Overview
- Britain’s Foreign Office shut a specialist team that tracked alleged breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza and Lebanon, saying its work will continue inside a different unit.
- The move also ends funding for the Centre for Information Resilience’s Conflict and Security Monitoring Project, though the department says it keeps access to Foreign Office‑funded CIR research.
- CIR’s open‑source database contains more than 26,000 verified incidents across Israel, Palestine and Lebanon.
- Human Rights Watch and Campaign Against Arms Trade said the change could weaken checks on UK arms export licences and efforts to assess possible war crimes.
- The closure forms part of wider cutbacks tied to the aid budget being lowered to 0.3 percent of national income, reducing conflict and atrocity prevention work.