“Payments were getting held up by banks,” remembered one NGO worker attempting to operate in a challenging area in the Middle East, adding: “Because of these delays, local vendors would come to our field offices demanding payment at gunpoint, putting the lives of our workers at risk.”
The terrifying episode illustrates the “devastating” consequences for vital humanitarian work from what British banks call necessary “de-risking” practices to guard against money laundering or terrorist financing — and what a new report argues is a system tainted by “structural Islamophobia,” hitting Muslim charities the hardest.
The study finds no less than 68% of Muslim-led charities that responded reported difficulties opening bank accounts, while 42% experienced “a complete withdrawal of banking services, effectively cutting them off from the financial system.”