GHO 2025: UN deputy relief chief underscores critical role of humanitarian diplomacy to reach people in need
Remarks delivered by Joyce Msuya, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator at the launch of the Global Humanitarian Overview 2025 in Kuwait: “Collective Action in Humanitarian Diplomacy”
Kuwait City, 4 December 2024
His Excellency Sheikh Jarrah Jaber AlAhmad AlSabah – Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Kuwait, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Colleagues, asalaam aleikum.
It is truly fitting that the launch of this year’s Global Humanitarian Overview is taking place here in Kuwait under the theme of humanitarian diplomacy.
Not only has Kuwait consistently ranked among the top donors of international assistance, but it has also placed itself at the centre of efforts to broker peace in the region.
Rooted in the Islamic values of charity and solidarity, Kuwait has used its neutrality to push for greater cooperation between countries and across cultures. Time and again, it has used humanitarian diplomacy to raise funds, to advocate for those in need, and to nurture dialogue among warring parties so that we can reach people in their darkest hour.
Never has the need for this kind of humanitarian diplomacy been greater.
As this year’s Global Humanitarian Overview makes painstakingly clear, the world is gripped by one of the worst humanitarian crises of the modern era.
305 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. Violations of international humanitarian law are rising. The number of people forced to flee their homes continues to grow. And humanitarian crises are more frequent, complex and longer lasting than ever.
The causes are clear. Record levels of conflict and a rapidly intensifying climate emergency are fanning the flames of suffering around the world. When it comes to conflict, the world is struggling to contain more state-involved wars than at any point since the end of the Second World War.
The consequences are devastating:
Civilians are being killed and injured in huge numbers as homes, hospitals and essential services are razed to the ground.
More than 123 million people were forcibly displaced by conflict and violence by the middle of the year. This is the 12th year in a row that this number has risen.
And the youngest in our societies are among the worst hit. One in every five children is now living in, or fleeing, a conflict zone.
The wars of today are being fought with a callous disregard for human life and a lack of respect for international law. In Gaza, more women and children have been killed in the last year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades.
And in Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sahel, Myanmar, Haiti and many other places, violence and conflict continue to devastate people’s lives.
When it comes to the climate crisis, humanity is now hurtling towards catastrophe. Our collective efforts have failed to put a dent in rising fossil fuel emissions, which means we are now dangerously close to exceeding the 1.5 degree target set in Paris almost a decade ago. The impact of this inaction is heartbreakingly clear.
Devastating floods in the Sahel, East Africa and Europe; drought in Southern Africa and the Americas; and heatwaves and wildfires across the globe. While everyone is affected, the least responsible are shouldering the lion’s share.
As crops fail and food becomes too expensive, millions are being driven deeper into poverty and food insecurity.
These twin perils – of climate change and conflict – are stretching an underfunded humanitarian system to breaking point. And the longer humanitarian crises last, the bleaker the prospects for those on the frontlines:
• Life expectancy in crisis hit countries is six years below the global average;
• vaccination rates are 20 per cent below average;
• maternal mortality rates double the average;
• and only 10 per cent of children finish primary school compared to 90 per cent globally.
And yet, despite these soaring needs, humanitarian action remains woefully underfunded. Last year’s shortfall – less than 45 per cent of required funding – saw people pay with their lives, safety and health.
Cuts to food and nutrition assistance left millions vulnerable to starvation and famine. Other cuts to water, sanitation and health care increased disease. And women and girls bore the brunt of cuts to midwifery, obstetric and newborn care, and essential support to prevent and respond to gender-based violence. We urgently need to plug the funding gap.
For 2025, the UN and our partner organizations are appealing for $47 billion to assist nearly 190 million people across 72 countries worldwide.
While it may seem like a lot, this sum pales in comparison to other global costs. It is less than 2 per cent of global military expenditure, 4 per cent of the global banking industry’s profits, and just 12 per cent of the money dished out to the fossil fuel industry in subsidies.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and our partners have worked hard to cut costs and increase efficiency. Cash assistance, early warning systems, and innovations in procurement continue to create a leaner humanitarian system.
And our work to empower local humanitarian organizations on the frontlines of the world’s crises not only cuts costs but vastly improves the delivery of aid. But nothing replaces the need for funding.
Unless donors step up by providing full and flexible funding free from red tape and burdensome strings, we simply will not be able to meet skyrocketing humanitarian needs.
The world’s crises may seem intractable, but I am buoyed by the simple fact that the two main drivers of the suffering we see today – conflict and climate change – are a direct result of human action.
This gives me hope because it means that we humans have the power to act, the power to change course, the power to arrest the current cycles of catastrophe and disaster.
To succeed we need to urgently address three priorities:
First, we are calling for far more to be done to protect civilians and humanitarian workers. Violations of international humanitarian law are rising, fueled by a culture of impunity that has emboldened warmongers.
Starvation, sieges and sexual violence are increasingly used as weapons while civilians, humanitarian workers, hospitals and schools are treated like legitimate military targets.
Indeed, 2024 has been the deadliest year on record for humanitarian workers, with at least 281 aid workers killed in the line of duty. International humanitarian law is designed to ensure a minimum of humanity, even in war. Instead, we see war justifying massive human suffering with few limits, if any. This is unacceptable.
Second, we need to do even more to empower local organizations and first responders. That means building new partnerships with local humanitarian organizations and then fully resourcing them so they can lead the response to the world’s disasters.
And it means redistributing power so that people on the frontlines, especially women, can guide humanitarian action. By including these people and organizations at every single level of decision-making we can ensure that our actions are shaped by their priorities, not ours.
Third, we need greater collective action on humanitarian diplomacy, the theme of today’s panel discussion. Too often bureaucratic red tape, sanctions, counter-terrorism measures, fines and the politicization of humanitarian assistance blocks aid from getting where it needs to go.
Humanitarians doing the hard work of negotiating access – the patient, painstaking trust-building and negotiation that it takes to get aid in – need greater, consistent support from across the system.
Humanitarian diplomacy is also about placing humanitarian priorities at the very heart of negotiations between warring sides. This is how we ensure civilians are protected and international humanitarian law respected.
Ladies and gentlemen, if the eye-watering levels of suffering we see around the world today have human roots, then we already know what it will take to reverse the course. We know what we’re capable of when we cooperate, how powerful we are when we act together. Now is the time to embrace difference and find common cause in our shared humanity.
And so I urge everyone here today to join the humanitarian movement so that we can address needs, begin to really wrestle with the root causes of crises, and end the downward spiral of suffering.
Thank you.