Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator
The escalation of hostilities across the Middle East and beyond has triggered a humanitarian crisis with consequences that stretch far beyond the immediate frontlines. Civilians are paying the highest price: lives lost, homes destroyed, essential services disrupted, and hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee, often repeatedly, within and across borders.
It has also caused the most severe global humanitarian supply chain disruption since COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. Our essential air, land and maritime corridors for humanitarian aid are restricted, driving up costs, delaying deliveries, and increasing the risk of hunger and deprivation in the Middle East and beyond.
Humanitarian partners are responding. Across Iran, Lebanon, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Syria, Afghanistan and neighbouring countries, local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), United Nations entities, and the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement are delivering life-saving help, often under extreme pressure. In Lebanon, a three-month Flash Appeal is supporting up to one million people, backed by rapid allocations from the Central Emergency Response Fund and the Lebanon Humanitarian Fund. In Iran, humanitarian partners are scaling up support, for Iranians hit by the crisis and refugees whom Iran has hosted for decades, with appeals for the refugee response and support to the Iranian Red Crescent Society. In Afghanistan, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Syria and Yemen, partners need funding against our existing response plans as they deliver while facing rapidly rising costs.
Our response is anchored in the Humanitarian Reset. Our priorities are clear and deliberate: to define our response, prioritizing those facing the most life-threatening needs; to deliver lifesaving aid swiftly and effectively; to empower and resource local and national organizations closest to the people we serve; and to defend international humanitarian law and our humanitarian principles. Our colleagues from across the humanitarian community are standing firm in an era marked by impunity, polarization, and indifference, amid threats to the lives of those we serve and to aid workers themselves.
This overview sets out how the humanitarian community is responding to this complex and consequential crisis. It is a call to protect civilians, to uphold international humanitarian law, and to act, collectively and decisively, to save lives now, while working relentlessly for the political solutions that people across the Middle East and beyond so urgently need. Humanitarians cannot end wars, but we can reduce the civilian suffering they create. To do that we need support, including urgent and flexible funding. The world seems to have unlimited resources for weapons. Let’s prioritize the civilians whose lives they destroy.