Aid Without Accountability=Crisis

What BCG’s role in Gaza reveals about due diligence, governance failures, and responsibility during war.

When we talk about the risks of operating in war zones, we tend to focus on energy, technology, and extractive industries. Afterall, they’re the ones most often accused of environmental destruction, displacement, or complicity in human rights abuses. But as this week’s news has shown us, in today’s interconnected world, no sector is immune.

Not even consulting.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG)—one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world—is now making the news for its role in designing and launching a controversial humanitarian aid system in Gaza. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), backed by U.S. and Israeli actors, was intended to deliver food to Palestinians during the ongoing war.

According to news reports, BCG helped model logistics, shape funding flows, and advise the delivery team. But the effort bypassed established normal humanitarian channels, excluded the UN, and relied on military and private security actors for distribution.

Now, that system is at the center of a major scandal.

According to multiple reports, hundreds of civilians were killed or injured trying to access food at GHF sites. These reports suggest that the project BCG helped build didn’t just fail to deliver aid safely, it became a location for additional harm and killing.

This post isn’t about assigning blame. It’s about understanding how a well-resourced and experienced firm—one that trades on reputation, risk awareness, and elite talent…one that literally advises other companies now to avoid these exact scenarios—ended up embedded in a human rights catastrophe.

And what it teaches us about operating responsibly in conflict-affected, high-risk areas (CAHRAs).

The Five Mistakes That Created the Conditions for Harm

BCG’s alleged missteps follow the same five mistakes I outline in The Global Executive’s Playbook for Navigating Fragile Markets.

❌ Mistake #1: Failure to implement heightened Human Rights Due Diligence (hHRDD)

There is no publicly available evidence that BCG conducted a conflict-specific hHRDD process for its Gaza work. BCG reportedly supported the design of a new aid distribution system during an active war, yet no reporting shows that they conducted an international humanitarian law analysis, consulted third-party human rights or conflict experts, or engaged with Palestinian civil society.

The Financial Times (FT) reports that BCG’s engagement grew from a feasibility study into full-scale business planning for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). This is despite humanitarian groups explicitly refusing to participate and the UN describing GHF as a “fig leaf” for Israeli war objectives.

In a conflict zone, especially one under active bombardment and blockade, this level of due diligence isn’t box checking exercise. It’s a minimum safeguard for determining whether a company should be involved at all.

❌ Mistake #2: Neglecting conflict analysis and on-the-ground stakeholder engagement

According to the FT reporting, BCG began helping GHF procure food and manage logistics after aid organizations declined to participate. The system was “militarized,” operated independently of the UN (the coordinating mechanism for humanitarian responses in emergencies), and was staffed by private U.S. security contractors and the Israeli military.

There’s no mention of community consultation in Gaza. No visible conflict mapping. No engagement with humanitarian actors who had decades of experience operating in the region.

The result? A system that overlooked or embedded serious risks, such as the dangers civilians faced when trying to access aid under armed guard in contested territory.

❌ Mistake #3: Inadequate oversight of high-risk relationships

BCG worked alongside actors whose methods and reputations were reportedly incompatible with humanitarian neutrality. According to reporting by France 24, these included Orbis—a U.S.-based security contractor—and a GHF organization staffed by former intelligence and military operatives, including an ex-CIA officer who also advised BCG’s own defense practice.

In CAHRAs, who companies work with is part of their risk profile, which means they have to conduct due diligence on their partnerships. When those partners operate in politicized, militarized, or opaque ways, the risks become operational and people can die, as is what happened here.

❌ Mistake #4: Weak corporate governance for CAHRA risk management

Perhaps the biggest mistake of all is the revelation that BCG leadership says they didn’t know the full scope of the firm’s involvement. In other words, they didn’t have adequate corporate governance structures overseeing this high risk portfolio.

The FT reports that senior figures were “repeatedly misled” by the partners running the project, and that “the full scope of these projects was not disclosed, including to senior leadership.” When the harm occurred, the firm’s leadership was apparently in the dark.

This shouldn’t be chalked up to a communications failure. In CAHRAs, any work connected to humanitarian aid, displacement, or wartime logistics should automatically trigger senior-level oversight and escalation protocols. If it doesn’t, the corporate governance system isn’t working.

❌ Mistake #5: Assuming third parties don’t pose strategic risk to your brand

Despite the risks, civilian casualties, and public warnings from humanitarian organizations, BCG remained involved in the GHF project until late May 2024. The firm did not publicly acknowledge its role until a Washington Post investigation broke the story in early June.

Then BCG launched an internal investigation, withdrew from the effort, and terminated two senior partners.

In today’s information environment, it’s very risky for corporate leaders to keep silent about human rights abuses, even if they’re committed by partners. This is especially the case here, given reporting of internal disagreement on the Gaza team about what was going on, which resulted in the removal of at least one employee. This alone can spark corporate backlash among the public and the company’s own employees.

What can we learn from BCG’s mistakes?

BCG is just one example of how well-intentioned corporate action can go dangerously off-course in CAHRAs. But these mistakes are not inevitable. They are preventable with the right systems and people in place.

Here’s what this moment is teaching us:

✅ Humanitarian and conflict dynamic expertise is non-negotiable.

Companies cannot substitute deep knowledge of political violence, displacement, or international humanitarian law with good intentions, technology, weaponry, or logistical capacity. If your team lacks lived experience or technical expertise in operating during or after conflict, you need to bring in people who have it and give them decision-making power.

✅ Local legitimacy is a strategic asset.

The people most affected by your presence must see your company—or your partners—as trustworthy, neutral, and accountable. This requires more than one-time consultations, social media messaging campaigns, or “stakeholder mapping.” It means listening and using what you hear to improve your operations, co-designing with the community, and understanding that legitimacy can shift over time.

✅ Governance structures must anticipate harm.

In CAHRAs, corporate governance model must be able to escalate, investigate, and intervene before harm occurs. This includes crisis protocols, CAHRA-specific board visibility and oversight, and clearly assigned accountability for risk monitoring.

✅ Oversight of partners and value chains must match the risk.

If you are operating through or alongside political actors, private security firms, or government-affiliated foundations, you need more oversight. The higher the conflict and risk, the tighter the alignment should be on core principles and risk management expectations.

✅ Silence is not neutral.

When things go wrong—and they often do in complex environments—how and when you respond is as important as what you say. Systems for real-time monitoring, stakeholder alerts, remedy mechanisms, and communications escalation can prevent a problem from becoming a crisis.

If there was one thing I would advise companies like BCG: hire peacebuilders from the location, listen to them, and act on their advice.

If you’re working in a CAHRA, what are you doing to ensure you don’t end up causing harm?