UK to end project tracking potential Israeli violations: Report

A UK government unit responsible for documenting Israel’s possible war crimes during its genocidal war in Gaza has been shut down amid funding cuts, the Guardian has reported.

The London-based newspaper on Wednesday reported that cuts within the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) have forced the international humanitarian law cell to close.

The move means that funding for the Conflict and Security Monitoring Project, which is run by the independent group the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), will also end, according to the report.

An FCDO spokesperson told Al Jazeera that the change was part of an “internal restructure” and that the cell’s work would be continued by a “different team in the FCDO”, without giving further details.

“We continue to heavily invest expertise and resources into our conflict prevention and resolution work, including the monitoring of international humanitarian law in Gaza,” the spokesperson said.

CIR’s work included open-source monitoring of incidents in occupied Palestine, Israel and Lebanon, with information dating back to the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023.

The centre also conducted more than 20 investigations covering topics such as shootings of children in Gaza and maintains a database containing verified information about roughly 26,000 incidents across the Middle East, the Guardian noted.

The Guardian’s report suggested the FCDO would lose access to the database once the funding stream ends, removing a key node of information that has aided decision-making in previous months.

The FCDO spokesperson told Al Jazeera the government department would “retain access” to CIR research it had funded while also noting that the project’s reports were only one element of its “assessments and approach” to IHL (International Humanitarian Law) issues.

The FCDO has been roiled by the prospect of major job and funding reductions. In July, the office’s former permanent secretary said it planned to shrink its workforce by up to 25 percent.

And last November, the FCDO announced plans to abolish its unit dedicated to emerging conflicts and displacement crises, the Guardian reported at the time.

The project provided support to governments and civil society in conflict zones such as Syria, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Yemen.

The Foreign Office in recent months has also seen internal divisions over the UK’s arms sales to Israel.

Mark Smith, a diplomat who quit his job over the UK’s refusal to stop selling arms to Israel, said late last year that civil servants who questioned the government’s Israel policies were routinely silenced.