World: Mr. Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator –Remarks on 87 Million Lives: Delivering on the Promise
Country: World Source: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Please refer to the attached file. New York, 21 September 2026 Welcome, everyone. These are some of the 87 million lives that we want to reach that we are already reaching this year with life-saving support. A huge welcome today. We have, I think, two big objectives in the next hour. Number one, to leave everyone feeling that they are part of something extraordinary and brave, and really, really difficult. And that’s why we’re doing it – because it matters. And secondly, to get you out of here ahead of time, because we’ve all had enough meetings already, and it’s only day one, so, we’re going to try and accelerate through this. I want to welcome Hadjar [Lahbib, European Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management, European Commission] and Sjoerd [Sjoerdsma, Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation of the Netherlands] as co-hosts. Ayman Safadi [Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Jordan] is entering the building as we speak, and so we’ll welcome him in just a moment. Can I also welcome our extraordinary local leaders? Do you want to stand up? The local leaders team, who have joined us. Here we are. These are the heroes and heroines of the effort and we’ll be hearing from them later on. They are co-leading our humanitarian delegation this week. We’re doing it because we believe in what they do. Now, very quick, some stats before we get going. We’re making some progress. We’ve mobilized – and it’s mainly the people in this room, in fact, it may be all the people in this room – about $14 billion so far for this campaign. And, of course, we never wanted to have to prioritize like this. We hate having to make these choices, but if we have to start somewhere, we’re starting with those [people] hardest to reach in severity four and five. And so already that means we’ve reached 40 million people so far this year with some form of life-saving support. And everyone in here has been part of that effort. And it’s an extraordinary effort, an effort of courage and creativity. Sixty-five million people have received some form of assistance this year. But anyone still counting the numbers, you’ll see that leaves us $9 billion short of even the hyper-prioritised target we’re trying to reach, let alone the money we need to raise to reach the over 200 million other people in need. And we all know what that means. […] So that does leave us a gap in the people we’re trying to reach and a gap in the funding. And it’s not just, of course, about the money. We have a mission this week, and I need help from everyone here to get the 10 access agreements in place. […] If we get these 10 agreements in place this week, then we can reach 11 million people that we can’t currently reach – from [the Democratic Republic of the Congo] to Yemen to Haiti to Colombia to Afghanistan, South Sudan, [the Occupied Palestinian Territory], Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen and beyond. And so, we need your diplomatic support as well as your support for this campaign. Now, last couple of slides on some stats. We want to also recognize those who are giving most generously. In fact, more than that, we want you to start competing with each other, frankly. Which is why I’ve had some slides made that show where the money is currently coming from for this campaign. So, this [ slide ] is the quantity, the overall quantity. And come and find these slides later if you want to see them closer up. If you can’t see your country on there, well, I hope your country is on there. If it’s not, then you know what to do. But this [ slide ] is effort. So, this is what our generous donors are giving to the humanitarian family and to the plan put together by over 2,000 humanitarian organizations by the size of their economy. So, there you see a different group of colleagues and friends can step forward and take a bow there. One thing, one huge change in the course of the year now, one big shift in the system, is that now 25 per cent of funding is going through pooled funds . And that allows us, of course, to get funding out to the front lines, to the local organizations, or indeed to the partner best placed to deliver, whether that’s a UN agency or an [international] NGO or a local NGO or another organization. So, this then shows you what each donor is giving in terms of pooled funds. And then, and I think we’re almost there on the slides, the generosity is not just measured in dollars. So, we also want to show you countries who are most generous in terms of hosting refugees . And so therefore are probably the most generous donors of all. And I’ve turned round to look at His Excellency Ayman Safadi because you see Jordan is at the top of that league table. And when you look at refugee-hosting countries relative to their economy , we have a surprising result because it shows different forms of leadership. It’s not all about the cash – although to those with lots of cash, we like that as well. It shows that there are different ways of stepping forward as part of this effort to save 87 million lives this year. That’s more than enough from me. We want this to be a quick-fire conversation over the next hour. So, we are going to be asking for swift top-level interventions. And we’re going to be asking some of the difficult questions. I’ve been in eight meetings at least so far and in every single one we’ve agreed on everything. And that is not the measure of success of our conversation today – we also have to lean into the areas where we might not agree on everything. I’ll stop there and hand over to our friend and colleague, Ayman Safadi.
ReliefWeb•UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs22 Sept
