Civil society urges WFP to drop Palantir
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The gist
A global coalition of civil society groups urged the UN's World Food Programme to end its Palantir partnership.
The letter targets a five-year renewal as WFP leads UN supply-chain reforms.
Background
The World Food Programme (WFP) is the UN agency described as the world's largest humanitarian agency, running a vast global supply chain for its own operations and for partners. Palantir Technologies is a major US company supplying data integration and analytics software, including its Foundry platform, to WFP. The campaign followed a June 2026 investigation by Tech for Bad into Palantir's expanding role across WFP's data ecosystem and August reporting on a leaked 2025 WFP audit that flagged privacy, risk-management and governance concerns. The open letter came as WFP prepares to lead UN-wide supply chain reforms (UN80).
How it unfolded
- 2025A leaked WFP audit identified high-priority concerns relating to privacy, risk management and governance.
- Jun 2026Tech for Bad published an investigation into Palantir's expanding role across WFP's data ecosystem, raising questions about transparency and data governance.
- Jul 2026WFP renewed its contract with Palantir for a further five years, according to reporting.
- Aug 2026Reporting on the leaked 2025 WFP audit was published.
- Oct 20, 2026Third World Network reported that a global coalition of civil society organizations, activists and individuals called on WFP to end its Palantir partnership in an open letter to Acting Executive Director Carl Skau.
Who’s saying what
- Support
- Signatories voiced grave concern that the renewed partnership fails standards of transparency, caution and accountability, and called on WFP to rescind the contract, commission an independent public review and set a time-bound plan to transition away from Palantir.
- Expert
- Tech for Bad said the partnership contradicts the UN charter and humanitarian principles, and that WFP is scaling the platform while positioning itself to co-lead UN-wide supply chain integration.
- Party
- Palantir, in a separate report on European contracts, said it does not own customers' data or sell or reuse it, and that customers control what data is processed and how; it has always denied accusations of human rights violations.