Gaza: Skyline International for Human Rights launches ‘The Price of a Meal’ briefing

Read in Arabic / للقراءة بالعربية

Skyline International for Human Rights (SIHR) has launched a briefing titled “The Price of a Meal: Forced Biometric Surveillance and Military Control of Humanitarian Aid in Gaza,” calling for the dismantling of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in order to end the weaponization of aid and the coercive extraction of biometric data from a starving population.

The briefing documents how the GHF, a U.S. and Israeli-backed entity, has replaced impartial UN-led aid with a privatized, militarized system of so-called humanitarian aid that functions as a tool for surveillance and control. The GHF forces Palestinians into an impossible choice: surrender to having their most sensitive biometric data captured or risk starvation and lethal violence in chaotic queues for food. This system has turned distribution points into lethal “death traps,” linked to the killings of over 2,000 Palestinians.

Key findings from the report expose a system where:

1. Aid for biometric data forces Palestinians to provide facial scans and photographs to receive food under a program misleadingly framed as “voluntary.”
2. Drones and facial recognition cameras, deployed by U.S. contractors such as Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) and UG Solutions, monitor aid points. This footage is fed directly to joint U.S.-Israeli control rooms, integrating humanitarian infrastructure into military targeting systems.
3. The same surveillance apparatus is used to identify and target individuals, facilitating violent enforcement by contractors who use live ammunition and crowd-control weapons in operations linked to the killings of more than 2,000 Palestinians.
4. Corporates such as the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) are alleged to have designed this system of control, while firms like the Global Development Company (GDC) promote biometric checkpoints that deny aid to those refusing data submission.

❝The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and its corporate contractors have turned the queue for bread into a checkpoint and a bag of flour into bait for biometric data, said Dima Samaro, Executive Director of Skyline International for Human Rights. In Gaza, a child’s hunger is now a tool for data extraction, and a meal comes with a devastating price tag: their privacy, their autonomy, their future, and their very dignity.❞

The report concludes that the coercive collection of biometric data from a starving population for tracking and targeting constitutes a grave violation of international law, potentially amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

To end these egregious violations, Skyline International for Human Rights recommends the following:

• Dismantle the GHF and its biometric aid program and restore all funding to impartial, UN-led aid mechanisms.
• Launch independent investigations into all parties involved, including private contractors and their state sponsors, for potential complicity in war crimes and violations of the Genocide Convention.
• Ban the coercive collection of biometric data in humanitarian settings, recognizing it as a violation of the right to privacy and a form of inhuman treatment.
• Suspend all operations of private military and security companies in Gaza that contribute to the militarization of aid or enforce biometric surveillance.

❝If allowed to stand, this model risks becoming a global blueprint for weaponizing starvation to impose digital control in other conflict zones. The international community must act before this becomes the new normal, Samaro added.❞

Download the Full Report:The full report, “The Price of a Meal: Forced Biometric Surveillance and Military Control of Humanitarian Aid in Gaza,” , is available for download [here]

For media inquiries or further information, please contact Email: media@skylineforhuman.org