The U.S. State Department is doing a good job vetting the nonprofits with which it works, a senior Foggy Bottom official told JNS, after the department drew criticism for working with a U.K. charity, World Vision, with a history of ties to Islamic terrorism.
JNS reported that the State Department was working with World Vision as part of what it called a “historic” $2 billion distribution of global health foreign assistance. It made the announcement despite an Israeli court convicting World Vision’s Gaza operations manager of funneling up to $50 million to Hamas in 2022.
The Senate Finance Committee probed World Vision in 2019 and found that the Christian charity transferred $125,000 to Islamic Relief Agency, which the U.S. Treasury Department sanctions for terror ties, in 2014 as a sub-grantee for a U.S. Agency for International Development-backed humanitarian project in Sudan. The Senate panel called World Vision’s vetting procedures “borderline negligent.”
A senior State Department official told JNS that the department “actively conducts counterterrorism vetting of implementers and their employees to ensure U.S. taxpayer funds and department-managed award activities never provide support intentionally or inadvertently to terrorists, their supporters or their affiliates.”
The department’s vetting process “safeguards our programs while ensuring the department can continue delivering initiatives that advance U.S. national security and foreign policy priorities.”
Washington’s collaboration with World Vision and two other charities, which it announced on Aug. 6, “reflects the Trump administration’s commitment to partnering with organizations that have demonstrated operational capacity, extensive in-country networks, and a proven track record of delivering results in the world’s most difficult environments,” the State Department official told JNS.
The White House Faith Office led the initiative, and members of Congress and Office of Management and Budget officials attended the announcement event, which demonstrated “coordination across the administration,” the official told JNS.
The senior official said that World Vision “reached 35.6 million people through 104 separate disaster responses, with an operational footprint spanning more than 100 countries” last year.
World Vision denied that its employee, who was convicted of funding Hamas, did anything wrong.
A World Vision spokesman told JNS that “regarding Gaza, World Vision immediately suspended operations in 2016, commissioned a thorough independent forensic investigation that found no evidence of aid diversion or ties to Hamas, and has not operated in Gaza since.”
“World Vision has previously briefed U.S. government stakeholders, including the Department of State, on these matters,” the charity’s spokesman told JNS.
No U.S. funding would go to Gaza for the newly announced initiative, as World Vision no longer operates there.
“World Vision condemns terrorism and the misuse of humanitarian aid, and we take seriously our responsibility to operate with strong compliance, oversight and accountability in complex humanitarian settings,” the World Vision spokesman told JNS.
“In the Sudan matter, World Vision did not knowingly work with a sanctioned organization,” the spokesman said. “We suspended payments when concerns arose, we sought U.S. government guidance, and we have since strengthened vetting, escalation and blocked-party screening processes.”
JNS asked World Vision for an unredacted copy of its legal team’s audit of the Gaza case. World Vision has declined to share that with Congress.
‘Hit the ground running’
In 2020, the Senate Finance Committee said that after the Islamic Relief Agency incident, World Vision “created additional screening methods in an effort to prevent future disbursements of U.S. tax dollars to sanctioned entities,” including extra layers of legal review.
JNS asked World Vision if it added any more vetting processes in response to the Gaza case.
“World Vision was selected based on their demonstrated operational capacity, extensive in-country networks and long track record of delivering health and humanitarian assistance in complex environments,” the senior State Department official told JNS.
“World Vision is able to leverage in-kind and private donations and volunteer networks to keep overhead costs low, which in turn helps stretch American taxpayer dollars,” the official said.
The senior official told JNS that World Vision and its partner faith-based organizations can use their strong local relationships and networks to “hit the ground running in affected communities, without having to start from scratch.”
Former charities that have received State Department funding have used just 35% to 40% of the funding for frontline health services, and the rest has gone to overhead and management costs. World Vision spends 80% on health services, according to the senior U.S. official.
“The proposal that the department received reflected a unique capability to perform the global rapid response and humanitarian assistance services required for this project,” the official told JNS. “The proposal demonstrated a proven history of success, responding to natural disasters and complex humanitarian crises.”
The State Department told JNS that it disagrees with a senior Trump administration official, with close ties to the Office of Management and Budget, who told JNS that Jeremy Lewin, acting U.S. undersecretary of state for foreign assistance, humanitarian affairs and religious freedom, “failed to do his homework” in partnering with World Vision.
The Trump administration official told JNS that World Vision is “severely compromised by ties to Islamist terrorists and a radical left-wing climate change agenda” and cited Lewin’s “obsession in funding communist U.N. agencies.” (The latter referred to a funding partnership with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.)
The senior State Department official told JNS that its “assertion the Trump administration-led State Department has not applied the same rigorous vetting for World Vision that we have used across the board is unsubstantiated.”
“We expect all organizations that have received U.S. funding to cooperate with the appropriate U.S. authorities to facilitate the proper administration of justice and prevent the occurrence of fraud and abuse,” the senior official said. “Any implication on the contrary is simply false.”
Under Lewin, the State Department has worked to defund the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, whose employees participated directly in the Oct. 7 attacks and whose staff have long documented ties to Palestinian terror.
“I write in absolute shock at the anonymous attacks on my colleague Jeremy Lewin, whose record from defunding UNRWA to supporting faith-based community organizations speaks unmistakably to his dedication to an America First agenda, not the falsehoods now being leveled against him,” Yehuda Kaploun, a rabbi and State Department special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism, told JNS.
Kaploun called Lewin a “hero” for his work helping the Jewish community, most of which goes unrecognized.
“Those who hide behind anonymity to impugn the character of a man who has earned genuine admiration for his service to this country should have the courage to attach their names to their accusations,” Kaploun said.
JNS asked the State Department why it thinks that World Vision’s work outside of Gaza is viable, while the terror-tied UNRWA needs to be dismantled both inside and outside of the Strip.
The senior State Department official told JNS that comparing World Vision and UNRWA “is invalid for many reasons.”
UNRWA, which operates across Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, “has accumulated decades-long controversies over antisemitic educational materials, militant exploitation of schools, employee affiliations to Hamas and corruption,” the official said.
The senior official told JNS that “members of organizations designated by the United States as foreign terrorist organizations infiltrated UNRWA,” which has “repeatedly and intentionally exploited U.N.-controlled aid channels for the purpose of furthering the activities of Hamas.”
The Senate panel probe of World Vision “found no evidence” that the charity knew Islamic Relief Agency was sanctioned, the senior State Department official said. “Following this finding, World Vision took accountability, strengthened its vetting standards and compliance.”
The Senate investigation determined there was no evidence that World Vision knew of Islamic Relief Agency’s sanctioned status, but it also found that “World Vision had access to the appropriate public information and should have known how, but failed to, properly vet” Islamic Relief Agency. It also decried the charity for its “attempt to shift the blame to the federal government for their own inability to properly vet a subcontractor.”
“Our review demonstrates this failure occurred because World Vision’s system for vetting prospective sub-grantees was borderline negligent and ignored elementary-level investigative procedures, such as failing to conduct basic secondary research that is widely available to the public on the internet via free search engine,” the panel found.
Despite changes that World Vision made after the Islamic Relief Agency incidents, Senate panel staff still have “reservations concerning World Vision’s ability to avoid situations similar” to the Islamic Relief Agency, the Senate report concluded.
“World Vision’s posture during and after this episode gives the impression they have externalized the responsibility for vetting the groups and organizations with which they choose to affiliate,” it added.
‘Outrageously given the stiff-arm’
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has led much of the investigatory work of World Vision, wrote to the law firm DLA Piper, which represents World Vision, in April 2024 that the charity was refusing to provide Congress with an unredacted copy of the audit of its internal forensic investigation.
Grassley noted that the charity shared that information with other national governments and with some U.S. government entities.
“World Vision’s refusal to be fully transparent to the public is ironic considering World Vision’s Aug. 6, 2016, press release where it called for a ‘fair and transparent legal process’ regarding Halabi’s arrest,” Grassley wrote.
The law firm told Grassley that a “copy of the final report was provided to the U.S. State Department and to the U.S. Agency for International Development.”
Grassley wrote that Congress was “outrageously given the stiff-arm” by a charity that is tax-exempt in the United States and that received $200 million of U.S. appropriated funds in 2023.
“World Vision has an obligation to be fully transparent to Congress and the American people, and its failure to do so is without any legitimate basis,” Grassley wrote. (JNS sought comment from Grassley and USAID.)
World Vision conducts “rigorous risk management, including recurring sanctions screening, multi-phase partner vetting and independent financial audits,” the senior State Department official told JNS.
The World Vision spokesman told JNS that the charity is “committed to constant improvement in our systems and our controls to ensure resources reach their intended beneficiaries.”
“We believe our record demonstrates both our transparency and the significant measures we took to strengthen compliance, oversight and accountability,” the spokesman said. “Our work focuses on meeting the needs of vulnerable children and families, and we remain committed to transparency and accountability in order to safeguard aid.”
