London, 24th April 2026 – Yesterday, it emerged that the Foreign Office unit tracking potential breaches of international law by Israel in Gaza and more recently Lebanon has been closed because of cuts within the department. It is a deeply misguided and appalling move by the department, and flies in the face of the UK’s obligations under international law.
This decision will also end funding for the Conflict and Security Monitoring Project run by the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR). The centre has supported the Foreign Office with a range of work, including the world’s largest open-source monitoring of incidents across Israel, Palestine and Lebanon and is the UK Government’s only programme dedicated to collecting, verifying and analysing human rights and conflict incidents in Israel and the occupied territories. The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians will continue to carry out similar evidence collection and documentation in order to support the work of international courts.
The criticality of the CIR’s work cannot be overstated: it generated verified evidentiary records at scale, informed the UK’s arms export licensing obligations, and enabled the investigation of alleged breaches of international law. The closing of this unit will also mean that the Foreign Office will lose access to a database of 26,000 verified incidents in the Middle East. The CIR’s closure will have far-reaching consequences for transparency, accountability, and justice in the UK and across affected regions.
By dismantling this capability, the Foreign Office is also depriving decision-makers and investigators of access to critical evidence and data documenting alleged Israeli breaches of international law. Successive Foreign Secretaries have already refused to release the legal advice conducted, which was crucial to assessing whether there was a ‘clear risk’ of serious violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in relation to the UK’s continued supply of arms to Israel. Now, the very evidence that these assessments are based on will cease to be collected and maintained. It eviscerates any facade that the UK Government is doing appropriate due diligence to ensure that the end-use of UK arms exports iscompliant with IHL.
It is also extraordinary that a mere fortnight ago, the Foreign Secretary said respect and support for international law would be one of the linchpins of the department under her leadership, and that international law and the role of international frameworks are “vital” to Britain’s national interests. This runs contrary to the department’s decision yesterday to effectively dismantle such linchpins and frameworks.
ICJP strongly urges the Foreign Secretary to immediately move to reinstate the CIR and the wider unit tracking potential breaches of international law by Israel, a measure the Foreign Secretary has clear authority to enact. Once again, the Foreign Secretary must also release the legal advice she has received in relation to the continued supply of 91.4% of arms licenses to Israel.
ICJP’s Head of Public Affairs Jonathan Purcell said:
“It was already a farce that the government wouldn’t release the legal advice they received to make a decision on banning arms exports to Israel – but now they are scrapping the evidence as well?
How can the general public have any faith that our government is avoiding complicity in war crimes when it is scrapping the unit that monitors them?”
ENDS
Notes for Editors:
- The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians is an independent organisation of lawyers, politicians and academics who support the rights of Palestinians and aim to protect their rights through the law.
- For more information, to arrange an interview with a spokesperson, please contact the ICJP news desk at [email protected].
Image: UK Home Office via Wikimedia Commons
