The world hasn't found a way to step up.
And I guess that's my my demand. My message really is like what
would it take? We're in a world of strong men,
aren't we? Of, of Putin and Trump.
You never hear them talk about the UN.
It's it's almost like a meaningless institution to them.
Well, there is a there is this risk that we end up feeling
slightly orphaned by the international system because in
a world of strong men, the last thing they need is an
organization coming in that opposes this sense of sort of
survival of the fittest. We seem to be in this age of
indifference, of impunity, where people aren't being held to
account. Hello and welcome to the
Forecast. My guest today was recently
described as having the toughest job in the world.
Tom Fletcher, the Under Secretary General for
Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, is
juggling humanitarian crises across the globe, from Gaza to
Sudan, from Ukraine to Yemen. He is tasked with relieving the
suffering of the displaced, the hungry and those in danger in a
world that may not have the resources or the will to
respond. Tom, thank you for joining us
from Switzerland, your headquarters.
I think we have to start with Gaza because it is such an
immediate crisis. You have been warning for weeks
now that people are starving and and they still are today, aren't
they? They certainly are, and that's
why, Christian, you know, to your introduction, I don't have
the toughest job in the world. The toughest job in the world is
sitting there watching your kid having his arm cut off in a
hospital without an anaesthetic. The toughest job in the world
is, of course, being a survivor of sexual violence somewhere
like Darfur and having to go home to your family and not tell
them what's happened because you're worried you'll be thrown
out of your town. The toughest job in the world is
being one of the 190 million lives that we need to get out
there and save right now who are not getting the funding, not
getting the support we need. And of course, the epicenter of
that need across the world right now is Gaza.
And it's why there's such a tension on this crisis, and it's
why we've been sounding the alarm for months now about this
starvation crisis. The world simply hasn't stepped
up though, has it? I mean, you.
You've been sounding that alarm in the Security Council, in the
media, and people are still today starving to death.
And that's the tragedy of this, is that we can see what's
happening and OK, you can't get in, Krishna.
The media can't get in. You need to be there telling the
story. We are there.
We're on the ground. We've got thousands of people
inside Gaza who are telling us every day.
And we're passing on that information through the Security
Council, through the briefings, through interviews like this.
And the world hasn't found a way to step up.
And I guess that's my my demand, my message really is like, what
would it take? Why aren't we seeing that
pressure that's necessary for this to stop, for the crossings
to be open. We need all of those crossings
open. We've got the means to get in
the aid needed to save these lives, hundreds of thousands of
lives at risk right now. And it we're being prevented.
Can you explain what the situation is?
Because we're getting very confused messages from both
Israel and the GHF who are suggesting that the UN is
allowed to operate. So what?
What are you allowed to do and what can't you do?
Well, I'm afraid that for much of the recent months, and I, I
was in Gaza myself in a period when things were operating more
effectively and we were getting IN600700 trucks a day.
Still not enough, but but enough to actually save lives at scale.
I'm afraid that what we've seen since then is that we've been
set up to fail. So we're getting in maybe 100
trucks on a good day out of the 600 or 700 trucks that we need
to to deal with the conditions that we face.
But it's not a question of just driving those trucks through the
borders. And these are trucks that with
baby food on, with anaesthetics on, with essential medical and
food on. And you have to go through a
hugely laborious process before you can get those trucks to the
border crossing and through that border crossing.
Then you have to unload those trucks onto pallets next to the
crossing in those Israeli controlled areas.
You then need to get a different set of permissions for a
different set of trucks, a different set of drivers to come
and pick those up. On a good day, we might get half
of those permissions. The rest are denied.
You then have to hit a series of Israeli checkpoints.
Often the trucks turn around because it's nightfall and they
tell us we have to go back. Or they say the battle lines
have moved and it's not safe for us to move.
And even then, when we get through, we then have to cross
these areas where desperate, starving, hungry civilians will
hit those trucks, understandably because they will do anything to
feed their families. So when Israel says there are
hundreds of trucks waiting to be, you know, driven into people
and the UN is just not doing it, and we've offered to help,
that's not true. It's just not true.
And you know, we, we have to soak up a certain amount of
this, but you know, we are humanitarians.
This is our day job. Our work is to move those
trucks. We've got the distribution
networks, we've got the community relationships to get
them to where they're needed to flood the market with aid, which
is the only way you'll deal with the starvation crisis.
It's the only way to deal with the looting, with the fact that
there is that food is being sold on the in the on the black
market because there's so little getting in.
We can do all that. The idea that we'd be sat there
refusing to move aid, you know, it's just offensive.
Well, I mean, you know, as you know, the Israel says that the
reason that they, you know, replaced the previous operation
was because all, you know, most of the aid was being stolen by
Hamas. How how much aid was being
stolen by Hamas? How much was were you just
getting through normal normal channels?
I'm afraid, you know, as as the people we work with at a
technical level understand on the ground, you know, this is
just nonsense. The idea that that Hamas were
stealing his aid at scale. If there was evidence of that,
do you not think with that immense communications machine
out there trying to discredit our work, we wouldn't have seen
more of that evidence? The vast, vast majority of the
aid we were getting through when we were allowed to deliver
without these impediments, without these obstacles, was
getting to the civilians who so badly, badly need it.
Now. Does that mean that there isn't
a grain of rice or a sack of wheat that gets stolen, sold on
the market, on the black market and that Hamas get some of that?
It's impossible to guarantee that that doesn't happen in a in
such a chaotic environment when Hamas have a lot of the power
and the weapons on the ground. But this is a tiny fraction of
what we were able to get through to civilians, and that we would
be able to get through again if we were allowed to genuinely
operate. If a fraction of the energy and
money that was being spent on perpetuating this conflict was
actually spent on allowing us to save lives, we could do this at
scale. What is really at stake here
though? Because I can't really remember
a time in my career where the UN has been so undermined openly by
governments and you really thought well is this the is this
the beginning of the end of these big international rules
and international organisations having any authority?
So there is a broader sustained attack actually on our values
and principles, on this whole international system.
And look, take it from me, I've been doing this job 8-9 months
now. This is not a perfect system.
It has its flaws, but we have the most committed people in the
world, the experts. People are busting a gut,
working around the clock. Our own people are starving
inside Gaza. We will do everything to get
that aid through, but we are facing this much more sustained
public attack. Now.
Some of that is just to distract from what's going on.
Some of it is also because we have a dual mandate here.
We have a mandate to deliver aid and we also have a mandate to
come and talk to people like you and the Security Council and
tell you what we're seeing to bear testimony to what is
happening in Gaza, just as we bear testimony in Sudan, in
Afghanistan, in Haiti and Yemen, in all of these conflicts.
And it's that role which is really under attack.
And I get told explicitly that unless we dial down the
reporting, unless we dial down the conversations with people
like you, that we will face further restrictions.
And just recently, the head of office for my team, the person
coordinating this aid delivery, was basically told he no longer
had access because he's been out there reporting on what he's
seeing. And told by by the.
Israeli government, that's right.
So they control the visas and there is always a back and forth
over the visas for our aid workers.
And he was basically told that's it, you won't get a visa from
now on because you've been speaking out about the
humanitarian situation, the crisis that you're witnessing.
Israel says you're biased. You know that you are basically
against them, that you spell Hamas propaganda.
I will not buy it. We it is in our DNA.
It's in our charter, it's at the heart of what we do, that we
must be independent, impartial, neutral.
We cannot be biased. It would completely undermine
everything we do everywhere if we were to show that bias.
And I've, you know, from the start of this crisis, from my
first day in this job, I've been calling for the hostages to be
released. That call should be unequivocal,
unconditional. We've got to get the hostages
home. I visited near Oz, one of the
kibbutz that was hit on October the 7th, where one in four
people were either killed or taken hostage.
I'm in regular contact with the families there, desperate to get
their loved ones home. Desperate, by the way, they tell
me for a ceasefire as well. And also desperate, importantly,
because it this isn't a key message to get out as well.
They tell me that they want the aid to get in.
They do not want to see people starving on the other side of
that of that fence. So we will always be neutral.
We will be independent. You know, we will fight to
defend the values of the UN Charter and that means we'll be
neutral. So again, absolute nonsense.
And I just will not take it that when we're accused of not being
neutral. You see around 100 aid agencies
have come out and been fiercely critical of the Gaza
Humanitarian Foundation, this new organization that is handing
out aid in Israel and is accused of sort of being an instrument
of Israeli policy now in Gaza because people are being killed
either going there or leaving it, but mostly by Israeli
forces. Now they they say that these GHF
distribution points are effectively, you know, sort of
the bait in a, in a death trap for people in Gaza.
Are they right? So I've I've seen that
statement, it's a very powerful statement from our our allies in
the humanitarian movement, in the humanitarian community who
know the situation incredibly well on the ground and who stand
for the principles and values as as we do of impartiality and
independence and neutrality in the delivery of aid.
The key thing for us here is that aid has to be delivered in
a in line with those principles. We have real concerns about
militarized hubs, about security contractors.
We have concerns, as I've said out in the Security Council
consistently, about anything which displaces people and which
risks dehumanizing people. Now we want aid to get through.
We want starving people to get food, but we desperately want
that to be done in line with these principles and in ways
that protects civilians and doesn't harm them.
Is there, is there some disagreements in the UN around
this? Because it's being reported that
some of your staff have met the GHF.
In fact, the GHF told us that today that they've had meetings
with UN staff. They didn't say from which UN
organization. And there is this leaked letter
from UNRWA, the the, the, the Palestinian Refugees
Organization chief, you know, sort of basically saying they
want you to take a harder line. So there have been meetings with
GHF on the ground, but also in in New York there was a meeting
last week with several UN agencies present.
For us, we'll go anywhere. It's the nature of our job.
I've been recently in Afghanistan talking to the
Taliban. I was in DRC recently talking to
M23. When I was in Israel, I was
talking to the Israeli authorities.
We go anywhere, talk to anyone in order to try to get
humanitarian aid through. That doesn't mean that we are
working together some somehow or that we align ourselves with the
approach of any of those organisations, including the
contractors that you mentioned. We have to have this principled
approach, but we also need to talk to anyone.
So. So could you imagine UN staff
working with the GHF? No, I can't imagine that.
I mean, we, we couldn't work through a militarized system in
that way. We have to have a system which
is independent and impartial. That's in our DNA as, as, as
humanitarians. I don't wish them to fail.
If they can get food through, that's a good thing.
But I just wish they would do it in a principle humanitarian way.
And that that's a view shared, by the way, across the the UN
system. There isn't a division among UN
agencies on this. We're speaking as one.
There's also a report that there is a, there's a plan to possibly
move Palestinians in Gaza to South Sudan, another area where
your organization has been very active in tackling Humanitarian
Affairs. I mean, you know, it's not been
confirmed, but if this were to be a real plan as part of sort
of either as the temporary reconstruction of Gaza and
temporary emptying or something more permanent, what would your
view of it be? Anything that involves forced
displacement, ethnic cleansing of a civilian population breaks
all the rules. And, you know, you hear a lot of
preposterous, atrocious ideas again and again coming out of
this conflict. And I'm afraid this is just one
more of those, you know, Christian, you know, South
Sudan, you know, the conditions there.
You know, we operate there. We try to deliver civilian for
civilians there, humanitarian aid to support those
populations. Displacing the Palestinians
somewhere else is not the answer.
I was in Gaza recently. They want to stay, and they have
a right to stay in their homeland, in their homes, which
have been reduced to rubble. But everyone I spoke to there
said that when the guns fell silent, and as we must hope that
they will, they would rebuild, that they would stay and rebuild
their communities again in Gaza. I mean, a big part of your job,
as you say, is going to these places yourself, seeing it and
then reporting back on it. How, how do you, how do you cope
with that? I mean, I, I read, I think an
interview with you in which you talked about having taken on a
therapist because of this job. So, you know, as you started, I
mean, this is a very tough job in terms of the, the travel
schedule, but, but more in terms of, of, of what you're seeing
and experiencing and the, and the sense of responsibility you
have to come out and tell those stories from people who
otherwise aren't being heard. Because often this will be in
places. And I went to Darfur in my first
week, places where the international media can't
necessarily get. Gaza was another classic example
of that. But also I got across, I went, I
travelled across Syria just after the fall of the Assad
regime and met many communities there, you know, who, who were
telling their stories for the first time.
So, you know, my job does feel hard at times, but it's much,
much easier than being one of those civilians who we serve.
And, and my job, your job, our collective job, is to make sure
their stories are heard and that the world responds with much
greater compassion and kindness to those realities for those
people. Because the reality at the
moment is that we seem to be in this age of indifference, of
impunity, where people aren't being held to account for what's
happening to these civilians and where this less generous
approach is becoming somehow fine to say we should cut aid
budgets at a moment when the needs are actually going in the
opposite direction. All I'm asking for here is 1% of
what the world spends on defence and we could save over 100
million lives. I can't believe, I mean, Can you
believe? I can't believe that's too much
to ask. Britain is cutting its
international aid budget and transferring the money into
defence. America has slashed USAID.
What kind of effect are these cuts having?
The effect of these cuts internationally, it's not just
the Americans and the Brits, many others, is brutal choices.
And my teams are every day making the toughest choices you
can imagine. Life and death decisions, which
program to shut down, which program to save, which basically
means which lives to save and which lives not to save.
And I see that all the time on my missions.
I mean, recently in Afghanistan, I saw just after the funding
cuts there started to really bite.
I sat with Afghan mothers who'd lost their children because
they'd had to cycle 3 hours on bumpy roads to get to the
nearest clinic to try to give birth.
So these are really biting right now, these cuts, and they have a
a life and death impact and it's why we have to get out there and
make the case as effectively as we can that 1% of what we're
spending on defence would actually save 100 million lives.
Surely that is a mission that we can all get behind.
How, how do you persuade a public at home that is
skeptical, that is struggling, that they do need to spend more
on the crises that you go to? Well, that's the $1,000,000
question, Christian. In fact, you know, it's the $20
billion question because that's what it would take to, to reach
these 100 million lives that we need to, to save.
I think, you know, it starts with empathy.
I think we've got to understand that people are anxious at home.
They're worried about their own families getting hospital
appointments, about their their kids education.
This is a moment of anxiety and distraction.
And that doesn't mean that people are somehow lacking
compassion for those on the other side of the world.
I think then there's a set of arguments around self-interest.
And it's, I'm sorry to put it in that more cynical, crude way
that will upset a lot of people who, like me, are driven by this
sort of humanitarian mission. But there is a self-interest
point, a pragmatic point here, that unless we deal with
epidemics, conflicts, inequality, poverty on the other
side of the world, then actually these problems will come in our
direction. You can't put a tariff on a
pandemic and you can't stop the migration that will be caused by
an explosion of these conflicts and actually will be driven by
climate change in the next 5-10 years as well.
And then I think perhaps most importantly, we've got to get
back to the human story at the heart of this.
We probably don't win the argument by just talking about
the defence of institutions. And here I am standing in front
of this picture of of flags. We probably don't win the
argument by just talking about our values and principles.
We've got to be talking about those individuals and those
lives, people who are just like us but are facing these immense,
immense obstacles and for whom this small amount of support can
be life changing. We've got to get their stories
told. Now, obviously Gaza has been
getting a huge amount of attention, but in terms of lives
and suffering, you know, Sudan is absolutely terrible.
There are, you know, Yemen is still very, very difficult.
There are lots of places around the world where there is
terrible human suffering that doesn't get the attention and
therefore doesn't get that cut through.
How, how do you decide, you know, where you try and shine
the light? Or are you just, you know, do
you just have to go where the media attention goes
effectively? This is a really difficult
challenge for us. We're desperate to get more
attention for Sudan, for Yemen, for DRC, and for many of these
conflicts which which seem to be forgotten by the mainstream
media. A big part of this, I think, is
to get journalists in. And I know you, Christian, that
you do this as well, to get them in behind the battle lines,
telling the story way more effectively than we can.
But we've also had to massively prioritize among these different
crises. When I came into office, we
prioritised 28 country crises and one of the very, very tough
decisions as part of our, what we call the hyper
prioritisation, we've had to do is now to focus on just 21.
So that means there are country crises which just won't be
getting the same attention, the same resources that they need.
It doesn't mean these needs have gone away.
It's just mean. It just means that we've had to
take these brutal, brutal choices about where to
prioritise. Yeah.
I mean, particularly in the Western world as well, though
obviously the whole question of waste and, you know, lavish
headquarters and expenses and highly paid officials and all
the rest of it is also a big political issue.
I mean, as you say, you're standing there in front of an
image of a very lavish looking UN building.
I mean, how much does the UN need to reform and cut its cloth
do you think? It's a big part of the answer to
this. And so as part of what what I
call the humanitarian reset, we're doing 4 big things.
One is to define much more clearly the mission around those
hundred 114 million lives that we know we can save this year if
we get the resource. The second thing is to devolve
much more power in this system to give power away to local
communities. Power shouldn't be with people
like me standing in front of flags in a, in a suit and tie in
Geneva. It should be with those local
community organizations that really know what the needs are,
so pushing more resource, more authority to them.
And then thirdly, you're right, this massive area around
delivery and efficiency. And I've been doing this since
the first day when I came into office before Elon Musk started
waving a chainsaw around, finding ways, very practical
ways, to make sure that we are delivering in the most efficient
way possible. And we're really driving that
program of reform and efficiency right now.
The 4th area that's really important is then defend
defending international law. As you said earlier, these are
the values and principles which are under sustained attack right
now. And we've got to hold the line
here. We've got to defend this hill.
We've got to defend the Charter. We've got to defend the United
Nations. It's imperfect, but it is the
best idea we've had in our history for promoting global
coexistence. And if anyone can tell me that a
world without the United Nations is a better world than bring on
that argument because we're out there trying to stop those
conflicts, trying to save those lives.
And I, you know, that to me feels like a pretty important
mission. I mean, The thing is, we're,
we're in a world of strong men, aren't we?
Of, of Putin and Trump and you know, in different ways, Modi
and India and XI in China, you know, they, they, you never hear
them talk about the UN. It's it's almost like a
meaningless institution to them. Well, there is, there is this
risk that we end up feeling slightly orphaned by the
international system because in a world of strong men, the last
thing they need is an organization coming in that
opposes this sense of sort of survival of the fittest.
You know, I've always read, written and and said that, you
know, we have these two human instincts. 1 is to compete for
resource and one is to collaborate and work together
for resource. And the UN is unequivocally
looking for that collaboration, looking for that cooperation.
And that doesn't suit strong men who want a more transactional
might is right approach to the world.
But that's where you need us as, as humanity, because we were
invented, remember, because of an age of strong men, because
we'd seen what happened to the world when we went too far down
that track of the strongman, of the autocrat, of fighting for
resource in that way. And we've learnt a lot over
those 80 years. We're just coming up to that
80th anniversary. We're constantly reforming.
But at the heart of all this must be our charter and this
work we do to, to stop those wars and to to save lives.
And as I say, there cannot be a more important mission.
So, so who, who can stand up to them?
I mean, I guess it's quite hard for you, you know, you're, you
know, a senior official in a, in a organization that's supposed
to be impartial, as you say. Is it for the is it for the
secretary general to stand up to Donald Trump and say you need to
respect the rules based order? Well, an organization which I'd
stress is impartial, not just supposed to be impartial, but we
are impartial. I think what you're seeing in
this moment actually where some of the more traditional
supporters of the UN are being a bit more critical, a bit more
sceptical. You are seeing other countries
step forward and say, look, this is not AUS LED organization.
This is not just about the big powers, about the permanent
members of the Security Council. This is our organization.
It belongs to all of us. And so many of those smaller
states, medium sized states, emerging economies, they're the
ones right now who are saying we've got to defend the values
and the institution of the UN. And of course, then it is also
for the SG, as he does to go out there and make the case
repeatedly, consistently, powerfully, as he, as he does,
always saying that we can be better.
And he's launched the UNAT Reform program, which is all
about making sure that we really are fit for purpose and that
we're constantly improving, but defending those values that that
are at the heart of what we do. We must.
Leave it there. Tom Fletcher, thank you very
much indeed for your time. Many thanks, Christian.
Thank you. Well, that's it for this episode
of The Forecast. Until next time, bye bye.