A Moment to Reflect: Why Finland’s Choices Matter for Human Rights
Sometimes, it’s hard to talk about global issues — especially ones that feel far away. But when thousands of lives are lost, and people are suffering, staying silent doesn’t feel right either.
That’s why Finnish Human Rights Advocates ry recently sent a complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, asking for something simple, yet powerful:
👉 A closer look at Finland’s current relationship with Israel — and whether we’re truly standing up for the human rights we care so deeply about.
Let’s break it down.
📜 Why This Matters
The complaint isn’t about blaming anyone — it’s about responsibility.
Finland has promised, through our Constitution and international agreements, to stand for human rights and protect people from harm. These include:
The Geneva Conventions
The UN Genocide Convention
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
The European Convention on Human Rights
And Finland’s own Constitution (Section 22), which says our authorities must guarantee basic rights for all.
So, when there’s strong evidence that serious human rights violations are happening — like what’s happening in Gaza — it’s natural to ask: are we doing enough?
💔 What’s Happening in Gaza?
Since October 2023, over 35,000 people — many of them children — have lost their lives in Gaza.
Hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and even aid workers have been attacked.
International human rights organizations and UN experts have raised serious concerns — some even saying it meets the definition of genocide.
It’s heartbreaking. And it’s something the world can’t ignore.
🤝 Finland’s Role
Finland has continued its political and economic relationships with Israel. The NGO’s concern is that we haven’t:
Pressed pause on cooperation,
Supported sanctions or arms embargoes, or
Pushed for international investigations through courts like the ICC.
The point isn’t to say Finland is doing something wrong on purpose — but to ask, can we do more to protect lives and uphold our values?
🧭 Our Constitution Guides Us
Our Constitution is clear: protecting human rights isn’t just a goal — it’s a duty.
That’s why the NGO is asking the Ombudsman to take a closer look. It’s about making sure we’re living up to our principles and promises, especially during difficult times.
🗣️ The Role of Civil Society
Human rights groups have an important role in society. They help keep the conversation going — especially when situations are complex and sensitive.
According to the United Nations, NGOs like Finnish Human Rights Advocates ry have the right to:
Report concerns,
Ask questions, and
Encourage governments to act in line with human rights laws.
It’s not about creating conflict — it’s about caring deeply for humanity, wherever it’s needed.
🙏 A Hopeful Request
The NGO is now asking the Ombudsman to:
Look into Finland’s relationship with Israel since October 2023,
See if there’s anything that goes against Finnish or international law,
And suggest ways Finland can take peaceful and meaningful action — like pausing certain partnerships or supporting investigations.
These are not accusations. They are questions from people who care — and want to make sure Finland continues to be a country that puts human dignity first.
The Ombudsman has been given a 30-day window to respond. If no action or decision is made within that time, the case will be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for further examination.
💬 Why This Affects All of Us
Standing up for human rights isn’t always easy. But it's something Finland has always been proud of.
This moment is just a reminder:
Let’s stay true to who we are. Let’s keep standing for fairness, peace, and justice — even when it’s difficult.
Because when we act with compassion, we make the world better — not just for others, but for all of us.
Major Welfare Cuts Ahead in Finland: What You Need to Know for 2025
Big changes are coming to Finland’s welfare system in 2025. The government is making deep cuts to housing support, unemployment benefits, healthcare, and social services. The goal is to save money and boost employment, but for many people, the impact could be difficult.
Let’s break down what’s happening—and why.
🏠 Housing Benefits: Tougher Rules and Less Help
Starting from January 1, 2025, the rules for housing support will get stricter:
If you have more than €10,000 in savings (or €20,000 for couples/shared households), your housing allowance will be reduced.
If your assets are over €50,000, you won’t get any support at all.
Summer cottages won’t count toward these asset limits.
Also, Kela will stop paying housing allowance for owner-occupied homes. This change will affect nearly 16,000 households who were getting about €230 a month on average. The government hopes this will save €30 million.
Pensioners’ housing benefits will stay the same, but others will face stricter checks.
💼 Unemployment Benefit Cuts
Changes are also coming to unemployment support:
Partial unemployment benefits will be cut.
People in job training won’t get extra financial support.
Young people will be affected too. For example, 17-year-olds who drop out of school won’t qualify for support, and the rehabilitation allowance (often used for mental health reasons) will only start at age 18.
This means it could become harder for some young people to access the help they need.
🏥 Healthcare Costs Are Going Up
Healthcare will become more expensive in 2025:
The annual deductible for prescription drugs will rise from €50 to €70.
Primary care fees will increase by more than 20%.
Specialist care fees will go up by 45%.
People will also need to pay more out-of-pocket for services, and the yearly spending limits will reset.
At the same time, many key benefits (like unemployment and parental leave allowances) will be frozen—meaning they won’t increase with inflation. As prices rise, more families are expected to need basic social assistance. Kela estimates that this aid will cost €900 million in 2024, up from €760 million in 2023.
🏢 Kela Itself Faces Budget Cuts
Even the agency that pays out these benefits—Kela—is being hit with cuts.
A €50 million budget cut is coming in 2026, around 10% of its operating budget.
On top of that, Kela already has a €45 million savings plan for 2025–2027, which means fewer staff and reduced services.
Kela’s Director General called the new cut a surprise and warned that it could hurt the agency’s ability to respond to emergencies.
🧓 Other Welfare Changes & New Tech Tools
The government aims to save a total of €170 million by making changes across the social and healthcare system. Some of the confirmed actions include:
Lower staffing requirements in child welfare units.
Replacing some elderly home care with digital tools—like AI systems that help with documentation.
Reducing services for people with disabilities and those in rehabilitative work.
The idea is that digitalisation and smaller staff numbers could make the system more efficient—but many are worried it will also mean lower-quality care.
💶 But Wait—Finland Is Still Giving Billions in Aid?
Here’s where things get confusing for many people. While Finland is cutting support at home, it’s still spending billions to help other countries—especially Ukraine.
Let’s break this down simply.
💰 How Finland Is in Debt but Still Giving Aid
Yes, Finland is in debt. And yes, it’s still giving large amounts of financial aid. Here's how this works:
1. Finland’s Growing Debt
At the end of 2023:
The government owed €156.2 billion, which is 55.4% of Finland’s GDP.
The total public debt (including local governments and pensions) was 75.5% of GDP.
In 2023 alone, Finland borrowed €14.2 billion to help pay for its expenses.
So the country is borrowing money—not just to support people in Finland, but also to meet international commitments.
2. Where the Money Is Going
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Finland has sent around €3.2 billion in aid:
€2.3 billion in military aid (weapons, equipment, training)
€220 million in humanitarian and development aid
€18 million through the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism
€550 million to help Ukrainian refugees in Finland (housing, services)
3. How Can Finland Afford This?
Good question. Here’s how:
The government borrows money to fund both domestic and international needs.
It cuts spending elsewhere—like we’re seeing with welfare, healthcare, and Kela.
It sees this aid as a long-term investment in security, peace, and European cooperation.
🧭 Why Is Finland Doing This?
Even during tough economic times, Finland continues to support Ukraine because of a few key reasons:
It’s part of the EU and NATO, and backing Ukraine helps defend European stability.
The government wants to be seen as a reliable international partner.
Helping Ukraine now is seen as protecting Finland’s own future security.
📌 What Happens Next?
Finance Minister Riikka Purra has already said that more cuts might be coming in April 2025.
With one-third of the national budget already going to social and healthcare services, the government believes that reforms are needed to keep the system sustainable.
But the big question remains: Who feels the impact the most?
Many experts warn that these changes could deepen inequality and make life harder for vulnerable groups. As 2025 unfolds, we’ll begin to see the real effects—on both everyday families in Finland and the country’s position on the world stage.
A Mother's Love Under Siege: Life in Gaza Through Her Eyes
It's 4 a.m. again. The electricity hasn't returned, but she doesn't need a clock—her body knows the rhythm now. The low hum of drones replaces lullabies. Her baby stirs in her arms, too tired to cry, too hungry to sleep.
In the heart of Gaza, under skies heavy with smoke and uncertainty, there lives a mother. Her name isn’t known to the world. She could be anyone—someone’s sister, someone’s daughter, someone’s everything.
But right now, she’s a mother surviving on strength alone.
Her Morning Routine Isn’t Like Ours
While many of us start our mornings with coffee and headlines, she starts hers by checking for cracks in the walls after the latest blast. Her children sleep in their clothes—just in case they have to run in the middle of the night. There’s no breakfast. Not because she’s too tired to cook, but because there’s no food left to cook.
She ties a scarf tightly around her head, not out of habit but to hide her thinning hair. The weight of hunger, stress, and fear has aged her. She takes her toddler by the hand and walks for an hour to a charity kitchen for one portion of rice—maybe pasta, if she’s lucky. No vegetables. No protein. Just enough to keep the body going.
Over 80% of Gaza’s population depends on these meals now. She is one of them.
Water—A Daily Gamble
Her next mission is water. She fills plastic bottles from a cracked community tap. The water is cloudy, but she has no choice. Gaza’s water systems are in ruins—bombed, broken, and dry. Most wells are contaminated. She boils what she can, but fuel is scarce. Electricity comes on for just an hour or two, if at all.
She’s lost count of how many times her children have gotten sick.
A Visit to the Hospital Brings More Fear
Her middle son used to need asthma medication, but now they only have one inhaler left. The hospital is overflowing—people lie in hallways, waiting for care that may never come. Six out of seven dialysis centers no longer work. People die waiting.
And yet, the hospital is still a place of hope for her. Not because it has all the answers, but because it has people who still try.
Hope Isn’t Gone—She Carries It
This mother, like thousands of others, keeps going—not because life is easy, but because her love is stronger than fear. She still whispers stories to her children at night. She still braids her daughter’s hair. She still believes in a better tomorrow, even when the present feels like it’s slipping through her fingers.
This Story is Fiction—but the Pain is Real
While this mother is a symbol, the facts are heartbreakingly true. Families in Gaza are enduring:
Widespread hunger and severe malnutrition.
No access to clean water or electricity.
Hospitals on the brink of collapse.
Children growing up with trauma, not toys.
They are not numbers. They are people—parents, students, dreamers.
So What Can We Do?
We may not be able to stop the bombs. But we can refuse to be silent.
We can share their stories. We can raise our voices. We can remind the world that behind every headline, there’s a human being just trying to survive another day with dignity.
Please keep Gaza in your thoughts, in your words, in your actions. Because when the world stops watching, the suffering grows louder in the dark.
Hope Can Cross Borders—With You
If this story moved you, don't let it end here.
While borders remain closed, your compassion doesn’t have to be. A small donation can help provide food, clean water, and emergency care to families in Gaza—especially to mothers like the one in this story, who wake each day wondering how to protect their children in a world falling apart.
❤️ Give what you can. Hope travels fastest when we carry it together.
👉 https://finnishhumanrights.org/donations-1
Gaza’s Silent Suffering: A People Cut Off from Life’s Essentials
Voices from Gaza: When Every Meal and Every Drop of Water Becomes a Struggle
Imagine waking each morning not knowing if you’ll have enough to eat. Or if the water you drink will make you sick. For more than two million men, women, and children in Gaza, this has been their daily reality since March 12, 2025, when a fragile ceasefire finally broke and a full blockade was set in place.
A Blockade That Stops Hope
When the ceasefire collapsed in mid‑March, talks to swap hostages for peace fell apart. At once, the borders shut. Trucks carrying flour, medicines, even baby formula—all halted at the crossings. Aid convoys that once brought lifesaving supplies are now stalled by endless checks, or simply turned back.
Hunger in a Land of Plenty Dreams
Before the blockade, Gaza’s kitchens hummed with the promise of warm meals and children’s laughter. Now, over 80 percent of families must line up at charity kitchens for a single thin portion of rice or pasta—no fresh fruit, no meat, no hope of a balanced meal [AP News]. Thousands of children show signs of serious malnutrition; in some towns, rates of acute undernourishment have soared by double digits, according to UNICEF.
Local bakeries—centers of community life—have closed their doors. The World Food Programme had to shut its last ovens, unable to get grain or fuel across the borders [euronews]. In private markets, desperation drives prices sky‑high: a single loaf of bread can cost ten times what it did before the blockade.
Water: A Precious, Poisoned Gift
Gaza’s water network lies in shambles. Airstrikes have battered 85 percent of the pipelines and destroyed nearly 50 pumping stations [Middle East Monitor]. Wells that once ran clear now run dry or send tainted water that spreads disease. Treatment plants have stopped working altogether, leaving families to gamble with contaminated taps.
And with no fuel for generators, the territory’s lone power plant is silent. Power cuts stretch to over 22 hours a day—so there’s no electricity to run even the simplest desalination units [Reuters]. Parents boil what they can salvage, hoping it won’t make their children sick.
Hospitals on the Edge of Collapse
In Gaza’s hospitals, every heartbeat is a miracle. Six of seven dialysis centers are wrecked; the remaining ones are overwhelmed. Patients crowd machines two at a time, receiving half the treatment they need—and more than 400 have already died because of it [AP News]. Operating rooms run on borrowed time: anesthesia, antibiotics, and basic supplies are days from running out.
Aid workers—those who risk everything to help—have paid the highest price. Nearly sixty have been killed in recent strikes, and many organizations have withdrawn, unable to keep their teams safe [AP News].
Crossing the Borders: A Test of Faith
The Rafah gate into Egypt stands mostly closed, except for the gravely wounded. Kerem Shalom—the main route for UN and Red Crescent aid—sees only rare, small convoys, each held up by hours of inspection. Plans to hand aid delivery to private contractors have been floated, but so far nothing has moved [The Guardian].
Meanwhile, expanded military buffer zones force distribution points farther from homes. Mothers carrying babies must walk into exposed fields, fearing shells, just to reach a handful of supplies [The Guardian].
A Call to Our Shared Humanity
More than 51,000 Palestinians—most of them civilians—have lost their lives since October 2023. In the last month alone, nearly 1,700 more died when the fighting resumed [The Guardian]. The United Nations, the European Union, and humanitarian groups all beg for corridors of safe passage. Yet, each plea has faltered.
Today, thousands of fathers and mothers in Gaza lie awake at night, their fears echoing off the cold concrete walls: Will tomorrow bring enough bread? Clean water? A chance to see their child smile again?
We must not look away. Every story we tell, every post we share, every voice we lift helps pierce the silence. Please join me in keeping attention on Gaza, and calling on leaders everywhere to open the crossings—so that food can come in, water can flow, and hope can live on.
References
AP News – “Over 80 percent of Gaza residents depend on charity kitchens”
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=AP+News%2C+%E2%80%9COver+80%E2%80%AFpercent+of+Gaza+residents+depend+on+charity+kitchens%2C%E2%80%9D+April%E2%80%AF2025.&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8UNICEF – “More than a million children in Gaza Strip deprived of lifesaving aid over one month”
https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/more-million-children-gaza-strip-deprived-lifesaving-aid-over-one-monthMiddle East Monitor – “Gaza’s unquenchable thirst: The water tragedy amid relentless bombardment and total blockade”
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250422-gazas-unquenchable-thirst-the-water-tragedy-amid-relentless-bombardment-and-total-blockade/AP News – “Gaza dialysis patients die as hospitals run out of supplies”
https://apnews.com/article/gaza-israel-palestinians-kidney-dialysis-health-war-c72ce95bf0d8f9b2c719a01aeb04341eThe Guardian – “Gaza Palestinians in ‘total blockade’ as aid is blocked by Israel”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/19/gaza-palestinians-israeli-aid-blockade
The Role of Banks in Finland's Economic Downturn: A Call for Accountability
It all begins with an idea.
Finnish Human Rights Advocates Ry
In recent months, a disturbing trend has emerged in Finland, with banks refusing to open accounts for new companies and civil society organizations without providing valid reasons. This discriminatory practice is not only a violation of Finnish and European Union laws but is also contributing significantly to the economic downturn in the country.
Legal Violations
Multiple banks, including Nordea Bank Abp, Danske Bank A/S, Handelsbanken, OP Bank, and Nooa Säästöpankki Oy, have denied essential banking services to various entities. These actions contravene several legal mandates:
Act on Credit Institutions (610/2014), Chapter 15, Section 6: This law mandates that banks must provide basic banking services to legally residing individuals and entities in Finland.
Finnish Equality Act (1325/2014): This act prohibits discrimination against any person or group in the provision of goods and services, including banking services.
EU Payment Accounts Directive (2014/92/EU), Article 15: Ensures the right of access to a basic payment account irrespective of the consumer’s financial situation or nationality.
EU Anti-Discrimination Directive (2000/43/EC): Provides protection against discrimination on various grounds, including access to goods and services such as banking.
Economic Consequences
The refusal to open bank accounts is stifling new business creation and innovation in Finland. Many of the companies rejected by Finnish banks have managed to open accounts abroad. Consequently, these companies channel their funds outside Finland, evading local taxes and depriving the Finnish economy of much-needed capital. This raises serious questions about the motives behind these banking practices and the broader implications for the Finnish economy.
Who Benefits from This?
The current situation begs the question: Who benefits from the destruction of the Finnish economy? Is it just the banks, or is there a larger conspiracy at play involving the government? By pushing companies to move their financial operations abroad, banks are effectively undermining Finland’s economic stability and growth prospects.
A Call for Accountability
Finnish Human Rights Advocates Ry calls on regulatory authorities and policymakers to enforce existing laws and ensure that all entities have access to essential banking services. It is crucial to investigate the role of banks in this economic sabotage and hold them accountable for their actions. Additionally, the government must clarify its stance and take active measures to prevent further economic damage.
Conclusion
The integrity of Finland’s financial system and the well-being of its economy depend on fair and non-discriminatory banking practices. It is time to address these issues head-on and ensure that banks fulfill their legal obligations to support, rather than hinder, economic growth.