HUMANIFESTO – EDITION 13

Beijing, 22 April 2025

This has been another tough few weeks for the humanitarian community. I have spent the past few days making calls to the key players in Sudan, seeking to secure access to the thousands of civilians caught up in the fighting around El Fasher. Meanwhile, we have no access at all to the civilians being killed in Gaza, among them still more humanitarian colleagues. Conflicts continue to claim lives from Ukraine to DRC. As I told the Security Council, this is what an age of impunity looks like. And if we cannot commit to stopping it, why are we here?

Meanwhile, the humanitarian sector continues to reel from the gut punches of waves of funding cuts. We have started to make brutal choices. I gathered thousands of our staff from all of our offices around the world to set out how we are forced to reduce 20 per cent of our programmes and posts to ensure that we save as many lives as we can with the funding we have. It was one of the hardest meetings I have had to convene, and I am afraid the next months will be even harder on us as an organization. We will refocus our work in HQ around three strategic priorities: crisis response, sector renewal, and humanitarian leadership. We will also establish a Humanitarian Task Force, to provide us with a more agile capacity to work where we are most needed. 

These decisions mean stopping some of the work that we have invested in, and that we know matters. It is heartbreaking to close programmes and say farewell to colleagues and partners, and most of all to have to pull back from so many of those most in need. 

But we must keep going. Over the break, I’ve been thinking about the next steps for the wider humanitarian effort. There has been a collapse in the political consensus around saving lives and protection. The era ahead of us will be more transactional, less generous. More opportunistic, less strategic. More nationalist, less rules based.

We have a plan. And we have started to deliver the first two parts of it - to regroup and reform. A smaller humanitarian sector more clearly focused on saving lives, with stronger in country leadership and more influence for the communities we serve. We have a bold programme to reduce duplication and bureacracy. 

We now need to create space - however hard amid such flux and when we are stopping so much vital work - for radical renewal and moral imagination.

This requires us to rethink why; where; what; and how we will work in the future. Moving from a system driven by the money we can raise to a mission based on greatest need. From a system that remains over concentrated in some of the richest cities in the world to a movement that is rooted in the communities we serve. From a system that incubates duplication and process to one that can show how every dollar we receive contributes to saving lives. 

Fundamentally, radical reform requires us all to ask ourselves: what power do I have; and how will I give it away? Can what I am doing be better done by others? 

I think the answers to those questions will lead us towards a bold, new humanitarian pact with those we serve. Local where possible; international only when necessary. A smaller sector but a bigger movement. Shared where possible, alone only where necessary. Partnership not paternalism. Bottom up not top down. 

As part of this, I think we should look at new shared financing models, including a global Humanitarian Financing Facility and the majority of funding to go to pooled funds by default, and through those to local actors. We should also make cash assistance a tool for local leadership. 

I’m writing this from the plane to Beijing, where I will explore some of these themes. The climate crisis is driving huge increases in humanitarian need.  In two decades, humanitarian appeals for climate-related disasters have increased by 800%. In the same period, climate change intensified all of the 10 deadliest extreme weather events and contributed to more than 570,000 deaths. 20,000 children flee their homes every day. Every $1 spent on climate resilience can save up to $13 in damages, recovery and economic impact. 

I think China will lead the world in developing a disaster response mechanism for the challenges of the 21st century, especially the climate crisis. Its investments in early warning systems, meteorological capacity, satellite systems and climate resilience could energize the UN’s anticipatory action coordination – science, data and finance – to drive smarter responses. China dominates global clean technology manufacturing, producing 80% of solar panels. It could drive a green humanitarian model, with supply chains that swiftly reach those in most need.

I’ll then travel to Afghanistan, where aid cuts are hitting hardest, especially programmes to support women and girls. We need to hear their stories and support their hopes. 

Over the break I relished watching ‘The Mirror and the Light’ - the adaption of Hilary Mantel’s extraordinary final novel on the life of Thomas Cromwell. The intrigue, conspiracy and treachery of Tudor England is of course completely unlike the UN.

My best,

Tom