UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : OCHA Press Conference: Launch of the Global Humanitarian Overview 2024

But I would like now to ask Martin Griffith to speak a bit about the global humanitarian overview that we are launching on Monday 11th of December.

The information of this part of the briefing is embargoed, as is the press release that I have shared with you and the and the abridged version of of the document that I sent to you earlier today.

So, Martin, back to you.

Thank you very much.

Perhaps, if I may start by perhaps what might be an an inapposite claim, but one that's relevant to this particular global humanitarian overview.

I represent for my sins the global humanitarian agencies, not just the United Nations agencies, but many, many, far beyond, not all of them, but most of them.

And I am honoured to lead many of them in their advocacy and coordinate them in their operations.

And I will speak on their behalf now when I talk about the humanitarian picture for next year.

And let's start with the stark numbers, because I think that that is the best description.

There will be 300 million people in need, 300 million people in need across the world in 2024.

This figure has been arrived at by a process in every single country where we operate, where where humanitarian agencies operate by looking at the levels of need, counting the populations in need, compiling lists, analysing them, seeing who's in need of what, and the arrival is 300 million people in need.

Importantly, that is less than the number for 20/23, which was 363,000,000.

And I want to explain that because this is because there has been an enormous effort made by humanitarian agencies in every single one of those countries to limit our focus on the very, very direst needs.

And we do this because we have had, as you know, gaps between funding and needs.

And we are not innocence abroad.

We are, we are, we know that we need to reflect available funding as well as be honest about assessment of need.

So the 300 million people in need around the world, a sizeable number say the very least, but less than the 363 million people for this year 2023.

We will target for our specific needs for the agencies that I represent, 181 million of those 300 million people.

And the the difference between the two is not about need, but it is about that.

There are other organisations, notably the Red Cross and the National Red Cross Societies, Mensafrontiere and others who go out with their own appeals and their own responses.

And of course, a great greater part of that assistance to those 300 million will come from host governments.

It's easy to forget that host governments and local governments are perhaps local communities in particular, probably the largest donors of humanitarian assistance around the world.

Everywhere you see displacement, and I have the chance to see it in many different parts of the world.

The first donor to a displaced group are local communities.

They give of themselves.

So that's where that difference comes from.

We will be looking 4, a total of $46 billion for 2024 and that compares with $57 billion for 2023.

So quite a considerable reduction.

You can imagine what hard work it has been to reduce those numbers, to persuade agencies to come down, to be realistic, to be focused, to be tough minded about what we are really going to be able to achieve.

So bringing it down to 46 billion from 57 billion has been an effort, a gigantic effort led by, I'm proud to say, my office LED here out of Geneva, but also particularly led by humanitarian coordinators in the field.

This this overview, the global humanitarian overview, which has all these numbers, covers 72 countries in total, 26 crisis countries themselves and 46 neighbouring countries that have received refugees.

You know, in Sudan are all familiar with the phenomenon of the needs of the people in Sudan, but equally of the needs of refugees in neighbouring countries and their host communities, whether in Chad, in Central African Republic, South Sudan or Ethiopia.

It is the same in many places.

Syria produces a diaspora of refugees, which is also included in this overview.

So those are the figures.

Still a massive ask, $46 billion is going to be no easy task with the kind of cost of living worries that many countries have, many donors have.

We're still relying on a very small number of top donors and we expect the following, we expect climate to only increase its impact on our work.

We've already seen it very clearly this year, haven't we?

We've already seen from the beginning of the year the earthquakes in Syria, in Turkey.

We saw what happened in Morocco, we saw what happened in Libya.

We've seen the droughts and the floods, by the way, in the Horn of Africa.

We've seen what happens in the Sahel.

Now we will be, look, we, we, we have just come out of COP where we've had some success in making arrangements for climate funding to come through some of our funding mechanisms to spend on resilience for, for communities facing climate shocks.

But there is no doubt about climate being confronting, competing with conflict as the driver of need.

If I'm right, it is the case that climate displaces more children now than conflict.

It was never thus before.

And climate will grow.

Climate will grow.

We will need to invest in new ways of programming for climate shocks.

We will need to learn programming how how frontline humanitarian aid workers will actually use climate data to know where best to spend, for example, water planning and so forth.

We will need to be agile just as the climate community has been agile.

So that's number one.

Number two, conflict and it's resolution.

I speak as a former mediator.

I was in Yemen for some years.

Yemen has been until recently, and hopefully still is, hopefully still is, one of the rare opportunities for peace.

But the durable solutions, by which I mean solving the problems of ID PS peace, by which I mean stopping wars and stopping conflict and returning countries to where they should be.

This is as rare as hen's teeth these days.

These are rarities we used to expect 1020 years ago, peace agreements in Latin America, in elsewhere.

We hoped for Syria to be moving towards a more peaceful situation.

It is not.

It is still back in war and the the, the, the, the, the statistics on resolving conflicts give us very little comfort.

So conflicts and intractable conflicts will continue #3 we will need to be very, very clear about the efficient use of the rare dollar money that we are given.

And the efficient use of that dollar includes, first of all, and of paramount importance, listening to what the frontline communities tell us are their priorities.

If you want to spend money wisely, ask the people who whose needs you're trying to resolve.

Ask any shopkeeper anywhere in the world, and they will tell you that this is a banality in the retail business.

It should be a banality in the humanitarian aid business.

We need to make sure that it is these people who tell us what they want.

And by the way, when they're telling us they should not be telling simply the humanitarians, they should be telling our partners, our development partners, we should be sitting there and we plan to do so.

And we have been talking to the World Bank and development agencies.

True partnership with development parties comes not from formal agreements negotiated in New York with **** level panels of the leaders of these organisations and and exciting discussions in the margins of annual committees of these organisations.

It comes from listening to the same people when they tell us what they want, because they will not be looking at us as a development person or as a humanitarian person.

They'll be looking at us and saying we need a Rd.

I don't care who gives us a road, we need a road, we need a clinic, we need some shelter.

So let's start with improving the efficiency of our money through listening to people.

That's not easy, that's not simple.

We need to do it much better.

We are actively involved in doing so at the moment, but we cannot do this job that we are going to face in the coming year without true partnership with development agencies, true partnership.

Now look beyond that.

What we need is a reminder of the obligations of states.

Gaza, God help us, has reminded us of this, as has Sudan.

We need to remind Member States of the obligations of international humanitarian law and protection of humanitarian aid workers and of their delivery.

What Can you imagine are the statistics of the response to the killings of humanitarian aid workers?

One of my predecessors was killed in 2003.

The people who killed him have not been investigated and certainly not indicted.

And he's just one of many, many, as we know in Gaza.

We have lost over 110 and more.

And I don't suppose for a minute there isn't.

There are investigations.

There need to be investigations #2 there is a pandemic of attacks in conflict on hospitals and clinics and places with that Red Cross, which signified safety but which now signifies target practise.

We have to remind the world of the obligations that comes under the Geneva Conventions, that comes through international humanitarian law and that have to protect us, to enable us to do the job with a little money available.

Without these protections and this support, we will not be able to change the day.

And one final point, if I may, and that is this, and I say this as we come out of the COP, the climate community is a community of enormous activism and energy.

It is a community which insists on its rights and the importance of its objectives existentially for the world.

We need to be like that.

We need to partner with them.

We need to learn from them.

We need the humanitarian community to be as activist as and as insistent and as unrelenting as those who promote climate change.

We need that.

So we need money, we need safety, we need international humanitarian law, and we need activism to remind people that actually humanitarian operations are a sign and a signal and a symptom of the greatest humanity.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We will take questions in the room now and I can see there's some hands going up already to raise your hand online and we will get to your question.

So first here in the room, over to you.

Thank you.

Where?

Where do you see the needs being the most acute in 2024?

And secondly, are there any countries or situations that you?

Feel are.

Are going under the radar and should be in the spotlight a bit more than they are.

Thank you.

I don't have a list of the countries in front of me, at least I do but the deeply involved paper about the specifics of the totals.

But we could get that to you.

But the countries of the greatest need in 2024, I, I am quite sure are going to be the the Palestinian people, Sudan and Sudan westwards, Ukraine turned over.

Yet Afghanistan, we worry a lot because of the increase in instability and the possibility of outflow.

And I think the ones that have that are being forgotten are parts of Africa, which are traditionally, you know, in the front of our attention.

Syria, Yemen, the Middle Eastern countries will continue to play their important role.

I think the the needs for Syria in the last year have been about $10 billion for the year.

I expect it's gone down a little bit, but not much.

That's including the regional needs.

So I think the Middle East as a whole, adding Gaza and West Bank in is probably going to be the area of greatest need.

But Ukraine is going to go is going is going through desperate winter and a war that will restart in full swing next year and it will need a lot of attention.

There are some countries, I hope Venezuela is 1, where the the political dialogue that has been existing between the opposition groups and the opposition platform and the Maduro government unlocks Venezuelan assets, frozen assets for the people, for the people of Venezuela.

It could be a really good example of where dialogue actually leads to welfare rewards.

Afghanistan.

If we can pay attention to the issues of the of of business and economic investment and economic prospects without losing sight of the needs of rights, we could make Afghanistan also a place where we need to invest less to defeat potential famine.

Very worried about Myanmar because of course it's war is increasing a great deal and it is so far away from us that we rarely think about it.

But I still think the epicentre is going to be the Middle East, the greater Middle East now, and Sudan and Sudan westwards.

Thank you, Martin.

We have Yuri Aprele from RIA RIA Novasti online.

Please.

Over to you Yuri.

Yes, thank you Jens.

But my question is not about the appeal is it's a question about Gaza.

So if someone have a question about the the appeal, I will wait if not I can ask it right now as you want.

OK, let, thank you Rory that that's very kind of you actually.

Let me just finish up with this and then we might take a question on, on, on, on Gaza after that.

But long, yeah, I'd like to come back on that enormous effort that you mentioned and that was made by by the different organisation to reduce the appeal.

Don't you fear that there might be comments within governments to say, why did you, didn't you do that before?

And, and, and that you might not be able in the future to increase much the, the, the volume of, of appeal you're gonna, you're gonna launch if needed because of that.

And, and then quickly, just as a follow up.

So now we have, we've seen this year much of public attention around a few crises.

That means Sudan, Ukraine and now the Middle East.

Is there a correlation between that and and the difficulty in the future to attract funding for the other?

Crisis it's there are about 5.

No, there are about 10 top donors who provide about 860 to 80% of the total amount.

They have been very clear with us, as you might imagine in recent times to try to bring the totals down somewhere closer to the amount that they're able to give so that we don't go around the world saying you're only 35% funded and good luck with that because it doesn't help anybody.

So we have heeded them to, to answer your question, we have heeded them and what we have been doing in fact.

Which is by no means an easy or simple thing, as you could imagine.

As we've been saying to our colleagues in the field, what you have to do is to narrowly focus on the most key life saving needs, life saving.

And there has been a long discussion in our community between the virtues and values and priorities, between life saving, which is of course the classic focus of humanitarian operations, and the need for resilience, the need for support for livelihoods.

And what we have been forced to do in the past years is take up some the needs of resilience and livelihoods because nobody else has been there to do it.

We have started to take over and do some of the sorts of things that development agencies are actually much better at doing that than we are.

Afghanistan was very much a clear case in point, not the only one.

But as you know, there was a big debate about who's going to run the hospitals and so forth.

So what we're doing is we're saying, OK, we'll focus right down on life saving.

But let's be very clear, if we do this, first of all, you need to respond as well.

You need to make an effort just as much as we have.

And secondly, you need to help us make sure that we have what I was describing earlier as that living partnership with host governments, host communities, national governments and development partners.

Otherwise it it, it, it, it won't, it won't work.

I personally feel very strongly, having visited many, many, many IDP camps, for example, that when you talk to people who've been in those camps for 10-12 years and there are many of those such people.

I was in, I was in Myanmar in August and talked to some Rohingya in one of those camps who'd been there for 12 years.

And they say to you, we've had no help with livelihoods or with resilience more broadly.

And you know that they want that because it's a sign of respect for their own agency, for themselves.

It's very difficult to walk away from that.

It's very difficult to say sorry, I'm sorry, we're just going to do life saving.

It means that we can't have an optional partnership with the development community.

It means that we have to have a necessary complete partnership.

And I'll make one more point, don't know, remind me on the second question in one second.

But I make one more point, which is this what we discover in places of crisis where there are pariah regimes, where there are difficulties of, of, of access, where it's it's not easy to move from A to B to get structures moving, to get basic services going again.

We're often told by many very good donors who would say we will protect humanitarian aid, don't worry about it.

But of course, we cannot provide development assistance.

And for every humanitarian who hears that, that is exactly the not the answer they want.

Development assistance is as necessary in crisis as humanitarian, and we can't wait for it.

If you go to Syria these days, as I was being told by my colleague who runs the UN in Syria the other day, you will find that even civil servants in Syria.

In other words, people who have a salary, a rare, a rare and wonderful thing in Syria are barely able to afford transport to their children to school because the cut the the amount of money that they're receiving is so much less now, because the the way in which their economy has contracted and contracted and contracted Syrian, their levels of poverty in Syria as a result of this contraction of the economy as a result of lack of development assistance and other reasons, the war and so forth, means that there is no safety net for people.

And what happens, they join the queue to get aid from us, whereas in fact they'd be a lot better off never coming anywhere near us and keeping going with people who are on basic services better.

ICRC in Afghanistan, you'll remember this about a year ago, had decided because of lack of choice really to start funding a number of hospitals in Afghanistan because of the after the Taliban came in, where development funding stopped completely.

Do you remember that?

And ICRC and WHO and UNICEF all went in to start paying for that.

ICRC recently had to stop doing it because the money wasn't there.

It wasn't sustainable.

For sustainable funding, don't look to the humanitarian community because that's not what we're supposed to do.

Look to these others.

So we have to do partnership.

The second question was.

Yeah.

Laura, do you want to repeat the second question, please?

Yeah, it was just about the correlation between the fact that we have three big crises with public attention and the ability to attract funding.

For other crises, good, good question.

Sorry, excuse me for the I, I, I remember saying when the Ukraine war started in its first months that the, the immediate impact of the Ukraine war on other crises was not actually financial in terms of humanitarian aid.

It was a tension.

Well, you know that, I mean, you, you live, you live it daily.

We can't get Sudan onto the news.

It's impossible to get Sudan stories out because it's competing with Gaza now.

Ukraine before even Ukraine now has a bit of difficulty getting on the news.

So the first casualty of these spinning of crises is attention.

And without attention you don't get support.

And it's become more and more difficult to get attention.

It's become, and this is an invidious thing for me to say, it has become like a hit parade of where's the worst place now?

Do you remember Tigray 2?

Two years ago, wasn't it?

It was all Tigray.

I remember.

I went there myself.

Nobody's talking about what's happening in Ethiopia at the moment.

And there is a lot happening in Ethiopia at the moment.

The whole of Africa never quite made it.

Why?

Because it didn't declare famine.

Thank God it didn't declare famine because it didn't come.

But it's very, it is very difficult to get to, to get attention to the places of the greatest need and to spread it out.

And that does have a ultimately a financial impact.

It does, it does indeed.

It means that we are very underfunded in Sudan.

Ukraine is much better funded than elsewhere.

I mean, we still need more money in Ukraine.

Don't get me wrong.

We still need funding increase there.

We're still what it, what, how many, what's our 30% funded?

I think in, in, in Gaza for the, for the flash appeal, despite all the attention.

So we, we, we do need to think creatively ourselves.

I'm speaking to the humanitarian community of ways in which we are able to draw the attention of the world to places where money can be wisely spent.

That's why I mentioned the climate community.

They've actually blazed a trail clearly in COP this year in which they have achieved great things in terms of moving the world towards where they wanted to be only as a beginning.

Don't, don't get me wrong, but it's an extraordinary achievement and we need, we need some of that talent to shine a light on these other countries.

Thank you very much.

I don't think there are more questions on this.

So Jori, thank you very much for your patience.

We will go back to you now for your question on the situation in Gaza.

Yes, thank you, Jens.

More than 132 UN employees have been killed since October seven in Gaza.

Do we know if Hamas is responsible for the death of some of them or is Israel the only one responsible?

Have you obtained any guarantees that you know our sites and employees will no longer be targeted by Israel and especially schools and shelters?

And will the UN demand for those responsible for these attacks on the organisations be tried?

Thank you.

As as I said earlier, fortunately, I'm not a lawyer and I'm not in the business of as, as a humanitarian coordinator, not in the business of finding those culpable for those killings.

I don't know who killed those 132 people, whether it's Hamas or Israel.

We hope and we have discussed this together with UNRWA, obviously, that there will be an investigation of those crimes and that somebody will be indicted.

And as I said earlier, I think this should become an international issue.

The head of a very large non governmental organisation, international non governmental organisation came to me the other day and he said we lose about 3 or 4 people every month to deaths, to killings and kidnapping, 3 or 4 people on average every single month of the year.

Let's have some Frontier, as you know, has a tragic history of killings, of kidnappings, of trying to find the people where they are, of trying to find the people who did it.

And almost no occasion are there any formal investigations and indictments.

So I don't know who did those killings.

Whoever did it has nothing but contempt from people like me.

And we hope that once circumstances obtain, that there will be an investigation of those crimes.

But of course, those killings are only a small number of the killings of civilians in Gaza.

And let us also not forget of the numbers allegedly now close to 16,000 Palestinians who died, of all those who died on October the 7th.

I have seen the videos of that day, the shocking videos of that day, of what happened on October the 7th, and they are deeply shocking.

2 months ago today, we have seen and estimated the numbers of Palestinians who have died.

We have seen the pictures you have shown them of the youngest of children burrowing their even younger siblings, a 5 year old boy putting his four year old brother into the ground.

I, I, I, I don't understand how humanity can contemplate that.

So I hope these crimes will indeed be discovered, indicted and punished.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Martin.

You're either.

I think there was there was a second part to your question about guarantees from from Israel, if you don't mind just to repeat that.

Yes, it yes.

Thank you, Yancey.

It was just to know if Israel gave any guarantees that at least strikes against the schools and shelters of the UN in the South or even in the north in Gaza, will not be striked, if you had any guarantees about that.

Well, we've had lots and lots of discussions with the Israeli authorities, Unruh in particular, throughout the entire two months of the sanctity, if you like, of United Nations institutions, UNRWA with its UN flag planted in the middle of its institution as places of safety for people to go to.

We have had many such discussions.

We have also had many discussions with the Israeli authorities and others about the idea of so-called safe zones, which we oppose.

We do not believe in the United Nations.

The Secretary General is particularly clear on this.

In the safety of safe zones.

Safe zones, for a start, require both sides, all sides, to agree to their safety.

For example, we have had some occasions, and certainly true, and I don't want to underestimate for one minute, Israeli promises of safety.

And people have survived for periods of time in these places identified as de conflicted and as de conflicted with Israel.

Israel has honoured precisely those promises.

The state of the war has moved on from that.

And that's what worries us as we look at the South of Gaza, where we thought we could establish a whole series of places under Unrwa's institutional oversight of safety for people, and we find now that we can't.

But Israel has indeed honoured a great deal of deconfliction notifications from the UN system, as it has done for many, many years in Gaza.

This is not new to this conflict.

We're just worried at the moment.

No such places exist and no such places can be counted on to be assured of safety.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Martin for coming.

I will not take more of of your time.

Thank you very much to all of you here and online.

Just for clarity, this this last question on on Gaza and, and the replies is not under embargo that you can use.

However, everything that was talked about before on the global humanitarian overview is under embargo until Monday 6:00.

Thank you very much everyone.

OCHA Press Conference: Launch of the Global Humanitarian Overview 2024 - 07 December 2023