Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator - Remarks to European Parliament’s Committee on Development

Brussels, 19 March 2025

[As delivered]

This is not a drill right now. This is real, and so it’s excellent I have the chance to meet in this European Union, this parliament – and the citizens that you represent, have long stood for humanitarian action and humanitarian aid as a force for good in the world.

And your support, your sense of that mission is even more important right now, as many traditional partners retreat from that mission and retreat from those values.

You’ve been at the forefront of protecting countless lives. Last year, we reached 116 million people with lifesaving support, with huge thanks to the support that you gave us to do that. And the funding that you give and have given has taken on an even more vital component of that mission right now.

Effectively, with the US withdrawal, the pace and the scale of that withdrawal, the European stake in the humanitarian sector, the humanitarian share that you have, has effectively doubled almost overnight.

And as you know, the post-war system that was built with such patience and sacrifice here and elsewhere after we had learned the cost of losing that scaffolding, of losing that global solidarity is being tested right now as at no time in the lifetime in the last 80 years or so of the UN and the current global system.

And in that context, the people who so desperately need our support are increasingly having to fend for themselves. Programmes are being shut down. As we speak, staff are being laid off. The latest [statistics] I saw yesterday was that 20 per cent of NGO colleagues had been let go in the month of February alone.

And of course, the impact is felt most acutely at the local level. It’s the local partners where the cuts are hitting hardest. So, our priority in the midst of that is clear, we will save as many lives as we can with the money that we have, not the money that we used to have, or the money that we would like to have, or the money that we would need, but with the money that we have.

And I’ve set out, and I can dig into this if you’d like, a 10-point plan for the humanitarian sector on how we will define more clearly what we do deliver – much more effectively, much more coherently, remove those layers of bureaucracy and potential waste and inefficiency, be much more innovative.

But also, at the heart of all that is how we will defend much more robustly the principles for which we stand, defend much more clearly international humanitarian law, and not just in abstract terms, not just in platitudes. And I was at the Security Council yesterday making this case on Gaza, but I make it regularly to the Security Council on Sudan, on DRC, on Yemen, on Ukraine, on so many of these crises.

We don’t just need our partners to stand up for international humanitarian law right now. We need them to be engaging on specific crises, making those telephone calls, speaking out in the areas where the impunity is rampaging,

Even without the funding crisis right now, this was already going to be an incredibly tough year for humanitarian work and for the humanitarian movement of which you were all a part.

We are seeing this perfect storm of existing inequality and poverty, conflicts which are lasting longer and which are more intense and more ferocious, and the new inequality and conflict driven by the climate crisis. And I won’t hold back from using the word climate change, even if it is unfashionable in some parts of the world right now.

Those three things coming together are really driving a lot of the needs which we’re seeing right now.

And as a result of that, you know, we launch, I launched, in December every year an overview of humanitarian needs. And in December, we identified that there were 300 million people in need of life saving support right now. That number, as we tip into mid-March, is now at 307 million.

And we had already taken very, very tough choices to prioritize 190 million of that group for our support. We had already recognized that we couldn’t reach everyone, and so we’d asked for US$47 billion in order to reach those 190 million. Now of course, we must prioritize still further, and so your support remains absolutely vital.

As Barry [Andrews] says, I think I’m probably the only person in the world to have visited in the last three months, Damascus, Darfur, Kupiansk, Gaza, Beirut. Driving, across Syria a few days after the Assad regime fell, traveling from the Lebanese border to the Turkish border, spending a week up on the Russian-Ukraine front lines, a week inside Sudan. And so, I feel that responsibility to bring those stories back, and especially from those areas where the media can’t get [in] and I remain convinced that the cause is right, the mission is right, and that there is a movement out there that is strong and will back this work.

But let me end with the four headline asks that I bring.

First, predictable, sufficient funding. No other single donor is as capable right now of stepping in and salvaging what we can of this life saving work.

So, we urge you to ensure that the current and future multiannual financial frameworks continue to allocate sufficient resources to humanitarian needs and long-term development support.

And I have huge praise here for the work of our friends and colleagues at ECHO with whom we have a fantastic partnership.

Second, your voices standing up for international humanitarian law and human rights law. Continuing to defend those values and continuing to insist that we defend them, at a time when some traditional partners are telling us that those values should no longer be on our websites or in our project proposals.

Third, your strong support for those local partners, the responders on the front line of the humanitarian effort. And for us, that means that investment in the Country-Based Pooled Funds, which are so essential to the day-to-day response in country. And all of my humanitarian coordinators right now are sending through their revised strategies for how we use those Country-Based Pooled Funds in this new funding environment to really devolve power towards the communities that we serve.

And finally, your continued voice backing a fully joined up humanitarian, development and peace response. When I go out to Darfur or Damascus, people don’t talk to me about humanitarian and development, they don’t talk about the nexus – they talk about their daily needs. They join up those needs, and we should join up our response to those needs too.

Honourable members, you have been a champion of principled humanitarian aid, and I thank you for that.

Your support now is more important than ever, and when many supporters of this mission are in retreat for the world – from the world and from that mission and from those values that underpin it, I want to reassure you that we won’t retreat from the mission, and we won’t retreat from those values, and I know that you won’t retreat either.

Thank you.