Attachments
Geneva, 4 December 2024
Video file of *press conference available here
The full Global Humanitarian Overview 2025 is accessible here
Good morning, everyone, thank you for joining us.
The world is on fire - and this is how we put it out.
We will launch the Global Humanitarian Overview this week, and it fills me with a mixture of shame, dread, but also hope. The reality is, as you know well, that we are dealing with a polycrisis right now globally. And it is the most vulnerable people in the world who are paying the price. We are dealing with the impact of conflicts, multiple conflicts, and crises of longer duration and of more intense ferocity.
We are dealing with the impacts of the climate crisis. And as I flew over Chad last week, I saw for myself the way that people already exposed to poverty are now also exposed to flooding and droughts. But thirdly, we are also dealing with the impact of growing inequality. And this combination – conflict, climate and inequality – creates this perfect storm that we are navigating right now and which I hope that this report will now help us to navigate in the coming year.
Three numbers, which I think we need to have imprinted on our minds right now: The first number is 305 million – that’s the number of the people in dire need who we believe [are in need] in the coming year, 305 million. 47 billion is the second number – 47 billion is the funding we believe we need to raise [...] and then 190 million, the number of people we are trying to reach with aid in 2025.
Now, we have a choice; we have a choice right now. We can respond to these numbers with generosity, with compassion, with genuine solidarity for those in the most dire need on the planet – or we can carry on. We can choose to leave them alone to face these crises. We can choose to let them down.
I believe that we need to reset our relationship with those in greatest need on the planet. I believe that we need a surge in global solidarity, and that’s why I feel shame at these numbers that, as a world community, as an international community, we have let these numbers rise to this level. It’s why I feel dread, frankly, because I fear – and you in this room know this much better than me – I fear I’ll be back next year in this seat, saying the same thing, but with slightly bigger numbers. And that really does fill me with dread, because behind every one of these numbers is an individual, is a person.
But there is also hope. There’s hope in this report, and I also feel hope two weeks into my mandate as USG [Under-Secretary-General] and ERC [Emergency Relief Coordinator], hope because we have reached 116 million people with support in the last year, 116 million people.
I feel hope because of the people I met in Sudan over my visit that lasted more than a week – my first visit in the role to the site of the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis – right now, I feel hope because of the people I met who are responding on the front lines. People like Mama Nour, whose centre I visited, who is [helping] women who have suffered the most horrendous sexual violence time and time again, who must think that the world has forgotten them – and yet they’re not forgotten. She’s reaching out with kindness and practical support.
I feel hope because of the humanitarian workers I’ve met over the last week, including our UN teams on the ground, and I’ve seen the passion and commitment and dedication that they bring to their work. And it is inspirational. And I feel hope because of the message that I received from people I met in Sudan and Chad.
I spent a lot of time in community meetings asking them what their message was for the world. And their message is: Don’t give up on us because we still have hope. There are people who are living in a context that we could not imagine, that we would think is hopeless, and they are still telling us to have hope.
It is them, they, who are encouraging us not to lose hope. So as long as they have hope, then we have to have hope, too.
But it has to be a practical hope. It has to be based on our numbers and on plans. It can’t be pure idealism and wishful thinking. So this is our North Star for the coming year.
This will guide our work, not just as a humanitarian system, but as a humanitarian movement, a humanitarian community. Because this job is far too big for the UN family to deal with alone – we need that broader coalition to help us respond to those in the direst need.
I’m now very happy to take your questions.
Q: Thank you, Mr. Fletcher. Nice to come see us and appreciate it. I’m Jamie from Associated Press, welcome. You mentioned we have a choice. We have a choice right now. We can respond to these numbers, the three that you laid out with generosity, compassion, genuine solidarity. Your own country has been criticized for reducing its international aid outlays. How are you going to convince other countries, countries that have not been giving money for a long time, that have a lot of money in some cases, and are not doing so, when your own country is reducing its outlays?
Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: Thanks, Jamie. I think that’s a fair question, and I’m here to represent the UN, as of 16 days, that’s my sole designation. But as you can tell from my accent, I do come from somewhere.
I think this is a broader challenge and a concern that we all have of donor fatigue. This humanitarian system right now is overstretched. It’s underfunded, and it’s literally under attack.
And we can maybe come back to the situation in which humanitarian workers find themselves – globally, we’ve just passed a number that makes this the deadliest year to be a humanitarian worker on record. It’s a shocking thing for me to have to announce in my first week in the job, and those numbers have gone up again. People who are risking everything to do this work.
But yet your question is about that effort to ensure we find those resources. I think we’ve got to make the case afresh for global compassion.
We have to take that message to some of those, you know, we might call them the traditional donors, the people who are doing the most of the funding, for the last couple of decades – that includes the UK, includes others, Germany, the US, where the funding is being reduced. We’ve got to show them that responding to these crises in a practical, resourced way is the most effective way to deal with these crises.
We’ve got to show them what the alternative is, and sometimes we might have to frame that in different ways because we are facing a very different geopolitical context as the United Nations. And we should front up to that. We should be honest. This isn’t the world that most of us thought we’d be working in, in 2024, for my generation, you know, I was 14 in 1989 as the Berlin Wall came down.
I didn’t think that we’d be in a world where it feels as though the rivets are popping, that the wheels are rattling off on the international system that was designed with such patience by our predecessors and such vision – but it is.
The system is really, really stretched, and those that we might look to traditionally to reinforce that system, are not giving the support that we might wish.
So I’ve got to get out there, that’s my job. I’ve got to get into capitals. I’ve got to make that argument. I’ve got to bash down doors. I’ve got to find ways to reframe this argument in a way that will resonate with the public at large. And you’ve got to cut through the noise. All this distraction that’s out there, the sense I keep hearing, that we’re all too busy to care.
We’ve got to find ways to make people care again.
Q: And very quickly, you mentioned the long-time donors. What about countries that do have a lot of money? Which countries, in particular, are you hoping that might be encouraged to give more? Do you have any countries in mind that you think?
Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: I have a long list, and it has a lot of countries on it. We’ve got to diversify the donor base. We can’t just rely on the same club of donors, wonderful as they are and appreciative as we are of them. You know, I was in Chad last week, and Chad, despite being the fourth poorest country in the world, is a donor to the UN CERF [Central Emergency Response Fund] – that’s pretty extraordinary. We’ve got to take this message out. I’ll be going, I’m not sure we’ve announced my programme yet for the first quarter of next year, but you’ll see many of those sorts of countries on that list. I had a chance to thank our colleague from South Korea here yesterday for the fact that South Korea is one of our largest growing donors.
So we, we’re ambitious, and we’re confident that we have a message that will resonate with new allies as well as with old allies.
Q: Thank you. Nina Larson, AFP. So along those same lines, I just wanted to ask, just to follow up on that, you mentioned the shifting geopolitical context. I was wondering if, how much more difficult things have become since November 5th in that sense? And then also when it comes to the funding, it used to be, until last year at least, that every year we came here and the and the appeals were bigger. It was always a record appeal and a record number, that the UN was planning on helping and that’s no longer the case. I understand that might be down to realism, given that this year’s appeal is only funded at less than 50 per cent. So, if you could talk to that and the biggest concerns around the impacts on funding gaps.
Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: Thank you very much, Nina. So question one is clearly about [incoming US President Donald] Trump and I think what we’re facing, as I said to Jamie, is that much tougher global context. It’s not just about America, although America is very much on our minds at the moment, we’re facing the election of a number of Governments who will be more questioning of what the United Nations does and less ideologically supportive of this humanitarian effort that we’ve laid out in this report.
But I don’t believe that we can’t make that case to them. I don’t believe that there isn’t compassion in these Governments which are getting elected. And I think these numbers, which are staggering, will cut through. But it’s our job to frame the arguments in the right way to land and not to give up. And so I’ll head to Washington. I’ll spend a lot of time in Washington, I imagine, over the next few months, engaging with the new administration, making the case to them, just as I’ll spend a lot of time in other capitals where people might be skeptical about the work that we are doing. So I think we lean into this.
We should be honest about the challenges and realistic. We shouldn’t pretend that everything will carry on as it is, but we’ve got to engage, and I’ll be doing that.
On your second point, you’re right, and I’ve got the list in front of me of the previous years. You know better than I do. And the numbers do go up and down each year – I think that’s actually quite a positive. It would be very easy based on the data that I’ve seen and that the teams collected for us to keep coming to you with a bigger number and for us to say, look, the headline here is this is the biggest year ever. It’s an easy thing for us to say, it’s an easy thing for you to write.
But the reality is we’ve got to prioritize because of those funding gaps. We’ve got to be absolutely focused on reaching those in the most dire need – and, and really ruthless. And I choose that word carefully because it’s a judgment call, that ruthlessness about prioritizing where the funding goes and where we can have the greatest impact. So it’s a recognition that we’ve struggled in previous years to raise the money we need.
We’re not saying that these crises are getting better. We’re not saying that we don’t need to reach a higher number with more money than we’re asking for, but this is about prioritization, and we want to demonstrate that we will focus and target the resources that we have.
Q: Good morning, thank you for the briefing. You’ve talked about the need to combat impunity. This seems to be a little bit outside of OCHA’s traditional role. So I’m kind of wondering, after a year, which of you have said is the most deadly for humanitarian workers, how you intend to kind of promote the security of humanitarian delivery? And you talked about the ruthlessness of prioritizing that’s needed. What has been some of the humanitarian costs of the priorities that you’re imposing and some of the cuts that you’ve had to impose on humanitarian assistance in the current year? Thank you.
Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: Thank you. Nick, I think when I talked about we have to end the era of impunity, I’m thinking about the international community, I’m thinking about the world at large. I’m not suggesting for a moment that from where I sit, that is something I can deliver, solo somehow, or that it’s within my OCHA role.
It’s actually for the broader collective to deliver. So it’s a big “we” rather than a small “we”. But it is part of my recognition that this is a different context. And it’s not just the ferocity of these conflicts – Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Syria. It’s about that willful neglect of international humanitarian law, and as a result, we seem to have lost our anchor somehow. We’ve lost our bearings somehow, that scaffolding that we felt was there, international humanitarian law that I was hoping that we’d be taking for granted at this point, is shaking. That scaffolding is shaky at the moment.
And that’s the argument I think we need to take on, is a broader argument than just about OCHA because our job is to get the humanitarian support through – checkpoint by checkpoint, border by border. It’s what I was doing in Sudan, meeting by meeting last week, arguing truck by truck for that humanitarian delivery. That’s our mission. And as part of that, you know, you mentioned humanitarian workers and we passed that 281 number in my first week in the job of humanitarian workers killed this year, the deadliest year for humanitarian workers in history. And as I landed in Sudan, we lost another OCHA colleague. And we’ve lost more colleagues in the humanitarian movement, in the week since. And the reality is, the only way for me to stop that happening is to somehow try to stop humanitarians heading out towards the crisis in order to try to deal with the victims of them – and that’s not something that we can do or will do. So I really need the international system and those with a voice and power to do much, much more to protect humanitarians in these conflicts.
And thirdly, on the costs: I mean, I don’t have a list in front of me of the projects that we won’t be able to fund as a result of not asking for more money. But if you look at the gap between the number who we want to reach this year, I think it’s 190 million, and the number we think are in need, 305 million – my math is shakier than it was, but I think there’s 115 million that we won’t be able to reach with the support that we would like to, because we are making these priorities and that every one of those is an individual who needs shelter, health, education, people who are looking for what we’re looking for security, justice, opportunity and dignity.
Q: My name is Paula with Geneva Solutions. My question was regarding the climate crisis that you mentioned, and just a week ago, the COP29 wrapped up in Baku and it was agreed that there would be $300 billion in climate aid that would be provided, which is much lower than the $1.3 [trillion] that had been estimated to cover needs. We’d like to know from you what sort of signal that this gives to the donors? As well as the impact of that, on the ground?
Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: The impact on the ground I think we can all see. And as I said, it was really driven home to me, in Chad, flying over those floodplains, to talk to the Government about the fact that they’re hosting so many Sudanese refugees at the time when they have multiple layers of displaced people in the country, and they’re responding to the flooding and the droughts as the country most vulnerable to climate change.
So, it’s been seared on my mind, really, the real impact of that on a Government responding to that crisis. You know, I wasn’t at the COP, but I think there we face the same challenge that we can set out the reality of a failure to act. And the SG [Secretary-General] does this very eloquently in describing what happens if we fail to act.
We can set out how we must respond, what we need to respond, why we need to respond. But then we need people to respond. We need the resources. And I think here, alongside the humanitarian crisis, because it’s all intertwined, we’ve got to get that message out to new audiences. We’ve got to find a way to connect with new generations, because ultimately we need them to make the case to their Governments for why these challenges require a global response and not a national introspection.
We need to move on from this time of national distancing and get back to a system of global cooperation again.
Q: Two quick ones for you, Mr. Fletcher, just what’s the most money consuming crisis right now? Is it Sudan, is a simple question. And then let me try to ask this question again, in another way. But would you have come up with a bigger number for the appeal, had the outcome of the US election been different?
Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: Thank you. So I’ve got the list of all the response plans above a billion. I don’t have the list but I’m sure Jens [Laerke, OCHA spokesperson] can give it to you, from the last year of which crises consumed most money, looking backwards. Looking forwards, [the] Syria [Regional Refugee & Resilience Plan] is right at the top of the list. At over $4.5 billion, followed by Sudan, as I said, I saw of myself 25 million in need last week – at the top of this, it’s the Syria regional plan. But there are 14 crises on that list, at over a billion. So that also includes Occupied Palestinian Territory, of course – I’ll go to the region in the next two weeks to see for myself how we can deliver more effectively there – Ukraine, DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo], Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Chad, Somalia, Venezuela and Myanmar.
The second question. That’s a really interesting question. No, I think this will be exactly the same number. Jens will tell you later if that’s the wrong answer. But I believe, this has got to be based on data it for it to have real credibility. Our teams, you know, I’m amazed and encouraged – the rigor that goes into this work to get this level of clarity. If it didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it. It’s the sort of thing that someone who comes into the job and says, look, this is all too complicated, we’ve got to have a really clear roadmap, where is the need and what do we need to respond? These teams spend huge amounts of time on this, and I don’t think that one election here and there changes the data or changes the need.
Q: Good morning and welcome, Mr. Fletcher. Hi, Emma from Reuters. One of the reasons the needs are so big, because the conflicts are not getting resolved. You have an experience, a lot of experience as a diplomat, and I understand this role comes with some potential for back channeling, for maybe even brokering conflicts behind the scenes. Is that something that you intend to do and where do you think you can make a difference, if so?
Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: Thank you. Emma. And, yes, indeed many of the most formative experiences in my diplomatic life have been working on conflict and peacemaking from Kenya through to, through to Lebanon. But also for four years as the Prime Minister’s Northern Ireland advisor, so working very closely, on that, that negotiation. I know I have a very clear mission around humanitarian delivery. That’s the job description. You know, there’s a big C in the word OCHA standing for coordination. And ultimately, that’s what I’ll be judged against – can I coordinate the humanitarian system to stand up and deal with these challenges? Now, of course, to do that, there will be times when I need to be a diplomat.
I noticed that in Sudan, you know, I had 7 or 8 meetings just on getting the extra humanitarian flights, the extra humanitarian hubs and so on. That was diplomacy in its classic form. But it was for that humanitarian mission. I pay great tribute to my predecessor, Martin [Griffiths], who did some really extraordinary entrepreneurial humanitarian diplomacy, and I hope to build on that, learn from it, and be active and use a skills experience that I hope I can bring. But also we have some extraordinary people doing the actual political work, the actual negotiation, the SG, his team of Special Representatives, the political team, peacekeeping teams and so on. So I would want to support them because there’s a link between peacemaking and humanitarian work, but also I’m conscious of where my lane is.
Q: Good morning, Mr. Fletcher, many thanks, for giving us the opportunity to talk to you. I was wondering, in the press release, and you repeated it earlier, you said that 305 million people around the world require humanitarian assistance next year and at the same time, you’re saying that with the $47 billion you hope to receive, you are giving humanitarian assistance to 190 million people around the world. So I was wondering what will happen to the 115 million people who are not covered?
Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: Well, I think, my understanding is that we won’t be able to reach them in the same way. And, you know, if it would be very easy to sit there and say, we need to reach all those 305 [million], because we do, we want to. We wish we could. And if this message cuts through and we have a bumper year of funding, then we’ll do as much as we can and it will go beyond the 190 [million]. But I have to be cynical and realistic about the prospects of doing that, and it is ruthless. I use the word ruthless and it’s a tough word for us to hear as humanitarians, because it does mean tough choices about not reaching everyone. But I have to work with what I have to work with, and that means really, really tough choices. But they’re based on evidence, and they’re based on this assessment of where we can have the most impact on those who most need it. And so it’s guided by the data and the evidence.
Q: I would like to ask a question on a country that you know well, Mr. Fletcher, and it is on Lebanon. How is the humanitarian situation and what is the plan for next year? I also want to ask about OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territory], what is the humanitarian situation there and what will be needed in 2025?
Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: As you say, Moussa, I know Lebanon very well. I seem to be doing this in French and English combined – very Lebanese, in fact, combining the two in a sentence. So I know Lebanon very well, and it’s a country that I love. And it’s going through the most significant humanitarian crisis in a generation. This is after multiple crises. I left Lebanon in 2015 and said at the time that every time you think you couldn’t hit rock bottom, you hear a sound, a tapping sound below. And they’ve heard that tapping sound again and again. The financial crisis, the port explosion and now this conflict, all of that on top of waves of refugees fleeing the Syrian crisis and we’ll see more of that in the coming weeks, I fear. So it’s a brutal situation that the Lebanese people are suffering and the ceasefire does, I hope, bring us some respite and an opportunity to get support to those who need it, because, you know, the human toll has been devastating.
The crisis is, of course, far from over. It doesn’t end with the ceasefire. So we need to get more access. We need more funding to deliver aid to the civilians who so badly need it. And again, we call on the countries with influence in the region to stand up for international humanitarian law. We’ve got to avoid further bloodshed. We’ve got to avoid got to avoid further suffering. We’ve got to protect civilians. We’ve got to protect humanitarian workers and get back to the implementation of [UN Security Council resolution] 1701. On the precise numbers, for the Lebanon appeal, Lebanon is not in that list of a billion plus plans so I’ll ask Jens to get back to you on the exact number in the document that we are seeking for Lebanon.
I’m also aware that for Lebanon and Syria, these needs are fluctuating at the moment and likely to increase given the state of the conflict right now.
Q: My name is Satoko, I work for Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper. According to the Overview, there are two main drivers of the crisis, conflict and climate emergencies. Could you give us a sense of which one is bigger driver of the global humanitarian needs in 2025? And secondly, you talk about multiple conflicts and crises of the longer duration and more intense ferocity. So how are you going to do this with these emerging the emerging trends? Thank you.
Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: Thank you. It’s a really interesting question. I think the reality is it’s the combination of the two, which is the most dangerous right now, because so many of the crises we’re dealing with, so many of the crises on that list I read out to you of the 14 plans, these are suffering from the combination. So on the conflict side, it’s not just the fact of so many conflicts at the same time, it’s the duration of those conflicts. The average length is ten years, so we’re not closing off conflicts before the next ones starting. And the fact is that those conflicts are so ferocious and the impact on civilians is so dramatic. I mentioned Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, as examples of that with this disregard of international law and, in every case, obstruction of our work.
I talk to our teams in the field every day, and they are facing multiple obstructions to getting the basics of humanitarian aid through. So we reckon 123 million people have been displaced forcibly by conflict. And among that group, violations against children are also at record levels. And I saw this, of course, in, in Sudan – one in every five children is living in [or fleeing from] a conflict zone right now.
So I don’t know where that ranks in the list of crises, but that feels pretty severe and unacceptable to me.
On the climate side, you all know the stats and they’ll be in the report: 2024 will be the hottest year on record. Presumably 2025 will then be the hottest year on record. Floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires affecting millions. We’re on the brink of surpassing the 1.5 degrees in warming, and that will hit hardest in the countries that have actually contributed least to climate change. It wipes out food systems. It wipes out livelihoods, it forces communities to move from their homes and land. Drought has caused 65 per cent of agricultural economic damage over the last 15 years, worsening food insecurity.
So we can debate conflict versus climate change. But I think the toxicity of this and the dread I have is that those two huge drivers of need are now combining. And that’s what makes our job so difficult. And they’re often combining in areas that have already suffered huge levels of poverty and inequality.
Q: Good morning, and thank you for the briefing. I’d like to come back to Africa and to the forgotten crisis, and particularly DR Congo. I’d like to know if you have innovative solutions to reach requirements because you spoke about the duration of the conflicts and the crisis. DR Congo has a crisis that lasts for the last three decades. Do you plan to go to the region? Could you give us a picture and more information about the region, please? Thank you.
Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: I can, and thank you for ensuring, Catherine, that we don’t neglect some of these conflicts that can slip down the list that should normally, would normally consume so much more of our attention.
I wanted to make a point of visiting Sudan first because it’s the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. I wanted then to get to the Middle East, as I will do the week after next, because it’s the most intense crisis in the world. Gaza is a terrible place to be a civilian right now, as you all know, better than I do. But in the new year, I will be visiting Ukraine early on, it’s very high on the list, and I plan to get to the DRC very early on to try to shine more of a light on that conflict – as you say, a long-running conflict. The country with the largest number of people in need of humanitarian assistance, one in four people requiring aid; the second highest number of uprooted people, more than 6.4 million, in the world, after Sudan. The scale of suffering is enormous, far beyond what the humanitarian movement can address. Among that – and I want to really underline this point more generally because it was something I heard and was very moved by during my visit to, Sudan – are the levels of gender-based violence, this epidemic of sexual violence against women and girls, the weaponization of women’s bodies in conflict, which is at just horrific levels.
And I had conversations in Sudan that I will never forget. But this is also a huge feature of the conflict in the DRC. But then also, of course, and I haven’t touched on it yet, but, in these overlapping crises, we also have the health crisis, in the DRC as well.
And as the document will show, the levels that we’ve got to reach are just not matched by the funding that we’ve been able to raise, so in DRC, as with all these conflicts, we are ready to do more. It’s our mission to do more. My people are desperate to get out there and deliver because they really are on the frontline. They can see what is needed, but we need these resources. That’s our call to action. And we also need the world to do more. Those with power to do more – to challenge this era of impunity and to challenge this era of indifference.
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*An embargoed press conference was held on 3 December 2024 in Geneva.
Disclaimer
- UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
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