Helsinki's Gaza donation sparks backlash and divides city council

A decision by Helsinki City Council to donate €350,000 to aid agencies providing humanitarian relief to civilians in Gaza has sparked a fierce backlash, and highlighted the ideological divisions in the Finnish capital’s highest decision-making body.

Wednesday’s vote, which passed with a 50-30 majority supported by left-wing parties, also raises questions about so-called ‘two-tier compassion’, and how involved sub-state actors like cities or regions can become in international affairs, an area traditionally led in Finland by the President and government.

Councillor Mia Haglund (Left) spearheaded the initiative, and tells Finland Insider that Helsinki residents “feel there is a global responsibility to act” for the civilians in Gaza.

“It’s divisive, but I think there is a large community in Helsinki who have shown humanity and solidarity, and we see the immense need there is in Gaza,” she says.

The money will likely be taken from the city’s discretionary funding budget, and won’t impact any current spending commitments. It will be divided between the Red Cross, UNICEF, Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders.

“The situation in Gaza is absolutely horrific, and international organisations have said that it’s the biggest, most deadly crisis in the 21st century,” explains Haglund.

The city council’s vote came on the same day as an Israeli airstrike killed six staff members at a United Nations-funded school in Gaza, with the UN Secretary General António Guterres calling the attack “totally unacceptable” and said the “dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now.”

Dissenting voices on the council

Helsinki City Council was largely split along political lines for Wednesday’s vote, with politicians from the National Coalition Party and the Finns Party voting against the initiative.

“We consider the situation in Gaza serious and unsustainable,” a group of right-wing politicians including current mayor Juhana Vartiainen (NCP) and the official Kokoomus candidate to succeed him, Daniel Sazonov, wrote in a statement.

“The responsibility for Finland’s role in providing international humanitarian aid rests with the Finnish state,” the group noted.

On social media, FIIA researcher Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a frequent commentator on foreign policy issues, wrote that councillors who voted to approve humanitarian aid for Gaza “don’t prioritise the people living in the city of Helsinki, but want to make a moral posturing policy with our money.”

Another X user described the vote as “virtue signalling” and questioned how much of the money, if any, would end up in Gaza.

“Helsinki is a sad city,” another social media user wrote.

“Humanitarian aid is the responsibility of the state and the EU,” wrote city councillor Jenni Pajunen, adding that “although all my sympathies are with Gazans and people living in the midst of other crises and conflicts in the world, Helsinki's tax money should not be used for humanitarian aid to Gaza. It is the duty of the state and the EU.”

Helsinki’s humanitarian aid precedent already set

This week was not the first time Helsinki City Council has voted to provide humanitarian relief money to civilians in a conflict zone.

A precedent would seem to have been set in 2022 when the council - including many politicians from parties which opposed Wednesday’s vote - agreed to give €350,000 in humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

Vartianien and Sazonov say that aid to Gaza “cannot be equated” with aid sent to Ukraine, a conflict which is “organically connected to Finland’s own security policy situation as well,” they wrote.

Mia Haglund says some of her council colleagues opposed to giving money to Gaza might have seen Ukraine as a “special, one-off” situation.

“There are many ongoing conflicts and dire humanitarian situations around the world which need funding, and in Kokoomus there are people who are not opposed to giving aid to Gaza, they just don’t think the city should be doing it.”

Haglund said she doesn’t want to have a foreign policy discussion on a municipal level, but thinks the decision in 2022 to give humanitarian aid to Ukraine “set a precedent that municipalities can be active agents when it comes to humanitarian aid, although not otherwise in foreign policy terms.”

Cities as advocates for international aid efforts

Helsinki is certainly not alone in donating money for humanitarian aid, whether to Ukraine in 2022 or Gaza in 2024. Sub-state actors in Europe, such as regional governments or individual cities, are increasingly carving out their own proto-foreign policies, navigating within the constitutional or legal limits of the larger state of which they are a part.

The Belgian city of Ghent donated €20,000 to Doctors Without Borders shortly after Israel launched its offensive in Gaza in November last year - Jerusalem’s response to a deadly terror attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel which left around 1500 people killed and several hundred more kidnapped.

In spring, the French city of Nantes earmarked €25,000 for UNICEF to specifically help Palestinian children in Gaza; while Barcelona has given €300,000 to help alleviate hunger among displaced Palestinians through a UN programme.

And since the start of the current conflict, the government of Scotland (as a sub-state of the United Kingdom where London takes the lead on foreign policy issues) has donated more than €880,000 for humanitarian aid to Gaza through United Nations agencies.

“It’s such a horrific situation that I think whatever we can do on whatever level it’s good to try and reach out with humanitarian aid,” says Mia Haglund.