UN humanitarian chief: ‘Let’s save 87 million lives this year’

UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator Tom Fletcher has said the US “is challenging the international system in a way that we haven’t seen for decades”.

From pulling out of international and multilateral organisations such as the World Health Organisation to eliminating USAID, US President Donald Trump has made clear moves that business as usual would not suffice.

Speaking to The National in Davos before the start of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, Mr Fletcher said: “This is a US-built world order after the Second World War. It’s the US that basically crafted and framed and often oversaw the way these international institutions operated.”

He added that he had been working closely with the US administration on several files, including getting aid into the Gaza Strip for the past year.

“In my experience, it’s a more transactional world, it is a more hard-power, raw-power world … but I’m not experiencing a US withdrawal from the issues that we’re working on,” he said.

“But I hear them wanting to engage overall, and so I take encouragement from that.”

Last month, the US committed $2 billion to the humanitarian sector, in addition to working with the UN to try to get access to areas in need of aid in Sudan and Gaza.

“There’s an enormous need out there, but $2 billion is a lot more than zero, which is what we feared that we would get,” Mr Fletcher said.

“It’s also significant because the US is coming in and saying very clearly, ‘This is in support of the humanitarian reset, the reforms that we’ve set out over the last year.’”

He added that having US support would ensu