Choose humanity to save 87 million lives in a time of “brutality”

UNOCHA – United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Remarks at Press Conference on 87 Million Lives Campaign by Tom Fletcher, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator

Geneva, 11 March 2026

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So many thanks, colleagues for being here.

I want to start by saying that we’re living through a moment right now of grave peril across the Middle East. We’re seeing these crises escalate rapidly and increasingly collide in dangerous ways.

We’re seeing violence reverberate across borders, displacement, economic shocks, soaring humanitarian needs – and we’re seeing the consequences spread faster than we can respond.

Later this afternoon, I’ll make three asks of the Security Council.

Firstly, that civilians, all civilians, wherever they are in the region, must be protected. Constant care must be taken to spare civilians and civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, energy at all times and by all parties. And humanitarians must be protected and our movements facilitated.

My second ask: we must be supported to go wherever the needs are in the region. I’ve reaffirmed our readiness to help Lebanese, Iranian, Palestinian, Israeli or other civilians, as needed. Humanitarian action is always harder in times of war, but this is, of course, when it is most needed. We count now on Member States to help ensure that our life-saving work continues.

And a third ask of the Security Council is for a revival of strategic, calm, rational, patient, hopeful diplomacy – we need calmer heads to prevail. Peacemaking is hard, but it is always better and takes more courage than the alternatives.

So, every time you hear the powerful attack the UN, ask yourself what they gain by weakening us. Let’s have the courage instead, to recommit to lasting peace, sustained stability, dependable governance and international law.

The developments of the last two weeks are further confirmation that we’re living in a time of brutality, impunity and indifference. The rules-based scaffolding meant to restrain the worst excesses of war is cracking. Human ingenuity is being applied to find ever more sinister ways to kill at scale, while civilians are subjected to ever more abject violence.

Aid workers are increasingly under attack. Just today, three more of my humanitarian colleagues, Sudan, in the [Democratic Republic of the Congo] and in Lebanon have, I’m afraid, been killed.

So, this is a tough moment for humanitarian action. We are overstretched, under sustained attack and under-resourced, but we refuse to retreat from our principles and we refuse to retreat from our mission.

We refuse to give up on the people who rely on us to survive.

And that’s why today I actually want to talk a bit about something more uplifting: a global mission to rediscover solidarity and humanity, even in these toughest of times.

Just over 87 days ago, the humanitarian community unveiled a hyper-prioritized humanitarian plan calling for $23 billion to reach 87 million people this year with life-saving support. Let me just pause on that staggering number – 87 million people, more than died in the Second World War, the catastrophe that, of course, led to the creation of the United Nations. And of course, behind every number is a life, is a story.

So we gave ourselves 87 days to challenge Member States to back this plan with resolve, with resources, with a determination to deliver something extraordinary in 2026.

And of course, the real needs are far greater than just those 87 million lives. And, of course, we have vital, vital appeals that go well beyond $23 billion, but what we’ve done here is to prioritize in line with our humanitarian principles, on the basis of impartiality, on the basis of greatest need, where the most urgent cases are that we must respond to first.

This plan will be delivered by around 2,000 humanitarian organizations across our extraordinary global humanitarian community. Over 60 per cent of them are local partners, local organizations.

And so here’s a rare piece of good news for you. In January, we reached over 7 million people with life-saving support – and they are the 7 million people facing the most severe needs in the most hard-to-reach places across 17 of our operations. In Sudan alone, we reached almost 2 million people in January, despite the security and logistics challenges we face.

Imagine delivering that same result every month, this year: 7 million lives a month. It’s an extraordinary number, but it is within our range. We can do that if we get the support we need, and we would then reach our target of 87 million lives across the year.

Of course, while we’re doing that, we’re transforming the way that we deliver humanitarian support. Through the Humanitarian Reset, we are taking out the layers the bureaucracy. We’re delivering a process, a system, that is more efficient, that ensures that more funding reaches the people we need to reach, including local organizations and especially women-led groups and projects supporting women and girls.

I promised you just over 87 days ago, when I announced this plan that I would set out where we were on the funding at this stage, where the Governments had shown up in support.

So again, let me start with some good news. We have received extraordinary backing from a significant number of Governments for this plan, and I’m hugely grateful to those ministers and ministries who are putting out their videos and statements of support as we speak.

We’ve also received $5 billion for the plan, with additional pledges and announcements, bringing the total to $8.7 billion – so that’s over a third of what we’re looking to get this year for this plan, delivered in the first quarter. And so I’m hugely grateful to those Governments who have stepped up, despite tight budgets and despite competing funding priorities.

And that $5 billion includes $810 million in unrestricted funding – the gold standard of humanitarian funding – for UN agencies, funds and programmes that gives us the flexibility to adapt our plan to where the needs are greatest.

I’m also pleased to confirm that, of that money pledged, donors have told me very clearly that a significantly higher proportion will go to the hyper-prioritized plan that the humanitarian community has set out. They are responding to the priorities that we have set, and that’s a significant improvement on previous years. So I welcome this, I look forward to seeing it in action, and I will give you continued updates to ensure that we hold everyone to account for the pledges that they have made.

So I want to thank several countries that have come forward, several States that have already come forward, in support of this plan, led by the USA, the European Commission, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, Canada, Japan, Norway, Denmark, the UAE, Belgium and Qatar. Several of those partners have also stressed that, in the coming weeks, we’ll have further good news to share.

But we still face a massive gap, and I can’t rely on States and Governments alone. Without additional support, millions of people will die.

So we need those who’ve made those pledges to deliver that disbursement quickly. We need those who have more funds available to get those funds moving fast towards this plan in the first half of the year, not the second half, to allow us to live, to deliver where support is most needed.

And we need our other friends and partners to come forward and join this global effort.

Beyond what Member States have already committed, and you’ll be able to do the maths, we still need over $14 billion now to deliver this plan, and this is at a time when conflict in the Middle East is costing $1 billion dollars a day. Listen to that number and feel the shame that I feel that we’re spending a billion dollars a day on this war. Even just $1 billion would allow us to save millions of lives.

So the choice is, there: are we going to close this gap? The resources exist, but does the solidarity Now, I believe it does, and that we will take this argument beyond Governments alone now to the public.

A recent global survey demonstrated that supporters of international aid outnumber opponents by four to one. There is a movement of billions out there.

Governments alone cannot carry the full financial weight of responding to this global humanitarian crisis, and we have our tracking systems for the money coming in, but also month by month, the lives we will save, and we will share those with you regularly to hold ourselves to account. We will share with you the data across individual crises of what money is coming in and how it is being spent. We will share with you the names of the organizations – already 1,323 who are part of this initial rollout of the plan, including 548 international NGOs. We will keep you updated in order that you can hold us to account and that we can hold ourselves to account.

But as I say, we cannot rely on Governments alone.

So now we need to reach out beyond to civil society, to business and to the public, most importantly. To date, we have $60 million already raised from foundations, corporations, individual donors, but today, we’ll launch a global public campaign to close the remaining gap – “One Life at a Time,” 87 million lives – and this is eminently doable.

We’re not asking you to choose between a hospital in Brooklyn, London, Mexico City, Rio, Manila, or a hospital in Kandahar, Akobo, Aleppo, Port-au-Prince. We’re asking you just to recognize that maybe the world can spend a little bit less on weapons this year and a little bit more on doing something extraordinary and world-changing.

We’re inviting new partners to step forward. I believe that when people understand what humanitarian funding represents and delivers, they will overwhelmingly support this action – it’s about solidarity, humanity, kindness.

We’ll work with the private sector to expand digital, multi-purpose cash assistance, reducing costs, giving people more dignity and choice. And we’re calling on the tech sector to help bring innovation into the response, putting technology in the service of humanity.

Our ask, therefore, is simple. Choose solidarity. Choose this year to save 87 million lives.

No one can end every crisis, but together, we can help end someone’s crisis – one life at a time.

If you can donate now to the many organizations that are part of this 87 million lives campaign. Look for the hashtag: #87millionlives. If you have a platform, please share this campaign. Bring others with you.

Let’s make 2026 a story of genuine solidarity and genuine hope. Let’s show that humanity can do better.

Thank you.

Q: So you mentioned the $1 billion cost every day of the war. How much does it cost in extra humanitarian needs? In other words, do you have already to revise the plan that you unveiled in December? And briefly there was during the start of the war in Ukraine, there was a mechanism between your predecessor and Russia in order to try to settle the problem of fertilizer, which seems to happen again in the Strait of Hormuz. Are you in contact with the US and the Iranian authorities in order to try to facilitate that? Thank you.

Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: Thank you. Two excellent questions. So yes, the cost of our response is going up, and we will have to prioritize even harder and further with the resources that we get in. What I’m asking for is enough resources so that we can at least plan. What tends to happen in the sector is we identify the needs that are out there, and then we wait for money to come in, and it comes in a very scattergun way. It doesn’t come in against the appeals that we set out, and we basically have to make do responding to crisis as they come.

What I’m trying to give us here is the discipline of a plan, the discipline of a strategy, but because of the conflict in the region, we are now going to have to scale up further in places like Lebanon, for example, that we’ll be setting out the detail of a Flash Appeal later in the week for Lebanon. I’m having to use more money from the [Central] Emergency Response Fund to react to these crises across the region. And every time we do that, it means that we have to deprioritize the response elsewhere at a time when, as I say, the needs go well beyond the 87 million. I have to be honest, this stuff is quite complicated – it’s not easy to explain, and part of the challenge here is helping the sector donors and organizations be more organized in the way that we collect data and really assess outcomes and delivery, rather than just count money and count it several times. Donors have a habit of announcing the same money over and over, and I’m trying to bring some discipline to this coordinated effort.

On the Straits of Hormuz, I’m really worried about food costs, energy costs, as you say, fertilizer costs. I’m worried that actually further escalation will damage other supply routes. All of this has a direct impact on our humanitarian supplies, including going to areas of key need in sub-Saharan Africa. But more broadly, it drives up the prices and so drives more people into greater need.

So we’re appealing to all the parties to try and secure those routes, including the Straits of Hormuz, for our humanitarian traffic, and we’re appealing to all parties to ensure that we have humanitarian exemptions for our humanitarian supplies, so that we can reach anyone, anywhere, on the basis of greatest need, and not on the basis of politics.

Q: Are you in contact with the authorities of both countries on that trigger?

Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: I’m in daily contact with authorities throughout the region, including those as part of the conflict right now, as are, of course, colleagues across the UN.

Q: You just mentioned Lebanon, so I’d like to know if you intend to be traveling to the region. And it appears that the UN [Secretary-General] will be traveling this week to Lebanon. So are you going to travel with him? And do you plan also to go to the Gulf regions? Thank you.

Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: I’m obviously looking at my travel plans for the coming weeks in what is a very turbulent moment. I don’t know if we’ve yet confirmed the [Secretary-General’s] travel plans this week. You’ll know he’s on the way to Turkiye at the moment, so I don’t know how much more I can say about his trip. I’ll refer you to [Stephane Dujarric, the Secretary-General’s Spokesman,] in New York, who I’m sure will have more to say on that.

I do have senior colleagues from the humanitarian team going to Lebanon in the next couple of days, and again, we’ll say more about that once they once they get there, and I’m in daily contact with our superb Humanitarian Coordinator, Resident Coordinator, in Beirut, who is, of course, monitoring the situation very closely and giving us constant needs assessments, including on the increased needs that Lebanon is facing, and that we’ll set out as part of the Flash Appeal.

I will certainly be in the region later this month, but will confirm exactly where closer to the time.

Q: I was just wondering on what kind of contingency plans you guys are looking at for the region – if you have any estimates yet, of the numbers of numbers of people, more people who will be in need or who will be displaced because of the conflict now. Is there any way of estimating that? Also, you mentioned that you’re calling on countries to spend less on weapons and more on solidarity, but I think the trend right that we’re seeing right now is going in the opposite direction, with also spending on a lot of arms that that previously were not accepted by the international community. How concerned are you about this? Thank you.

Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: Thank you. So it’s hard for us to predict how many will be displaced, but already, hundreds of thousands of people are on the move. Many of those in Iran are internally displaced at the moment. We’re monitoring very closely the border with Iraq to see whether there is an increase there in the numbers crossing. And I talked to our Resident Coordinator yesterday to make sure we have preparedness plans in place in Iraq.

I also talked to Humanitarian Coordinators in Afghanistan and Pakistan, because you’ve got existing high levels of displacement, and so you may find further waves on top of those creating that escalation. Of course, that’s already happening in Lebanon, where you now have people on the move from the south and from the Dahiyeh, from the southern suburbs, many of the many Syrians returning back to Syria, and now many Lebanese who’ve been displaced many times actually, moving elsewhere in Lebanon or trying to cross over into Syria. So those numbers are very, very worrying, and every day of the war pushes more people away from their homes and their communities. I’m sorry, the second question?

Q: It was on the weapons spending.

Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: So, I’m really worried about drones in particular. I think the world has decided that it’s far more interested in spending enormous amounts of money developing these increasingly deadly weapons than it is on saving lives, and it seems to have decided that it hasn’t got time to work on ensuring that the rules that govern these weapons, these lethal autonomous weapons, keep up with the pace of technology.

So you’ve got this dangerous alliance between very innovative technology and huge amounts of money and people’s desire to kill more people – and that’s a toxic combination. And last year, 90 per cent of all deaths caused by drones [and other explosive weapons in populated areas] were civilians, many of them humanitarians. And we’re seeing that across the crises on which we work – whether it’s Gaza, Sudan or in Ukraine, we’re seeing these bad practices move between crises. The bad actors are actually discovering newer ways to kill and learning from each other new ways to kill, and we’re struggling to keep up with that innovation in killing. So I’m really concerned about this, but I’m really concerned that this, this conflict whenever it ends, or whenever people claim it ends, this phase of the conflict, will mean that in the next phase, people will be spending even more money on arms and defense, because they’ll be more anxious about the next conflict. There’ll be even less funding for humanitarian action.

But you also have this knock-on effect on international law and international trust. It will be even harder for us to stand up the systems and processes, the scaffolding, that’s meant to hold the world together because it’s facing such sustained attritional attack. So that’s what I mean about the warning lights on the dashboard flashing red right now.

Q: I was just at a at a session at the CCG about the security of aid workers in the field, and the need to be impartial and neutral to gain acceptance. Is OCHA’s conditional deal with the US on aid putting this impartiality at risk, let alone setting a precedent for donors to follow suit with their own conditions at a time that the aid sector is looking for increased funding, flexible funding? And also, I just have another question, which is, you know, this morning, you spoke about the need to, for localization, to actually put it into action. And I’m wondering with regard to the conflict now, have there been discussions at all about decentralizing distribution of aid, given the importance that Dubai plays in in that?

Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: I mean, just to be clear, I’m utterly committed to neutrality and independence, impartiality of aid, and there’s no way, even in this transactional world, that we’re going to transact away our principles and our values, so I don’t know where that idea has come from, that somehow we have made any compromise there.

But we are absolutely clear on the independence of our needs-based, principled aid. And we’re clear on that with all our donors. And we receive a lot of pressure from many, many different donors to spend more money in their capitals, for example, or to count more of their aid money, or more of what they’re doing on the security side as somehow humanitarian aid.

And this is why I’m going for this approach with this Global Humanitarian Overview, where I will be setting out, not just what’s spoken of, or what’s pledged or what’s claimed as humanitarian aid, much of which is spent nowhere near the crises that we’re actually dealing with. I will only count, when I hold people to account, the money that’s actually spent against this prioritized plan set by the whole community.

And absolutely no, we have to, if we compromise our principles here, then we become just one more transactional actor. We’ve got to be bigger and better than that.

On decentralization, so we do rely on our partners across the Gulf, including where we have these humanitarian hubs. In the UAE, we do a lot of work with our friends and partners in Qatar as well, in Saudi, so across the region, and I’m in again daily contact with them to make sure we can keep those humanitarian supplies moving and to make sure we can continue to rely on that sense of collective partnership. And I’m reassured by the conversations I’m having that their commitment to those humanitarian hubs remains as strong as ever. Now, of course, we have to look all the time at where we pre-position supplies. We have to continuously contingency plan on our supply routes, but we’ll do that with our partners in the region.

Q: Can you elaborate a little bit in your hyper-prioritized, the three areas where you need to channel most funds to save lives. And besides the Middle East region, what about other crisis areas that are not getting into the spotlight, like Central and West Africa? Thank you.

Under-Secretary-General Fletcher: Thank you. Yes, so across the $23 billion, we have very specific allocations to different country crises, and two that are at the very top of that list are Gaza and Sudan, in terms of the amount of money that we need to raise in response. We do, as I said in answer to an earlier question, then also adapt our plans as needs change. So, for example, Lebanon is moving up the list as we speak.

But I’m really glad that you mentioned the neglected crises, because this is a big concern I have in this moment. I’ve just returned from South Sudan; visited in the last year, of course, many of the neglected crises: Haiti, DRC. We struggle to fundraise for the Sahel, where you have a lot of people in need as part of our plan. But again, this is part of why we’re doing the hyper-prioritization: so that we can be really clear about where the gaps are.

Some donors want to put a significant amount of money, for example, to the Ukraine crisis, which is, of course, a massive humanitarian crisis, but that then means that they deprioritize other crises, for example, in sub-Saharan Africa. And what I’m trying to do across these major, major crises is then to show where the gaps are and to ensure that as a as a world, we’re much more strategic about this than we than we might otherwise be.

Posted on 11 March 2026