Attachments
“Upholding International Humanitarian Law in Armed Conflict”
Geneva, 4 December 2024
As delivered
Thank you, Claire [Doole, moderator] and welcome everybody.
Friends and colleagues, we are here as the humanitarian movement to launch the Global Humanitarian Overview for 2025 – my first time as Emergency Relief Coordinator.
I want to start today by recognizing your extraordinary work this year.
In 2024, you reached 116 million people with our humanitarian support and solidarity.
And you did this in the face of overwhelming odds – because you know better than me that we are overstretched, underfunded, and under attack.
It is an incredible achievement, and it is right that we, the world, recognize you for that and for your service to humanity.
If I was under any illusions about how tough this job will be, this document blows them away, it blasts them away.
As the report says: the world is on fire.
But this also gives us the solution to how to put it out.
In 2025, 305 million people will require urgent humanitarian assistance and protection. And behind that number are of course 305 million lives, 305 million humans, 305 million different stories.
The main culprits for this staggering number are clear – and they are both man-made.
The first is conflict.
We have seen in the last year, the devastating conflicts in Gaza and Sudan – distinguished by the callous disregard for human life, a lack of respect for humanitarian law, and also often the deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid.
Who stands in front of trucks to stop them reaching those we should support?
And of course it is not just these two conflicts, because conflicts are lasting longer, the average duration is 10 years. We’re dealing with conflicts in Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sahel, Myanmar, Haiti and many other places.
The link between conflict and humanitarian needs is unequivocal: four out of every five civilian fatalities this year have occurred in countries with a humanitarian appeal or plan.
And it is the youngest in our societies – the people we are meant to be protecting and nurturing – who are among the worst hit. Let that sink in; the youngest.
Grave violations against children in conflict have reached unprecedented levels. Sudan alone, where I was last week, witnessed a 480 per cent increase in children hit by conflict between 2022 and 2023. And now, one in every five kids is living in, or fleeing, a conflict zone.
The second man-made cause of these crises is of course the global climate emergency.
We know the world is perilously close to reaching 1.5°C warming.
But already, we are seeing the devastating effects of climate change; they are already, of course, with us. Everyone is affected, but it is the most vulnerable people on the planet who are shouldering the lion’s share.
2024 will be the hottest year on record.
We have seen devastating floods in the Sahel, East Africa and Europe; drought in Southern Africa and the Americas; and heatwaves and wildfires across the globe.
But the damage goes much further than that caused by the extreme weather events.
The climate crisis is also wreaking havoc on agriculture and food systems, it undermines livelihoods and deepens food insecurity – droughts have caused 65 per cent of agricultural economic damage in the past 15 years.
Yet as I embark on this role – and without for a second underestimating the task ahead – I draw two sources of hope:
The first is that because conflicts and the climate crisis are man-made, and I say man-made, humanity can do something to reverse them.
The second is my confidence in the ability of the humanitarian movement to support people through these crises, if – and here is the big “if” that we face today - they are adequately funded and can do so alongside renewed investment in development and climate action.
So, as we look ahead to 2025, three priorities.
One - of course you expect me to say it – is funding:
We are appealing for US$47 billion to help 190 million people across [72] countries.
And yet again that figure is the result of – and it is a tough word to use in this context - but ruthless, ruthless prioritization by our teams and partners to prioritize where the help is most needed and guided by where we have the most capacity to deliver it.
It incorporates of course a genuine commitment to real efficiency and effectiveness of the humanitarian responses.
It includes pushing forward on efforts to enable more support through local and national actors. Research shows that this will deliver 32 per cent more cost efficiently than when we work through international intermediaries.
And of course it includes much more creativity in our innovation, more effort to anticipate the crises that lie ahead, more use of disaster insurance products, more use of cash assistance.
And it includes a sustained efforts to shift our entire system towards more people-centred support, guided by genuine community engagement.
I spent nine days in Sudan listening to those we are here to serve. They told me they want protection and support, but also they told me they want dignity. They spoke of security, justice, opportunity. They want the same things as we do.
So yes, we’ll improve efficiency, but no amount of efficiency measures can replace the need for full and flexible funding.
Because in the past year, the movement was given an impossible job of meeting the needs of almost 190 million with less than 45 per cent of the funds required.
That shortfall has a cost. People pay for that shortfall with their lives, their safety and their health.
The cuts to food and nutrition pushed millions towards starvation and famine. The gaps in water, sanitation and health care increased the risk of disease. Women and girls bore the brunt of cuts to midwifery, newborn care and essential support to prevent and respond to gender-based violence - the epidemic of gender-based violence.
I know the money is out there. I know we can do better. I refuse to believe that we, as a global community, are too distracted somehow to respond, that we’re too caught up in our own lives to find the solidarity that we need.
I urge more donors to step forward and join this movement, and provide the flexible, streamlined funding that we need, so we can act with much greater agility, free from unnecessary bureaucracy. We have to tackle the process and the layers that stand between this mission and the people we are here to serve.
The second priority is sustained international action to end these crises, to deal with the root causes, to help communities recover and build resilience.
Because these crisis are lasting so much longer, people are paying in drops in life expectancy, six years below the global average, vaccination rates 20 per cent below the global average, maternal mortality rates double the global average, and primary school completion rates 80 per cent lower than the global average.
Nothing will do more to reduce humanitarian needs than real sustained action to stop these conflicts.
In 2025, we need to see much more muscular effort to end wars and secure peace; to tackle climate change while supporting those who will need to adapt to a shock-filled future; and – as emphasized in the Pact for the Future and the SGs message to us today – for everyone to put their shoulder to the wheel and lift people out of crises with more development action and more investment in vulnerable communities.
Third action point for 2025: more needs to be done to protect civilians and our humanitarian workers and uphold international humanitarian law - the theme of our panel in a moment.
2024 was one of the most brutal years in recent history for civilians caught up in conflict.
In Gaza, 44,000 lives lost since 7 October, and 100,000 more injured. Nine out of ten people are projected to face acute food insecurity or worse between now and April.
Sudan - 11 million displaced since April. The health care system and public services decimated, outbreaks of cholera and other diseases.
In the face of these severe limitations that we face on humanitarian access, people in Sudan are facing the worst food insecurity in the country’s history, half the Sudanese population facing crisis levels of hunger. The spectre, once again, of famine.
And I want to linger on another harrowing aspect of the crises that we face this year. This has been the deadliest year on record to be a humanitarian worker. We have lost over 280 friends and colleagues […] their courage and their humanity met with bombs and bullets.
So rather than give you another paragraph of words to recognize that sacrifice, I ask you to join me for a moment in remembering them.
Thank you.
This situation, these attacks on our people, on our movement are part of a deliberate, sustained, broader attack on what we stand for, on our values. Have no doubt about that. It is our values, and our systems, what we believe in as a movement, that is under siege.
It reflects a disregard for international humanitarian law, and a disregard for civilian life.
Humanitarian law is designed to ensure a minimum of humanity in these conflicts, even in war. Instead, we see war being used to justify massive human suffering.
This is unacceptable – we’ve run out of adjectives to describe it.
We need to see all parties to conflict comply with international humanitarian law.
We need to see Member States demand that they comply, and use the levers available to them, including diplomacy, political and financial pressure, and more responsible arms transfers to ensure that they comply.
And it is time for us as a collective to call time on this era impunity and to pursue accountability for these breaches of international humanitarian law and for these war crimes.
What unites all these priorities is the need for a renewal of our recommitment to the work we do, to humanity and to international solidarity.
As we look towards 2025 with shame at the scale of these numbers, with dread at the speech that I’ll have to give in one year’s time, but also with hope because of what we know we can do as a movement, I hope that the hard work that has gone into producing this report and the recommendations can be a foundation for all of our work.
So I thank you for being here, I look forward to working closely together in the coming year and beyond. This challenges that we are setting ourselves is huge and daunting. But our cause is mighty and our movement is strong.
Thank you.
Disclaimer
- UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
- To learn more about OCHA's activities, please visit https://www.unocha.org/.