Helsinki joins Washington and Stockholm in ending direct support for the U.N. agency — extending a shift that gained force at the first post-Oct. 7 congressional hearing on UNRWA, where testimony from Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce founder Duvi Honig entered the permanent record.
A third Western government has decided it can help Palestinians without paying UNRWA.
Finland will stop financing the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees when its current agreement expires at the end of 2026, Foreign Trade and Development Minister Ville Tavio announced on Aug. 27, ending contributions of €5 million a year and declining to negotiate a replacement. Tavio said Finnish aid to Palestinian territories will not fall, only move to other channels such as the World Food Programme, with the U.N.‘s new Palestine reconstruction fund under consideration. Israel’s Foreign Ministry welcomed the move, calling the agency a hotbed of terrorism.
Washington moved first and hardest. The United States suspended funding in January 2024 after allegations that agency staff took part in the Oct. 7 attacks, Congress then barred further money, and President Trump directed federal agencies in February 2025 to make no contribution, grant or payment. Sweden ended core support that December while continuing Gaza aid through other bodies. Finland had suspended its own payments in January 2024, then restored them two months later after reviewing the agency’s risk controls. This time it is not renewing at all.
American investigators, meanwhile, have gone from allegations to names. The USAID Office of Inspector General, a law enforcement body separate from the shuttered aid agency, has referred 108 current or former UNRWA employees to the State Department for suspension or exclusion from U.S.-funded work, and roughly 1,500 staff remain under investigation for ties to terrorist organizations in Gaza. Three more were recently proposed for debarment, among them a former UNRWA teacher accused of receiving and holding civilian hostages beginning on Oct. 7.
The case against the agency is not only about individuals. Those referred include school principals, teachers, security personnel, counselors and medical staff — a deputy principal serving as a Hamas company commander, a teacher with sniper training, another who tracked explosive device assignments, and a principal assigned to a Hamas weapons manufacturing unit whose school sat above three anti-tank positions and a tunnel shaft. A 2023 review by UN Watch and Impact-SE identified 133 UNRWA educators promoting hate and violence, plus 82 staff across 30 schools producing hateful material for students. Underpinning it all is a structural fact laid out in congressional testimony: the United Nations does not designate Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, so U.N. resources can and regularly do reach their members. A humanitarian body on paper had become a payroll, a classroom system and, in places, physical cover for a terror organization.
That argument was first pressed in a hearing room. On Nov. 8, 2023, one month after the attacks, Rep. Chris Smith convened a hearing on UNRWA’s schools, antisemitism and American funding. Smith entered testimony submitted by Duvi Honig, founder and CEO of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, into the permanent congressional record. Honig worked with Smith before the hearing on its direction and afterward on its takeaways. Smith went on to chair three more UNRWA hearings within twelve months and advanced the Stop Support for UNRWA Act, which cleared the Foreign Affairs Committee in February 2024.
“I’m proud and honored to have helped build this foundation from the beginning — working with Congressman Chris Smith before that historic hearing, helping shape its direction, testifying and putting our position into the permanent congressional record, and then working through the takeaways afterward as we pushed this from exposure toward action,” Honig said.
“The principle was clear from day one: taxpayer dollars intended to help innocent people should never be allowed to support terror, radicalization or institutions exploited under the disguise of humanitarian assistance. Protecting Jewish lives and protecting Palestinian lives both require making sure humanitarian funding reaches the people who need it.”
Honig credited Smith directly. “He is second to none on Capitol Hill in fighting antisemitism, hate and injustice, and he has repeatedly been willing to stand at the forefront when others would rather look away.”
For seven decades UNRWA rested on one assumption: that funding Palestinians and funding the agency were the same act. Three governments have now separated them. The United States alone sent the agency $344 million in 2022. It sends nothing today.
JBizNews Desk | Washington
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