HUMANIFESTO – EDITION 7
Stockholm, 26 January 2025
Dear Humanitarian Community,
48 hours of Davos speed dating left me with a mix of bewilderment, anxiety, and hope.
The challenge for those who gathered there is that the ordered world that they could once analyse in a nifty soundbite has become a disordered world that defies easy explanation. Everyone is working out how they adjust and adapt. If we are into deal making, what do we trade and what do we protect? As I've written on geopolitics in the past, if you're not writing the menu, you're on it. And many at Davos are feeling more insecure about which it is.
As I discussed in this podcast with Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell, the international system – scaffolding built with such patience and tenacity by the postwar generation – is particularly fragile. Like the Davos ecosystem, it is still reeling from a wave of shocks: the financial crash of 2008, the pandemic, climate crisis, the rise of introversion and nationalism.
In my discussions, several themes evolved.
First, we need to end some wars. If the dynamic created by the new US administration can help us do this, our job as humanitarians becomes less impossible. You don't build a Golden Age by retreating from the world.
Second, in a transactional era, don't trade away the UN space that we built to prevent transactional geopolitics leading to war, which it so often does. For 300 million people in need, humanitarian cuts are not a debating point. They are a potential death sentence. So, in a transactional world, we need to fight harder, together, to defend them. We need to go wherever it takes to do that.
Third, just because international solidarity doesn’t seem to be an election winner right now, it doesn't mean that saving lives and working together to solve the challenges humanity faces is suddenly a bad idea.
Fourth, private aid is already the second largest donor to humanitarian system. But it is not just about money. The conversation between humanitarians and business must start with identifying problems we can fix together. New partners can help humanitarians get leaner, faster, better at what we do; defend why we do it; and help us find new allies to help us do it. But the work also demands the recognition that those we serve are not a laboratory, a market, or an ego trip. We need to make our movement broader, while holding on to the principles that underpin humanitarian action.
Later in the week I came to Stockholm, my first full mission to a donor capital. Sweden is a powerhouse of humanitarianism, and a top donor to our humanitarian system. I came here to meet with partners in government, NGOs, companies and media. I updated on our effort to become more efficient and innovative. Governments are right to demand accountability for where and how their citizens' money is spent. It is our job to show why our humanitarian movement is the right investment.
This week has of course had a major Gaza focus. I am hugely grateful to all who worked flat out to get so much vital aid in since the ceasefire a week ago. A massive effort, but it must be just the start. More in my UN Security Council statement.
Finally, a highlight of this week was meeting our founding father, the great Jan Eliasson somehow managed to corral the international community to create OCHA, the office that coordinates humanitarian action, in 1991. I have been keen to meet and learn from all my predecessors, and now have a complete set. I drew a great deal from his wisdom and strategic heft, the statecraft and the streetcraft of humanitarian action. He is a Good Ancestor.
All best wishes,
Tom