UN Contracts with Companies Doing Business in Israel May Violate Ethics
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, is arguably the organization’s most outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza. An Italian international-law scholar appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2022, Albanese has warned in social media posts that Israel’s actions risk “completing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine” and, with other UN rights experts, called it a “genocide in the making.” In her mandatory reports to the Council, Albanese also says that Israel as the occupying power in Palestine is a form of apartheid.
She was sanctioned by the United States on July 9 for being “directly engaged with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries.” (Neither the US nor Israel is party to the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the court.) The UN is contesting the sanctions, saying that Albanese has diplomatic immunity.
Albanese was penalized by the US soon after she published a report, on June 30, 2025, titled “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide.” In it, she names several multinational corporations, many based in the US, which she says are profiting from and supporting Israel’s military operations.
Top of Form
In her report, Albanese contends that “far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide.” She argues that corporate engagement with any component of the Israeli “occupation” is linked to violations of international law, especially in light of recent International Court of Justice rulings affirming the illegality of Israel’s presence.
The report asserts that post-October 2023, entities previously involved in the “economy of occupation” are now implicated in the “economy of genocide,” calling for accountability for these corporate actors and their executives. Israel’s genocide continues “because it is lucrative for many,” she writes.
The Limits of the UN Code
Many of the companies named in Albanese’s June 30 report hold contracts with the UN. All UN vendors are bound by the organization’s Financial Regulation 5.2, which requires “fairness, integrity and transparency when exercising the procurement functions of the UN.”
Vendors must also follow the UN Supplier Code of Conduct, which obligates them to uphold human rights, fair labor standards, environmental responsibility and anticorruption measures. These rules are reinforced by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the Global Compact.
Albanese’s report argues that the activities of the companies she lists — such as those supplying military-grade equipment; cloud and AI services; and logistics and surveillance systems used by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories — run directly counter to the UN’s stated financial and ethical commitments. She says that if proper human rights’ due diligence had been applied by the listed companies, they would have “long ago disengaged from Israeli occupation.”
UN procurement records from 2020 to 2024 show that contracts with these same firms have continued, revealing a gap between the UN’s stated ethics and its daily business operations. Despite Albanese’s allegations and the grave human rights concerns they raise, at least six companies she lists still hold contracts with various UN agencies.
PassBlue also consulted the following UN procurement databases for relevant information:
https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_awards.cfm
https://www.unicef.org/supply/contract-awards
https://www.unfpa.org/resources/unfpa-procurement-contract-awards#:~:text=2020
The UN spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, told PassBlue that the UN procurement office was preparing a comment for this story, but no reply was sent.
Some of the companies doing business with Israel that also have contracts with the UN include:
Microsoft: The American technology giant has supplied cloud and AI infrastructure to Israel during critical periods of the war, such as after Oct. 7, 2023, when the country’s networks were overloaded from a surge in storage and computing demands. To handle this, the military turned to commercial cloud providers — like Microsoft Azure — to supply the extra capacity. According to reports, an Israeli military official described cloud computing as “a weapon in every sense of the word,” citing Microsoft and Azure.
Microsoft is a co-contractor in Project Nimbus, a major Israeli cloud initiative. A key requirement of Nimbus is the establishment of local cloud sites in Israel, ensuring that “information will be processed and stored within the borders of the State of Israel under the provisions of Israeli law, strict information security guidelines.”
Microsoft is also a key UN vendor, supplying software licenses, cloud infrastructure and cybersecurity tools to agencies like the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS), UN Development Program (UNDP), International Organization for Migration (IOM) and World Health Organization (WHO). In 2024 alone, Microsoft signed a contract with UNOPS to provide web development and design services for the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) website in Germany, a project embedding sustainability and human rights safeguards in its program.
At the same time, Microsoft is facing mounting scrutiny over how its technology may be used by the Israeli military. After a recent Guardian joint investigation with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, revealing that Israel’s Unit 8200 spy agency stored millions of intercepted Palestinian phone calls on Azure, the company launched an “urgent” external inquiry overseen by Covington & Burling. Microsoft said such use by Israel would violate its terms of service and pledged to publish the inquiry’s findings. The probe follows an earlier investigation launched this year about Israel’s reliance on Microsoft’s technology during its offensive in Gaza.
IBM: The US company is cited in Albanese’s report for managing Israel’s Population Registry, a biometric database maintained by the government’s Population and Immigration Authority. The database includes the personal statistics of Palestinians and, according to the report, is used to enforce discriminatory policies and movement restrictions in the West Bank. Since 2019, IBM Israel has operated and upgraded the central database of the Population, Immigration and Borders Authority (PIBA). It enables the collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data on Palestinians, thereby supporting Israel’s discriminatory permit regime, Albanese writes.
IBM is also a regular supplier to UN agencies of servers, analytics and other tech elements. Despite the UN Supplier Code of Conduct’s call for human rights compliance, IBM has not responded publicly to these concerns in Albanese’s report.
Palantir Technologies: The US-based data analytics firm is accused of being directly involved in battlefield operations. Albanese says that Palantir expanded support to the Israeli military after October 2023 by providing predictive policing and targeting software. Her report quotes Palantir chief executive Alex Karp telling US lawmakers in April 2025 that Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes were “mostly terrorists.” The Albanese report frames this comment from Karp as evidence that Palantir knowingly supports lethal operations. Palantir has maintained a major contract with the World Food Program since 2019, worth $45 million, to help analyze aid distribution data.
Caterpillar: The US company supplies armored bulldozers to Israel, which have been used in home demolitions and other military operations in the Palestinian territories. The D9 machines, retrofitted for combat with Israeli defense firms, have reportedly been involved in mass demolitions, including since October 2023, and even cases of injuring people. Human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly called on Caterpillar to stop sales of the machinery to Israel.
Caterpillar equipment is used by the UN for peacekeeping and development projects, including bulldozers and generators. For example, a 2025 UN tender included maintenance on Caterpillar generators.
A.P. Moller-Maersk: The Danish shipping giant is named in Albanese’s report for transporting goods from Israeli settlements to global markets and, since October 2023, carrying military-related materials. Maersk is one of the UN’s primary shipping partners. Entities such as the World Food Program, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and UNOPS rely on its freight network to move aid supplies.
Photo: Gaza destruction. A UN report by Francesca Albanese, the human rights expert on the occupied Palestinian territories, lists multinational corporations that do business with the Israel government, calling it the “economy of genocide.” Some of the companies have contracts with the UN, possibly violating its procurement code of conduct and other rules on ethics. Source: Blue Pass.
