The UN’s top humanitarian official Tom Fletcher has described aid cuts by western nations as a “punch in the gut”. With the US, UK and several European donors cutting funding, the humanitarian system is under severe strain.
Mr Fletcher, the UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, Ocha, told The National that funding cuts represent “a punch in the gut for our work because we know the impact”. “We know that there will be lives that we can't save as a result of not having the funding that we did,” he said. “So it does set us back and these are significant donors who are currently retreating from that humanitarian support.”
However Mr Fletcher, speaking in Abu Dhabi during a tour of the Middle East, stressed that there is a need for “innovative thinking” and new approaches to aid as “we have to diversify our funding base … we can’t rely on tradition donors”.
Discussing the role of the UAE, Mr Fletcher said: "It's not just about the money here, and that's a really important part of the equation... it's about bringing the energy and that problem-solving mentality that I saw day in, day out when I lived here." Mr Fletcher taught at NYUAD and worked for a number of years in Abu Dhabi after leaving the UK diplomatic service at the close of his time as ambassador to Lebanon in 2015.
He wants to bring the "impossible is nothing" Emirati ethos to humanitarian work. "We need ingenuity. We need that tech, that spirit of innovation and partnership. The UAE can be a massive exporter of that energy and that innovation right now," according to Mr Fletcher. He added: "I'm not here to say, please fill in the gap left by other donors. I'm here to say, let's fix these problems together."
He also explained that there is a need to “win the argument with the public globally that what we do does save lives and that it really matters”, acknowledging that “maybe across the aid sector, we've gotten too complacent that the support will always be there, and so we've got to win that argument afresh for global solidarity”. He also stressed that the aid sector must be “more effective, more efficient”. “We’ve got to deal with the bureaucracy, the duplication and the waste in the aid sector,” he said. The humanitarian sector met last week in Geneva to launch a plan for efficiency and to make sure every dollar spent is to help save lives.
Speaking to The National on his 100th day in the post, Mr Fletcher said: “It's been a tough 100 days in the job. When I met the caretaker leader of Syria [Ahmad Al Shara], he said, I hear you've got the toughest job in the world. And I said, you've now got the toughest job in the world.”
But “let's be clear, it's not as tough doing my job as it is being one of the people that we're there to serve”, he added. The UN estimates that more than 300 million people are in need of support globally. “The reality is we're just not able to reach them all because we're overstretched, we're underfunded, we're literally under attack in many of the places that we work,” Mr Fletcher said. “And that was all before I started.” He added that in the past 100 days, “we've seen more of those conflicts, more ferocious, longer duration, more intense. And we've seen this new context of a much, much more challenging funding environment”.
The US is the world’s largest contributor to international aid and development spending, while the UK is the fourth largest, and while the Americans have put virtually all of its spending on hold as it revises its plans, the UK has cut its foreign aid by 40 per cent, the Netherlands by 30 per cent and France by 37 per cent.
This comes at a time of immense need from the world’s greatest humanitarian crises in Palestine, Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Mr Fletcher described Gaza as “worse than anything I have seen” after visiting the enclave this month. “I've been to some very tough places as I described, and I think the reality is that nothing can prepare you for [the devastation in Gaza],” he said. “I'd prepared myself for the worse, and it was worse than that.”
Mr Fletcher went to Gaza after visiting Nir Oz kibbutz in Israel, which was attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023. “A quarter of the people at Nir Oz were taken hostage or killed,” he said. “But then you cross from southern Israel into northern Gaza, and it's just a wasteland.” And while Mr Fletcher described the situation as “awful and the needs are huge”, he added: “I found that the sort of despair and hopelessness was being replaced by more of a sense of defiance. People wanting to go back, telling us we need tents, saying ‘we're going to pitch a tent on the rubble of our home and we'll rebuild’. Every Palestinian I spoke to said they wanted to stay and they wanted to rebuild”.
Mr Fletcher said that he hadn’t seen US President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, but “one thing we can all agree on, whether you are a Palestinian or a humanitarian or President Trump, is the scale of the devastation”. He added that “it will take months to clear the rubble, if we're allowed to get everything in, even to do rubble clearance, remove the unexploded ordnance, remove the bodies from those homes and communities, that in itself is a huge job”.
And with the ceasefire appearing increasingly fragile, Mr Fletcher is advocating to make sure it holds and aid continues to enter the Palestinian territory. Mr Fletcher spoke about the need to feed two million people in Gaza, explaining that “we have to put huge pressure on all the parties to let us continue to do that”.
The UN, through various agencies, is working on ways to make the ceasefire hold and to ensure a political process. “It's a hard case to make to people, but I just wish we could bring as the global community, as humanity, as much money and energy and creativity to rebuilding Gaza as was spent on destroying it,” Mr Fletcher said. Meanwhile, he warned of the dangerous situation in the West Bank. “We can't take our eyes off the West Bank,” she said. “There is deliberate violence happening right now to drive people from their areas in order to move to expand the settlements. What's happening now, the change of those facts on the ground, is uprooting the last hope that we all have for that two-state solution.”
Repeating the position of the UN, Mr Fletcher stressed “there is no better idea” than the two-state solution. “I haven't heard anyone come up with a better idea to give Israelis and Palestinians the chance to live in security, justice and opportunity,” he added. “It's the only way where we demonstrate that the life of a Palestinian baby matters just as much as a life of an Israeli baby … and the life of an Israeli baby matters just as much as a life of a Palestinian baby.”
Mr Fletcher is markedly more optimistic about Syria and Lebanon. “When I look around the world, it's easy to paint a very bleak picture, but it's a real moment of hope and cautious opportunity for both Syria and Lebanon,” he said. He recently visited both countries, and called on the international community to support them. In Syria, Mr Fletcher said there were clear requests to “give us food, electricity and help us rebuild”. He welcomed the gradual lifting of sanctions, and said: “We’ve got to get the World Bank and big development actors in … we've got to show the Syrian people that there is a dividend for them here … that were on their side at this moment.” Despite reservations, Mr Fletcher expressed confidence in the new Syrian leadership, saying: “From my conversations with the new authorities, including the caretaker leader [Ahmad Al Shara], I felt this is an administration that we can work with”. However, he added: “Of course, we trust and verify all the way along … we keep checking back to make sure they're delivering on an inclusive government, to make sure that women are part of the leadership of Syria and that they feel they have a future in Syria, but I think we need to engage and lean in and seize this opportunity.”
One important humanitarian development since the fall of the regime of Syria's former president Bashar Al Assad is that the UN has access to areas of the country with humanitarian needs. Mr Fletcher explained that "there's much more cooperation with the authorities", even though there remains room for improvement. "Is it perfect? No. And we're in touch with them every day looking to improve it, but the access points are open”, he said. With close to half of the Syrian population displaced over the span of the civil war, Mr Fletcher said: “Millions of people on the move, clearly in all sorts of different directions. Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Syria. So that creates its own challenges... But the number one challenge right now is money”.
And that is a big challenge across the humanitarian sector. The UN appeals "are all completely underfunded", according to Mr Fletcher, who said: "It's a time of greater introversion and nationalism, and we've got to win the case for funding these massive appeals." However, he remains optimistic, relying on a sense of "international solidarity" globally. Mr Fletcher said: "I hear everywhere people standing up for the UN and saying, these aren't just the values of one country or one part of the world. These are our values and our institutions. And I think one silver lining to this cloud right now is that other countries will step forward and defend that international system."
