhaps due an effort to hide this embassy initiative from officials in the Netherlands.
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