Private Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Challenges UN Bodies and International Law
FULL TRANSCRIPTION OF BREAKTHROUGHS WITH JULIA EMTSEVA FOR PUBLICATION

Hello and welcome to Breakthroughs, I’m Daniel Brown. This month, we talk to a new arrival in the HEC research community, Doctor Julia Emtseva. Julia is assistant professor of law at the school. Her research mainly focuses on the role of private actors in international law, in particular in transitional justice or TJ processes. Our exchange was recorded in mid-October. And that’s an important timeline as Julia’s research is often on shifting sand, where latest developments can transform the reality on the ground. None more so than in the subject matter of one of her latest publications, the Israeli Palestinian conflict in and around Gaza. We’ll be discussing this with her in the coming half-hour, in this kind of context:
World leaders signed a deal for peace in Gaza during a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday, co-hosted by Donald Trump and Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. The summit’s aim is ‘to end the war in the Gaza Strip, enhance efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East, and usher in a new era of regional security and stability’, according to the Egyptian presidency.
Ziad Abu Zayyad, co-editor OF the Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture. 22’ Zyad Abu Sayyad. “I don’t know if we can talk about justice…”
Daniel Bar-Tal head of the Walter-Lebach Institute for Jewish-Arab Coexistence 
Daniel Bar-Tal Israeli academic, author and professor of social-political psychology from the Department of Education at Tel Aviv University.  .: professor of political psychology at Tel Aviv University. 

Some of the academic voices on Transitional justice. This is a way for countries to deal with mass violence or atrocities that happened during wars or dictatorships. And before that, we heard a report on leaders signing an ceasefire accord on October 13. As we record this, the ceasefire is holding. We’ll be returning to the role transitional justice could play in the Gaza conflict, and the research Julia has been doing on the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation later on. But first, let’s meet the person in question and get an overall idea of her work…
Walking in Law Department
So, here we are on the first floor of the flashy S building at the entrance of the HEC campus. This is where JE has set up office in the school’s Law Department for her tenure track which usually lasts five years or so. That began in September, after this young Kirghiz academic finished her International Law doctorate at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg. Julia’s research mainly explores the role of private actors in international law. She’s especially interested in how multinationals, foundations and NGOs operate within international legal regimes, often in conflict zones. And that’s one of the reasons that brought us to her office. Since this May, Julia’s been studying the operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, GHF. We’ll be focusing the podcast on the GHF. 
So, let’s find out more about Julia Emtseva’s research and vision on this question. Through this prism, we’ll be discussing how private actors like the GHF are reconfiguring traditional notions of how humanitarian aid is being distributed.
So, here we go:
KNOCK
Julia, lovely to see you here to talk about your research. First of all, let's start at the beginning. Could you briefly describe the kind of research that you do? I mean, how you work connects to international law of private actors and transitional justice.
Sure. Thank you so much, Daniel. Thank you so much for stopping by and for your interest also in my research. I guess since our listeners are not necessarily familiar with everything I do, let me introduce first what exactly we mean by international law, private access and transitional justice. So international law usually refers to a rule book of how states should cooperate with each other or resolve conflicts, but it's also a framework for establishing obligations, human rights obligations for states, et cetera, et cetera. 
When it comes to private actors that I study, I mostly look at non-governmental organizations, NGOs, foundations, philanthropies, and also businesses, so corporations. And then the third part is transitional justice. And transitional justice refers to something that happens after a conflict or an authoritarian regime. It is a set of mechanisms or processes that take place after such a crisis, like criminal trials to punish the perpetrators, the perpetrators of gross human rights violations. It refers to truth commissions, when commissions are organized to find what actually happened during this period. You probably heard about the South African Truth Commission, at that time. And also, of course, the reparation programs for the victims and institutional reform. So how should we change the institutions that were discriminatory or abusive in the past? How can we change them so we can be more democratic? 
So I look at the intersection of all the three things. Because it was very interesting for me how private actors that I mentioned are getting involved in transitional justice processes, and those are very public processes and mechanisms, and we are allowing private actors to step in. So how international law addresses this phenomenon? How can we regulate what they do? Is there anything to regulate? Because they're coming with a very good intention, usually. 
So this is basically what my project is doing. My work basically critically examines this growing privatization of justice because this is what's happening, exploring both the potential and the pitfalls of this whole evolving dynamic.
QUESTION: And what originally drew you to this kind of research? I mean, how you look at philanthropic and corporate actors that step into justice and humanitarian roles that were usually reserved for states.
It's a very interesting question because when I started studying this issue like five years ago for my PhD project, I guess what drew me first is that I was trying to reflect on my own past, not past, but on my own background.I come from Kyrgyzstan, the former Soviet Republic, and I was born during the time when Kyrgyzstan was trying to gain its independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And when I heard about social programs and human rights, these programs were always organized by, foreign private organizations like NGOs or foundations that were operating on the territory of Kyrgyzstan, who were trying to, I don't know, promote certain programs. And when I got to do international law and I had the chance to select the topic for my research, I thought about it again, and then the reason why I decided to study is because I'm an international lawyer, and from the international law perspective, it's very interesting why private actors are getting engaged in this very public and international legal thing. So I started studying why they do it, even though they are not supposed to do it.You know what I mean? So this was basically the motivation for me very shortly.
YOUTUBE EXTRACTS GHF
1) New aid system in Gaza has opened its first distribution hubs.mp3
With a growing famine for more than 2 million people, a new aid system in Gaza has opened its first distribution hub. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is backed by Israel and the United States, but has been rejected by the United Nations and other aid groups. They claim Israel is trying to use food as a weapon. The group also says the new distribution system won't be affected. Gaza faces a major humanitarian crisis after Israel's nearly three-month blockade of supplies to pressure Hamas.
QUESTION: So now let's turn, Julia, to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the GHF, as a striking example of privatized aid, as you write in your article recently.You started researching specifically the private aid distribution only when GHF announced its operations in May of this year. But you've been studying privatization offunctions for, as you said, at least five years for your PhD.How is this a logical extension of the research focus that you just described?
Well, logical logical, I don't know about that, but it is an extension also of my research interest. And while before, yes, indeed, I examined how private actors are shaping transitional justice, but it was still different. Most of the time they operated within or alongside formal legal frameworks. And the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation represents a more radical configuration of privatization, right? A privatization of public functions in an acutely fragile situation. So it's even the next level.
So for me, it was even more basic in that sense to study the whole framework of how this program came along and how this project appeared in the minds of those who created the project.
QUESTION: So perhaps, Julia, you could tell the listeners about that genesis .The reason I'm saying that is I think now is the time, actually, you can give the background if you don't mind, that you wanted me to give because it's much earlier. And so do you mind doing that saying how it was created with private American money and so on.
So Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is formerly also a private foundation registered in the US as well as in Switzerland, but the Swiss office has been closed because of the complaints about the organization. But so it is a private foundation. It's not an international organization or it's not a state agency, but it is still operates under the US and the Israeli oversight. The oversight comes in both through funding, because the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is funded by the American public money, but also there are donors that are undisclosed.So we don't know yet who is actually contributing to this whole operation.So, this means that it's deeply entangled with the state power while also presenting itself as neutral and humanitarian actor.
But in the very classical notion of humanitarian actors, they are not, right, because they are so deeply connected to the state of Israel, first of all, because it's an occupying power when we speak about Gaza. So the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's mandate and access to Gaza are entirely dependent on the political approval by the same authorities, by the Israel first and then the US, which in practice aligns its cooperation with their strategic and security interests. So this is why I also consider the GHF as a striking example of privatized aid. because it privatizes the administration and delivery of humanitarian assistance by also effectively outsourcing it to private foundations, but without the traditional safeguards of multilateral humanitarian governments that exist when usually the aid is distributed by international organizations, for instance, or humanitarian organizations.
QUESTION: Since June, the GHF has continued operating under new conditions, partial closures, temporary suspensions during the ceasefires, and talk of eventual shutdown if the peace plan holds currently.I know it's hard to comment when everyday developments can be transformative.I mean, just yesterday as we speak, the October ceasefire was shattered by heavy fighting, which saw 45 Palestinian civilians and two Israeli soldiers killed. But can you see this fragile situation impacting your own analysis or research or that of the monitoring bodies?
Yeah, as you say, it's really hard to say now because the situation is developing so fast and so drastically every day. But I guess this shift in the status of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, that now it's paused its operations, I think it highlights how the model itself, you know, the very model of private aid delivery, which yet is still embedded within the state dominant frameworks, is very unstable. So the fact that the GHF sites are being suspended during ceasefire phases, for me, it illustrates that the foundation's functioning is very contingent on the political and military context rather than purely humanitarian logic.
QUESTION: We're in a business school, as you know, Julia, but geopolitical realities are here. There's an institute that's been created on this very subject. Law is very much of, I think, a bridgehead between politics and economy. And so I decided to ask students here a couple of questions linked to this reality and to your research. And this was their response about the question of humanitarian aid being operated through private armed contractors as neutral United Nations NGOs or others (agencies) are being blocked. And this was some of the answers.
MEDLEY OF STUDENTS:
In my opinion, I feel like the privatization is almost a reaction to the non-reactivity of the organizations that are actually supposed to be doing this work. We're now in an era where human beings are extremely sensitive and extremely reactive to non-reactivity, where it is required.
I personally don't know too much about it. I’ve heard that it's become more of an issue and it's become to play a larger part in those conflicts. I think in general it needs to be a mix of privatization but still communication with the governmental bodies as well, but I don't know too much about it to be honest.
I think it's a way for countries or big companies to weaponize this kind of help, to create alliances. It's easier to say that they can give help, choose that, so it can be a weapon I think.
The United Nations and such a multi-country organization is not working anymore. I think this is because the system itself is outdated. The geopolitical relationship between the big countries has changed over the 80 years. So therefore, I strongly believe we need to reshape such a kind of organizations and the power structures between that. I say such important global decisions will be determined more privately rather than global.
Yeah, so to be honest, it's a very interesting topic, privatization of humanitarian ONGs in those conflicting areas.But to be honest, I don't have enough knowledge to comment on this topic.
QUESTION: So, a short answer from our final student, which actually does reflect a certain reticence of the people I talked to, to answer this question easily. I suppose we are far from the business style questions that they're more used to at HeC. 
Those are very interesting reactions from our students and I'm very happy to see that they (work) to reflect on it. So I really appreciate it. My immediate reaction to the fact that, somebody said that privatization is a reaction to the not very active participation of other states in this whole.in this whole program. But I just want to say that it's not up to the states to deliver aid. And we've all heard how the trucks have been waiting and have been waiting for the approval, authorization to enter the enclave, but they were not giving this authorization and the food has been rotting, et cetera, et cetera.
So there is an activity also from the governments, it's the blockade, it's the political reality on the ground that is not allowing for this. So Israel introduced the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as a response to the risks associated with the looting of the trucks, right? So because before May 2025 and before the blockade started, we had some UN trucks entering Gaza. But Israel has stopped this because of the reports that humanitarian aid is being taken by Hamas, and then people are actually not getting this humanitarian aid. And I understand these concerns, and this has been reported in the media widely, but when Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started functioning, there were also the leaks from the Israeli intelligence that there was no evidence that trucks were looted.
So, in the end, we were blaming something like the UN system that has been not working because it, was too exposed for theft, et cetera, but this was just not entirely true. UN has been working, the UN system, no matter how imperfect it is, and I agree with one of the students who mentioned that, the UN is an old model and we have to break out of it, maybe, but it's a conversation for another podcast, maybe. But in our situation, the UN had a functioning system of the aid delivery within Gaza.They had 400 distribution points.that were replaced by 4.400 have been replaced by 4 distribution points of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. So I'm not sure that this is, you know, the reaction to inaction we are talking about here.
QUESTION: And just a reminder that it is very hard to know what's really going on the ground because the international media has been completely banned from Gaza and there's a lot of censorship even on Israeli media. Julia, what makes this GHF model legally and ethically problematic?
Since we are talking about a conflict, a war, and we are talking about the context of illegal occupation of a territory, we are talking about international humanitarian law .This is the regime of international law that is governing this situation. So from the international humanitarian law perspective, how GHF is operatingundermines the very principles that make aid lawful, humanitarian relief, according to IHL, must be neutral.It must be also impartial, independent, and used solely for humanitarian purposes. We can find these principles in international conventions like Geneva Convention #4, Additional Protocol 1. So by distributing food under armed guard, in military zones and replacing established neutral actors that we just talked about, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation effectively politicizes and securitizes aid. And I guess this risks turning access to food into a coercive, into a selective tool rather than a guaranteed right under international humanitarian law.
And legally, very quickly, this has two consequences. The first one is that this instrumentalization of aid, meaning the denying effective relief to civilians in need, it can constitute a crime of starvation when done deliberately. Again, it's a conversation for another podcast, the crime of starvation, but shortly, it could be used? Secondly, GHF and its corporate backers operate with a private military company that is providing the security for this whole organization. So this might incur complicity and liability if their operations knowingly assist Israel's broader IHL violations. And Israel is the state that is accused by many other states and also international organizations of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and a crime of genocide. So if it will be known that the people who are working for the JHF and its company, private military company, we can speak about complicity also.And lastly, also states backing Gaza Humanitarian Foundation like Israel and the US could also bear responsibility under the law of state responsibility for aiding and directing internationally wrongful acts that I mentioned before.
QUESTION: For you, what does the GHF story reveal about the blurring of lines between humanitarian action, military control, and political strategy.
Yeah, this is something that we have already touched upon a bit, because for me, GHF operates under Israeli military coordination, despite presenting it as an independent humanitarian actor. And the fact that the GHF distribution hubs Thy were strategically located in southern, in the south of Gaza, and very far from the north and central areas, which effectively then channeled civilian movement, this was used as a strategy to move the population.
QUESTION: To draw them down from the north.
Exactly, to locate them and to concentrate them somewhere where they can, you know, control them better. So this for me already is the super blurry between like, are we actually helping them by providing humanitarian aid or we are actually controlling them in this very new smart and politically strategic way?
YOUTUBE EXTRACT
“Clambering onto aid trucks and wrestling over sacks of flour. For Palestinians inGaza, it's all part of the daily fight for survival…”
+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4Ho8O80Q3o

QUESTION: The GHF's defenders say militarized aid is necessary to ensure safe distribution. And theoretically, you were saying that. But does international humanitarian law recognize any justification for armed humanitarianism? And I just want to quickly remind the listeners, this isn't just the first time that it's been used. We've seen it in the past in Afghanistan and in Iraq under American occupation. So it's not the Israelis that have been the first in this approach.
Yeah, absolutely. If you think about the concept of when and how humanitarian aid is delivered, yeah, it becomes very clear that you have to secure it somehow because we are talking about very fragile situations and very difficult, realities on the ground.
So overall, international humanitarian law does not prohibit protecting humanitarian convoys. The security companies are often employed also in different contexts, as you said. But the key here is how it is done. Protection cannot mean militarizing aid in ways that put civilians at risk or conditioning access or entering conflict zones. So under the Geneva Conventions, Israel must ensure safe and effective humanitarian relief for civilians in need. And if aid in the situation we are talking about, is systematically delivered only through armed and militarized hubs that expose civilians to danger, that defeats the protective purpose of IHL. We are not then anymore speaking about neutrality, independence, et cetera, et cetera.
So the looting of aid, right, what Israel has been claiming does not justify denying or instrumentalizing relief, because Israel still remains bound to facilitate unimpeded neutral and impartial humanitarian assistance.
QUESTION: I wanted to go and talk further with the students of HEC that we heard earlier. And this time I wanted to ask them about something that was actually spontaneously brought up by a French student earlier, the possible weaponization of food aid. And indeed, hundreds of civilians have died in Gaza trying to reach the four GHF centers for food.So I asked them if humanitarian aid has become part of this conflict. This is what they said.

MEDLEY OF STUDENT VOICES 02
Obviously, it has become part of the conflict. I'm not sure how you can solve it. I think you just need to, good communication with the governmental bodies, et cetera, and also communication across organizations. I mean, cross communication across those organizations, but I'm not sure otherwise what to say about it, to be honest.
I feel like it's important that we recognize that human beings need their daily needs met. And if they're not being met, and other people who are technically terrorizing these people are impacting them at the point of need, that is a problem and it needs to be solved right now. Actually, it needed to be solved years ago, but right now it's imperative.
I don't feel it's quite the idea to weaponize the purpose of this kind of help. It's just humanitarian help and not geopolitical asset or weapons. So, no, of course.
I strongly believe such a kind of acts should be prohibited and should never be done. However, in reality, I think there's such a kind of behaviors and actions existing in the war places. Secretly, the soldiers and armies are doing such a kind of things. Because it's impossible to figure out and investigate such a kind of actions in the real wild places because no one wants to get into the wild places because they're going to have to face the risk to be dead. I assume the people fighting in the war place will lose some extent of their ethics. That's my thoughts.
QUESTION: The HEC student from Japan describing the loss of humanity in what he calls the wild places. Again, Julia, your response to these opinions?
Well, all of these reflections are very thoughtful reflections, I would say, and I'm very happy to hear that our students understand that, you know, this is bad, speaking in very simple words, this is bad, a weaponization of humanitarian aid. Somebody said that humanitarian aid is not a geopolitical asset, and I think that really, you know, summarizes basically our discussion in a very nice way. The student who mentioned the wild places and that people are losing humanity. Of course, I mean, this is true, like when we see what is happening in Gaza, because we have so many videos of from the sides of the distribution points as well, and we watch it and we are shocked by indeed the chaos, the brutality coming from all sides, coming also from the people who are trying to get this aid.
But the point is: why did we end up there? Why did we actually end up here forcing people to go over each other's hats, to kill each other if necessary for a box of food? When we had a functioning humanitarian aid distribution system before. We can criticize it as well.It was not perfect, but it was not as what we've seen with this four distribution points that were highly monitored and highly securitized. So I guess it's actually the reverse, like people are losing humanity because they were forced to lose it in that case.
Julia Emtseva, let's take a little step back.I mean, in general, your research describes a broader trend of privatizing public functions. So I just wanted to put this Gaza piece into that puzzle more generally and how it fits within this trend.
Very shortly, I guess this Gaza Humanitarian Foundation story exposes very well how Gaza is consistently framed not as an international legal problem, but you know, something as domestic or administrative one, an administrative problem that can be managed through technical fixes, through, you know, (it was) led by the private actor to distribute aid, which was supposed never to be a privatized scheme. Yeah, so rather than acknowledging Israel's obligation as an occupying power, I think this crisis is reframed as a logistical challenge, as you know, the challenge that can be outsourced to private or humanitarian actors.
QUESTION: Do you think that the current reconstruction plan of Gaza has something to do with this privatization?
Well, again, it's too early to say because we haven't seen all the annexes of the peace plan published yet. But so far, what we've seen is that I personally think that unfortunately, the current reconstruction of Gaza is closely tied to privatization and also reflects A broader political, economic strategy in the region. While it has been framed as a humanitarian rebuilding and modernization, it functions as a mechanism of economic discipline of a sort, right? 
Because we saw the provisions that were mentioning infrastructure projects, especially the special economic zone that Trump is talking about all the time, the foreign investments, and all this are designed to attract capital, right? To shape labor markets,and which ultimately will manage the civilian population. And from the political economy perspective, this translates this conflict, the Gaza conflict, into a market problem where peace and stability are supposed to emerge from capital flows, but this approach reinforces dependency, of course. It will marginalize local agency. It will channel sources towards private actors rather than public institutions that have to be developed in Gaza and Palestine more broadly if we want to speak about an independent state and any peace arrangement in the region.
So legally, the plan raises questions also under international law, because by outsourcing reconstruction to private and corporate actors, responsibility will be diffused. You know, we will end up in the same situation where we will be like, okay, something has been built using, I don't know, cheap labor human rights violations have been detected, but who will be responsible? We probably will have these questions again, because Gaza will be governed by the private sector.
“A leaked document has revealed details on how the authority charged with governing and rebuilding the Gaza Strip…”you see somethingcalled the Palestinian ExecutiveAuthority. um and its job would bebasically to implement the policies that are being legislated and decided by the higherups on this international governing body. It means that there would be very little to no control over what happens on their land. The question really here is whether the Palestinian people uh have a right to a share intheir own property, have a right to a share in their own future, have a right to a share in their own sovereignty.

QUESTION: As a lawyer, though, do you see any mechanisms in international law, either existing or emerging, that could hold foundations or companies accountable when they assume, well, what you're more or less saying is de facto state functions?
Well, so far, international law functions in the way that it only acknowledges states and international organizations like the UN as its primary personalities, as we say. So private actors are not carrying any obligations or any responsibilities under international law, even if they are performing public functions. So whenever a violation is detected, their behavior or their conduct will be attributed to a state. So we don't have anything right now that could, under the international legal frameworks, hold private actors accountable. But in my research, I offer a new way of thinking about private actors and I propose that we have to break free from these limitations (based on) this international legal personality and we have to attach and attribute responsibility, not based on, who is recognized under international law as an obligation carer, but who is performing what function. 
If you are performing a function of a state, then you also have to carry a responsibility that belongs to this state. But I understand also it's a very difficult constellation in the legal and the international legal discourse and the discussions that we're having, but maybe one day.
QUESTION: Like all academics in the academic world and here at HEC, you are looking at several different fields, not just the GHF. Could you give us in general terms what kind of research you're focusing on and you will be focusing on in the coming years, you hope?
I won't go too far from what we discussed today, but I guess in the near future I would like to explore exactly the points that we talked about the peace plan and this concept of privatization of peace, how we can address it also through the perspective of international law and political economy of the state rebuilding.So, yeah, I'll try to maybe reserve some time for studying this.
QUESTION: And we're very much looking forward to the results of this research.Julia and Seva, thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Daniel.It was great. It was a pleasure.
Doctor Julia Emtseva, Assistant Professor of Law at HEC Paris. In October, the UN’s Philippe Lazzarini estimated that on average 100 people were reported killed every day in Gaza. That, he said, is due to Israel’s military operation or shootings at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation food points. This GHF, according to a recent article in the New York Times, is , quote, an Israeli brainchild, first proposed by Israeli officials in the earliest weeks of the war. The group calling itself the Mikveh Yisrael Forum is run by a former senior C.I.A. officer; and it has a fund-raising group headed by a former U.S. Marine. We’ll undoubtedly be discovering more about the GHF and its often anonymous donors in the years to come.
Well, that wraps up this Breakthroughs. Our next podcast is in a very different world. Indeed, we’ll be talking Brian Hill of the school’s Department of Economics. Brian will be sharing his research on a digital product scorecard he’s hoping will revolutionize the E.U.’s policies towards sustainability and social concerns. 
So join us again next month. Until then, keep sending your comments to brownd@hec.fr, that’s brownd@hec.fr. Good-bye.

2