World Food Programme moves to renew Palantir contract amid leaked audit privacy concerns
The United Nations World Food Programme is finalising a five-year renewal of its contract with US data software firm Palantir, despite privacy concerns raised in a leaked internal audit from 2025. The audit, seen by journalists, points to unease inside the agency about allowing the company to process data used in one of the world's largest humanitarian supply chains. The development has renewed scrutiny of how aid agencies handle sensitive beneficiary information.
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The World Food Programme, based in Rome, manages the SCOPE system, which contains biometric and other information on millions of aid beneficiaries. Palantir developed the Digital Operations and Transformation System, known as DOTS, to help the agency track humanitarian aid and manage supply-chain data. According to the report, a WFP spokesperson said the agency is set to renew the contract despite the concerns.
The leaked audit is significant because it suggests internal disagreement over the use of advanced data-processing tools in humanitarian work. The report describes a split within the United Nations system between staff who want stronger safeguards around artificial intelligence and data integration, and others who argue for efficiency and operational speed. That tension is now playing out in a setting where the protection of vulnerable people's personal data is central to trust in aid delivery.
The issue has become more sensitive after a cyberattack in May on the Rome-based WFP exposed sensitive data on thousands of aid recipients in Gaza. The agency said the attack was limited to its Self-Registration Application for Palestine, which displaced people use to sign up for aid, and said it had no direct connection to Palantir software. Even so, the breach has intensified questions about how beneficiary data is stored, accessed and protected across WFP systems.
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WFP's SCOPE platform is one of the largest biometric databases used in humanitarian operations. That scale matters because aid agencies often rely on personal and biometric records to verify identity, prevent duplication and distribute assistance in conflict and disaster zones. At the same time, the more data that is centralised, the greater the potential consequences if systems are misused, breached or linked to other platforms.
Palantir itself has long been a controversial supplier because of the nature of its software and its links to government and security work. The company was founded in 2003 and was partly seeded with money from the US intelligence community. Its tools are designed to collate, process and analyse large volumes of data, and the report says they are deeply embedded in the US military and surveillance ecosystem.
The concerns raised in the audit also reflect broader unease about how humanitarian organisations adopt artificial intelligence and data-integration systems. Some staff are said to worry that beneficiary data collected by the UN agency could be used to train Palantir's systems. Others are concerned about the reputational and ethical implications of working with a company whose technology has reportedly been used by US authorities in immigration enforcement and by military forces in lethal operations in the Middle East.
For the World Food Programme, the contract renewal comes at a time when digital systems are increasingly central to aid delivery. The agency's work depends on accurate data to move food and other assistance quickly, but that dependence also creates pressure to ensure that privacy protections keep pace with the scale of the information being handled. The leaked audit suggests those safeguards remain under close internal review.
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What remains unclear is whether the renewal will include changes to oversight, data-handling rules or technical safeguards. It is also not clear how the agency will respond to the privacy concerns identified in the audit or whether further details from the review will be made public. The next developments to watch are the formal renewal decision, any revised terms attached to the contract, and whether the WFP faces wider pressure from within the UN system over its use of Palantir.
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