UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : OCHA Press conference in New York

All right.

Good morning to those of you who are joining us from New York and good afternoon to those of us who are joining us from Europe.

We have with us today Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and the Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher.

Just as a reminder to everybody, this is an embargoed press conference.

The embargo will lift on Monday at 6:00 AM in Geneva, which is midnight in New York.

It's kind of hard to figure out if that's Sunday or Monday, but the the bit where we cross from Sunday into Monday.

So with that, Mr Fletcher will make some opening remarks and then take some questions.

I know a lot of you are online, so please, Mr Fletcher, whenever you're ready.

[Other language spoken]

You very much, Arie, and good morning.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

Thank you for being here.

[Other language spoken]

Are we happy?

Yeah, OK, Good morning, Good afternoon colleagues, and thank you for being here.

2 weeks ago I was at a feeding station, emergency feeding centre in Tawela, Darfur, where humanitarians are supporting the survivors of the atrocities in Al fascia, and I met a young mother there who had seen her husband and child killed in front of her.

She had fled to her neighbour's home to find everyone dead except a 2 month old malnourished child.

At that moment, his life hanging in the balance, his survival chances were minuscule.

She swept him up and escaped along the most dangerous Rd in the world.

Along the way, men of violence attacked her, raped her, broke her leg.

And yet something kept her going through the horror and the brutality.

A survival instinct, a quiet courage that made her more powerful than her attackers.

A furious determination to save the starving child she carried, and the solidarity of strangers on that road who found ways to help her.

She made it to us in Tawila, and she and the child will live.

Does anyone, wherever you come from, whatever you believe, however you vote, not think that we should be there for her?

So it starts with one life, one story.

Because behind the numbers today are stories of survival courage, of dignity, of the will to survive, of human solidarity of people.

And she refused to believe, despite so much evidence, that she should succumb to an idea of an inhumane, brutal, violent world.

She did not give up on the idea that humanity is still out there.

And I refuse to believe that she's wrong.

So today I'll share with you the latest diagnosis on the staggering scale of global suffering, the challenges that we face as we respond, the case for moral imagination, moral ambition and our plan, laser focused, stripped back, costed, rooted in solidarity, but also rooted in reform, evidence, efficiency, a plan to save 87,000,000 lives in 2026.

So first the tough reality check, the diagnosis.

As the only person on the planet to have visited this year, Goma and Gaza twice, Darfur twice, and Damascus, Kapiants, Kandahar, Conduce, Mandalay, Beirut, Port-au-Prince, I can bear witness to offer testimony of the ferocity and the intensity of the killing, the complete disregard for international law, horrific levels of sexual violence.

This is a time of brutality, impunity and indifference.

This is a time when the rules are in retreat.

When the scaffolding of coexistence is under sustained attack.

When our survival antennae have been numbed by distraction and corroded by apathy.

When we are putting more energy and money into finding new ways to kill each other while dismantling the hard won ways we've developed to protect ourselves from our worst instincts.

When politicians boast of cutting aid.

A time when while some build driverless cars and contemplate A utopian life on Mars, the reality for most is a driverless world and an increasingly dystopian life on the planet.

We have So right now, 1/4 of a billion people are in urgent need of humanitarian help.

Yet the funding against our last humanitarian overview was only $12 billion, the lowest in a decade.

And so this is a heartbreaking report to share.

There is pain on every page.

[Other language spoken]

Food budgets were slashed even as famines hit parts of Sudan and Gaza.

Health systems broke apart.

Thousands lost access to essential services.

[Other language spoken]

Millions went without essential food, healthcare and protection.

Programmes to protect women and girls were slashed.

Hundreds of aid organisations shut and over 380 aid workers were killed, the highest on record.

So, as you've heard me say before, we are overstretched, underfunded and under attack.

Only 20% of our appeals are supported and and we drive the ambulance towards the fire on your behalf.

But we are also now being asked to put the fire out and there is not enough water in the tank and we're being shot at.

So I believe we won't turn this round unless we accept 3 hard truths first.

We've assumed for a generation that global development and stability lift all boats.

The argument was that economic progress was the best way to reduce humanitarian need.

But the retreat from global order and humanitarian action now reverses that equation.

The humanitarian crises that as a consequence lie ahead of us will themselves have negative consequences.

Mass migration, pandemics, conflicts, consequences for global development and stability.

A second hard truth.

The public hasn't rallied to our defence.

They've been misled that 20% of their money goes on foreign aid rather than much less than 1%.

And a third hard truth?

The money to save these lives is not coming back unless we make and win afresh the argument for humanitarian solidarity.

So we must respond.

And we respond not as acronyms and institutions, but as humans.

So that's the challenge.

How do we propose to fight back in 2026?

So we start with confidence.

Last year, despite the challenges I've described, the humanitarian community reached 98 million people with our support.

And I take heart from the conviction that so many leaders have, including the US president, that 2026 will be a year of peacemaking, a year that can create a once in a generation opportunity to do something extraordinary.

So let's do something extraordinary.

[Other language spoken]

This new overhauled global humanitarian overview is the foundation for our response.

It is laser focused on saving lives where the shocks hit hardest.

[Other language spoken]

Our priority for 2026 is to save 87,000,000 lives.

The plan includes 29 more detailed plans covering 50 countries.

This includes $4 billion to reach 3,000,000 across the Occupied Palestinian Territories, 2.8 billion for 20 million people in Sudan, the world's largest displacement crisis, and 2 billion for the 7 million Sudanese forced to flee.

It includes 1.4 billion to save 4.9 million lives in Myanmar and those fleeing the crisis there, and much, much more.

So why?

You'll be right to ask 87,000,000 when so many more than this need our help.

The plan sets out where we need to focus our collective energy first.

It's therefore based on excruciating life and death choices.

Beyond that, of course, there is so much more that we must and should be doing, and this plan has details of what more we could do with more support.

And I of course commend to you the superb appeals being launched for next year across the humanitarian community.

But we have to start somewhere.

And this plan identifies where, on the basis of data and on the basis of a massive evidence gathering exercise across 50 countries.

[Other language spoken]

We'll deliver this plan alongside the courageous diplomacy needed to end more conflicts.

We'll deliver it through the humanitarian reset that I've set out over the course of the last year.

That means a radical transformation of humanitarian action, prioritising hard, reducing bureaucracy and duplication, being more innovative and efficient, and moving from problem observation to problem solving.

We'll ensure that leadership of this effort is at the country level and that local organisations take on more power.

We'll put a greater proportion of the money that we get into the hands of the people who need it, with already over half of our pooled funding now going to local organisations.

But let me be clear that behind the data and the evidence, the process of this is not a technocratic exercise.

Because beyond this plan, we are renewing and reimagining humanitarian action.

And we're doing that with idealism, with humility, with hope.

I need to know what's the tech innovation that will save most lives in 2026.

I need to know how do we lay the foundations for a more radical renewal?

Greener, better prepared for the crises we can anticipate and those that we can't anticipate.

More accountable to those we serve.

From agencies to agency, from hierarchy to dignity, from aid to investment, From charity to empowerment, from handouts to solidarity.

Local wherever possible, international only where necessary.

Bottom up and not top down.

From a system based on the money that we can raise to 1.

Based on greatest need.

From logos and egos to people.

So another number for you, what do we need in order to save 87,000,000 lives next year?

We need protection for our work.

We need that energetic peacemaking and we need $23 billion.

Of course we need so much more, but this plan how shows how we will spend that first $23 billion of what I'm sure we will raise on the most urgent prioritised life saving work.

And I know budgets are tight right now, families everywhere are under strain.

But the world spent $2.7 trillion on defence last year on guns and arms and I'm asking for just over 1% of that.

The total global appeal could be fully funded if the global top 10% of earners, that's everyone earning over $100,000, gave just $0.20 a day 87,000,000 lives.

That's more than died in the Second World War, the horror of which led to the creation of the UN.

So is the UN dead?

Tell that to the relatives and the friends of the hundreds of our colleagues who died saving lives this year.

Tell that to the 87,000,000 lives that we will set out to save next year, to those under the bombs and to those who are losing most in a rules free, transactional, violent world.

Next stage, over the coming 87 days, one for each of the million lives that we will set out to save, we will take this plan to the Member States.

We will challenge them to back the simple prioritised appeal that they have asked us to produce.

Member States must also, of course, protect humanitarians, not with statements of concern, but by holding to account those killing us and those arming those killing us.

I will then aim, after 87 days, to share the numbers with you again of the government commitments that we have received and answer a simple question.

Did your governments show up for this plan or not?

The answer to that question will define who lives and who dies.

We'll then launch a campaign, a broader campaign to civil society, to business, to the humanitarian community, to the public globally, to close whatever gap remains.

And we'll deliver on this plan.

And we'll ask you to hold us to account, the humanitarian system, for how we spend this money in the most effective way possible to save 87,000,000 lives.

There's a great scene in The Lord of the Rings.

One of the hobbits asks Gandalf if he wishes he'd lived in different times.

And the wizard rebukes him kindly and says we do not get to choose our times, but we can choose what we do with them.

So this plan is a call to action for a generation of leaders and citizens armed with solidarity, curiosity, empathy, to be a movement of good ancestors.

And to our cynical ears, and believe me, my ears are more cynical, after a year in this job, this probably does sound too hard, too difficult for a selfish, distracted, transactional world.

And I would be lying if I said that this moment isn't daunting.

It feels like we're jumping off a Cliff, not knowing whether anyone will catch us.

I'd be lying if I did not tell you that I was overwhelmed by the challenge that we face.

But I don't believe for a moment that there that the sense of human kindness and solidarity that we're seeking here has been eliminated by a few elections a a pandemic, a financial crash.

I've more belief in humans than that because I get to spend so much of my time with the best of humanity.

So we're asking the world to choose solidarity, to choose moral imagination, to choose moral ambition, to think.

[Other language spoken]

And if we can respond with a fraction of the courage and power of the women of Towila, the women of Gaza, the women of Goma, then we will be able to say that we saved 87,000,000 lives.

[Other language spoken]

But thank you so much, Mr Fletcher.

He has time for his 10 minutes for questions, So we'll start in New York.

Emily, please.

[Other language spoken]

I'm Ellie Boutelier from AFP News Agency.

On behalf of the UN Correspondent Association.

Thank you for doing this briefing, $23 billion is less than half.

[Other language spoken]

I mean, obviously we know that you refocused media, but how worried are you that the less you asked, the less you would get?

And I mean, last year and all through the year, you use the word of shame.

I've seen the situation now you seem in a mood of fighting back.

You, you talked about reaching out to civil society.

I mean, we know that a lot of people are in, in financial difficulties over the world.

How do you and, and that they are kind of shutting down to all these images of horrors and that they can see all over the world.

So what is your strategy to reach out to the normal people all all over the world to convey the, the, the pain of all these people in the rest of the world that are suffering probably more than them?

[Other language spoken]

And and they're and they're questions that I ask myself, we ask ourselves about this exercise.

So firstly, in terms of the overall number, the the number in need is going in the other direction.

But what we are forcing ourselves to do because of the cuts is to hyper, hyper prioritise, be laser focused as what we could do with less money.

It doesn't mean we don't need much more funding, of course we do.

I hope that all of our campaigns across the UN family, across the humanitarian community, which add up to a much, much bigger number, will be fully funded.

I hope we find that spirit of generosity.

What I've tried to do here is to find that spot in the centre of the Venn diagram where all of those appeals overlap and where we can really prioritise those 87,000,000 lives that we could save with that $23 billion.

I think one thing we've learnt in recent years is that we don't get more funding just by naming a bigger number.

And so I'm trying to be realistic here about what would be a stretch goal for us to get in the current funding conditions.

And I want us to go far beyond that.

But I've got to start somewhere with that sense of of realism.

Do I want to shame the world into responding?

[Other language spoken]

But I also want to channel this sense of determination and anger that we have as humanitarians that we will carry on delivering with what we get.

And, you know, we are out there seeing the best and the worst of humanity.

So much of the humanitarian effort is not part of our plans.

It's humans on the front lines of these crises who are responding with that solidarity and kindness that the world is currently not able to show on the world beyond governments.

I want to see how far we get in the next 87 days with the governments taking this plan to states, traditional and non traditional donors to really see if we can find this moment of genuine generosity.

And that will leave me with a gap at the beginning of March.

I then want to build a campaign around closing that gap and looking to individual citizens, but also civil society and business to help us close that gap.

I recognise that the old model alone is not going to be sufficient to save the lives that we want to save, and so we have to find different ways and we have to find and connect with a new movement to support this work.

[Other language spoken]

We'll move to Geneva and take a question from there.

Laurent Ciero from Swiss News, please.

Yeah, thank you for the briefing.

First, for this year, are you already able to give us a rough estimate on how much money could be spared with the humanitarian reset and and could be reallocated directly to the people who need it?

And then for next year, there are a lot of crises.

You mentioned some of them.

Which one will be the most worrying for you that you can already anticipate?

And what about Syria?

We're one year after Syria.

How do you see the challenges evolving there?

Well, Many thanks.

I don't have a figure to hand on the savings we're making through the efficiency gains through the efforts to reduce duplication and bureaucracy.

These savings are being driven by cuts.

Let's be clear.

We want to be more efficient, we want to be more prioritised, we want to reduce that duplication.

And we're doing that and we're doing it ruthlessly, cutting back on the clusters and the meetings and the layers that have become a feature of the humanitarian system.

But it's the cuts ultimately that are forcing us into these tough, tough, brutal choices that we're having to to make.

But at the heart of that, we want to ensure that the the highest possible proportion of what we have is going to those organisations and individuals on the front lines and going to the communities we serve and not to institutions and organisations and agencies.

We want to minimise the transaction costs on the way through.

In terms of the worrying crises, I've just come out of Sudan.

So that's very much on my mind having spent a week in Darfur, as as I've shared with many of you already, before that I was in Gaza and we clearly have a mountain to climb as we try to turn around the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and take advantage of of the ceasefire.

I was asked recently to to name my most neglected crisis.

And my biggest concern at the moment is for Myanmar, which I, I fear slips down the list in, in terms of the world's attention, the world's response.

That's why it's very central to this global plan on, on Syria.

We're in high gear now to try and push through the remaining humanitarian challenges, clearing the munition, starting to get the infrastructure back into place so people can rebuild their lives, dealing with the remaining pockets of of hunger, rebuilding the health sector.

But our ambition as humanitarians in Syria has to be to put ourselves out of business.

We will have failed at whistle in Syria in the coming years.

We have to transition to a development response urgently.

I know this is a priority as well for my outstanding new colleague at the head of UNDP who began his work this week.

And I know it's a priority for the Syrian government too, who also want this to shift from being a humanitarian challenge to a long term resilience and rebuilding programmes.

So we have got to show as humanitarians that we can get to places fast and respond to emergencies, but also that we can put plans in place so that we can leave as well when the conditions are met.

[Other language spoken]

You very much, Frank, please.

There we go.

Hi Frank Uciardo from TRT World, thank you for being available in person to do this, we really appreciate that very much.

A few things it it seems to me that diplomacy has failed to meet the needs of humanitarians being able to do their work.

Do you feel it really has failed overall?

Also, you talked about a time of brutality, impunity and indifference.

Where are you seeing the greatest example of all three?

And the 20% you talked about people being misled of that money being spent on foreign aid.

Is that directly talking about the United States and the influences on their cuts to your budget?

[Other language spoken]

Thank you, Frank.

[Other language spoken]

Are they?

So I think evidently diplomacy has failed.

The Security Council has failed to end so many of these long running crises.

And something I said to the Security Council a few weeks ago in the context of Sudan was do you think that previous generations sat in these seats would have let this crisis run so long?

Do you think that future generations will fail in the way that we are evidently failing at the moment to end that conflict?

So I think there is a challenge there for all of us.

We know that the Security Council faces division and often paralysis.

But on a more hopeful note, I felt that the real story of High Level Week in September was not some of the the more public arguments and, and, and, and some of the more public theatre around it.

It was the fact that diplomacy actually came roaring back that week.

And we saw that across several of the peace processes where the US administration is engaging most heavily.

And a lot of the time that I've spent in the last two months since then has been focused on the on the follow up on crises like the DRC, Sudan, Gaza, where we are seeing progress as a result of that engagement and as a result of diplomacy coming back.

So I think there's an opportunity there.

And that's that's why I want to link this plan to the potential for 2026 to be a year of peacemaking.

I think we've heard that clear message from from the US president, we're seeing it from many of the key players across the Middle East and Africa that they want to engage to end as many of these conflicts as possible.

And that gives me more hope because ultimately we won't end these conflicts just through humanitarian support.

The best way for us to get the numbers in global need down are actually to make this a year of extraordinary peacemaking and diplomacy.

So that's my hope.

That's my New Year's resolution, if you like, is that we get that sustained engagement and patient diplomacy, the indifference and the and the inhumanity I think is a reflection on on what I'm seeing everywhere on my travels.

I wouldn't pick out 11 country and of course, you know to to your specific question on America.

America is still a significant donor to the humanitarian system and over years has saved hundreds of millions of lives and I hope will renew that commitment in the period ahead.

I hope that this is a plan that people in Washington will see has taken many of the tough decisions that they've been encouraging us to take to reprioritize life saving work on the on the public.

I think it is striking that the surveys show that the public, when asked, do you think we should spend 1% on aid when they're told where that goes, are actually very supportive of of what we do.

I don't think that that public support has gone away for this work, but they are receiving an absolute Blizzard of disinformation from politicians on the extremes that suggests that the figure that we get is much, much higher alongside of course the whole narrative about the humanitarian sector being incompetent, corrupt, woke, useless and so on.

And so I think it's important that we do push back, fight back against that disinformation.

And as I say, we're we're asking for only just over 1% of what the world is spending on arms and defence right now.

So I'm not asking people to choose between a hospital in Brooklyn and a hospital in Kandahar.

I'm asking the world to spend less on defence and more on humanitarian support.

Do you think it's time you meet with President Trump on these issues directly?

I think that's probably above my pay grade.

I think it's the secretary general who is the key interlocutor, and he had an excellent meeting with President Trump here in New York in September.

I very much welcome the the dialogue I have with the White House, with the American ambassadors here in New York and Geneva who are engaging heavily on these issues and on the diplomacy around this work and, and with the State Department as well.

Now, this is the most significant shift in the work that we're doing in the last three or four months has been that level of engagement on Gaza, on Sudan, on DRC, on so many of these crises.

And you know, I want to work with the grain of that engagement.

[Other language spoken]

Olivia, are you there?

All right, we'll move on.

Nick, Coming, Bruce from the New York Times in Geneva, please.

[Other language spoken]

Sorry, I think I had an issue with my microphone.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much for this briefing.

I noted that that you didn't mention Ukraine or Haiti and some of the examples.

If you could.

Just outline whether those two areas are still priorities under this plan going into next year.

And and secondly, you're mentioning approaching donors, both traditional and non traditional donors.

Perhaps you could just outline who some of the more non traditional donors are that you might be seeking.

And and secondly, from your conversation so far, if you've had any signals yet from Washington that they may be in a position of of funding your campaign into next year, I know you mentioned you're hopeful, but have you had any positive signals as of yet?

[Other language spoken]

So just to reassure you, there are many other countries and over 50 countries in the plan, including the 28 priority crises that that we've that we've prioritising as the key, key targets.

And of course, they do include Ukraine and Haiti, both places I visited in the last year where needs are immense.

So I picked out I think Gaza, Sudan and Myanmar just as examples.

But as you go through the plan, you'll see for each of the target countries, the number of people, number of lives we're seeking to save and the allocation we're seeking to make to that, to that response, non traditional donors.

I mean, really this is a pitch to the Member states as a collective, we clearly can't do this just with the classic pool of donors that we've worked with in recent years.

So we do need others to step forward to take up more of that of the of the mission.

And I think this is a chance we may be to to plug the Central Emergency Response Fund.

And we'll be saying more about our appeals for the 20th anniversary of that in the coming in the coming days.

But that's the fund, our emergency response fund, which is by all and for all.

And I was just in Chad recently, for example, and Chad is a donor to that emergency response fund.

And so we we welcome that sense of this being a collective response and not resting on just the shoulders of a few countries on US signals.

I mean, I'm in very close contact with the US administration.

I have a lot of very practical, constructive conversations with them almost every day.

You'd have to ask them whether they see in this plan something that they feel they can respond to, whether they think that we have done the work to prioritise, to improve efficiencies, to really bring to the core of our work the life saving effort.

I'm an optimist by heart, so I will continue to hope that they will respond in a positive way and be a central, you know, key part of of the humanitarian effort going forward.

Sorry.

And I think I called on Nick.

So Nick ******* Bruce from the New York Times in Geneva, please.

[Other language spoken]

Sorry.

[Other language spoken]

Yeah, following up a little bit on the on the.

[Other language spoken]

To what?

Extent it's your sense that.

The.

Global pot of funding for humanitarian causes has has.

[Other language spoken]

Or whether we're dealing with less interest in funding through the UN and the multilateral system.

And secondly, you spoke of reimagining how aid is delivered.

We we've heard in previous appeals about greater prioritisation, greater.

Delivery of of cash assistance to make sure it gets directly into the hands of.

People who need it, could you just elaborate?

A little bit on what exactly you're re imagining here.

[Other language spoken]

So, so yeah, the effort will continue with those less traditional donors to try to insist that the broadest to enlist the broadest possible coalition here.

I think it's a it's, it's a good question, Nick, on the, has the global pot shrunk or is it just the, the share of that pot for the classic humanitarian sector, the UN agencies and our NGO partners, friends and colleagues?

I think at the moment it's probably a bit of both.

I think the overall amount being allocated to humanitarian causes has gone down and within that the proportion going to the sector has shrunk.

So we clearly need to be to be doing the right to have the right humility as we come to this challenge.

And I think it's important that we're not just saying we have a plan, please give us some money, but we're also saying we have a challenge here of saving 87,000,000 lives.

How can you help us do that?

And that's a question I'll be taking to the private sector, including on the issue you you mentioned around multipurpose cash, which for me, and I think the argument's been won, that where a market exists, and particularly where the technology is in place, the connectivity is in place to use digital cash solutions, that that is a way of delivering support.

That is, that minimises the transactional costs and which maximises agency and dignity for those we're seeking to, to reach.

So that is a, a central part of the reimagination.

And I'll be saying more about that in in February when we're rolling out further ideas and proposals on on cash alongside private sector partners.

Then I also think there's a huge amount we can do to bring more climate preparedness to the effort, which means more anticipatory action, particularly around the predictable climate crises which lay ahead of us.

So a lot more innovation in how we pre position assets to be ready for those crises.

And then of course, but but you'd be right to to say, Nick, that you've probably heard so many people say we need more innovation.

It's one of those things that it's one of the platitudes that people and my job and jobs like this like to talk about.

I think we've got to accept that we're, we're not the most innovative people in the world right here.

And so we need a huge amount of help on this.

And so my call to action coming through this plan will be to the tech sector, to innovators, to to young people to come forward and help us do that reimagining.

How are we going to use blockchain more effectively to track the money that's donated between the the donor and the recipient?

How do we shrink the gap between the person seeking the help and the person giving the help?

How do we prepare for a not just how AI will change the operating environment for us, the craft of what we do, but how it will change society more broadly around us?

What AI will do to the numbers of people in need over the next decade, how we can make sure that the the technology is is working for humanity and that humanity is not working for the, the technology.

These are massive, massive challenges.

And that the sort of management leadership challenge I have at the moment is how do you carve out enough time to think strategically and refresh the work we do when we're also going through this process of enormous cuts and, and drawbacks and, and downsizing?

You know, it's, it's a, it's a tough environment to do that in.

But unless we do do that renewal and re imagination, then we're not going to meet the needs that are out there.

[Other language spoken]

And we have time for one last question.

So if to some Azam please.

[Other language spoken]

My name is Sam Azam, a lot of the newspaper two points, 2 quick points on the issue of renewing and reimagining humanitarian aid.

But on the financial part, I'm wondering if there are any discussions to have some of that budget you need as a mandatory and not voluntary from Member States because you, we, we every year we hear the same demand, not demands requests, but yet you're not getting what you need.

And the other thing, if you could very briefly say something about Gaza and since the what are your worries and whether you think that there is enough aid that's been delivered since the ceasefire?

[Other language spoken]

Terrific.

I mean, I think, you know, I'm aware that conversation is out there on, on mandatory contributions alongside or instead of voluntary and there's some, there's a lot of, there are lots of interesting creative ideas on how to do that.

There is also obviously, as you all know better than I do, a much tougher broader conversation about the funding for the UN as a whole going forward beyond just the humanitarian effort.

So I don't think the answer on that will come along in time for me for this plan in terms of saving 87,000,000 lives, I'll need to go out and and find those voluntary contributions, I'm afraid.

I wish it was, I wish it were otherwise, but I'm not holding my breath for a new solution there.

In terms of mandatory contributions on Gaza, the ceasefire doesn't mean the humanitarian crisis is over, far from it.

And we have been able to scale up significantly.

We're approaching now 3/4 of the way through the 60 day plan that I set out just after the ceasefire and after that extraordinary moment in Shama Sheikh when we when that opportunity opened up to deliver at much greater scale than we've been allowed to do since the last ceasefire, the 42 days at the beginning of the year.

I'd say my glass is half full on this at the moment.

We're able to deliver much, much more than we could over a million meals a day, for example, starting to get those school spaces back open again, starting to rebuild the health sector, starting to work on, I mean, doing significant work actually to clear the the roads, including a sardine Hwy that I drove up just a few weeks ago, clearing the munitions and the bodies from from the roads.

We've had a big surge in the last two weeks on winterization.

Tents, fuel, warm clothing to get through.

[Other language spoken]

What is already a brutal winter.

But there is enormous amounts more that we still need to do.

It's why we want to get all the crossings open, all six crossings open.

It's why we talk a lot about the need for our crucial friends and partners in the NGO community to be allowed the access so that they can deliver alongside us.

We can't deliver at the scale we need to without them.

And why we need to mobilise the whole UN family as part of this response.

So big improvement since the ceasefire, but not yet enough.

Not yet all that we would wish in order to turn this humanitarian crisis around and start to bring hope and and resilience back to the for the population of Gaza.

All right.

Thank you, everybody for joining us today.

Just as a reminder, this is embargoed until 6:00 AM on Monday, Geneva time.

[Other language spoken]

OCHA Press conference in New York - 03 December 2025