Tom Fletcher, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), set the tone at the beginning of the European Humanitarian Forum, a high-level conference held in Brussels on 19 and 20 May.
He pointed out that truck drivers at the borders of Gaza, and not the Brussels Forum, are the actual “humanitarian frontline”. “We have 29 lorries at the Kerem Shalom border crossing – and thousands more ready – and those first drivers going in will be met by looters and 100,000 starving people. (…) 29 is nothing compared to what is needed. We have 9,000 trucks we want to get into Gaza right now, and we will take every opening we have.”
This snapshot of the current situation opened the debate on humanitarian aid during the two-day conference, in the context of sharp United States funding cuts.
A global financing gap that existed even before the current crisis
“Even before all this happened in the last few months, last year we faced the biggest funding gap ever: we asked for almost 50 billion dollars and we received just under 40% of that,” said Ramesh Rajasingham, Director of UNOCHA’s Coordination Division in Geneva, during a panel on “The role of humanitarian diplomacy to safeguard humanitarian space, including access”.
“That was not necessarily a loss in generosity, it is just that the problems are getting much bigger and accumulating without solutions. The drastic funding cuts have been now exacerbated by the attacks on multilateralism and the politicisation of aid, which has pushed us to breaking point these last few months. We are now looking at 200 million people living under the control of non-State armed groups territories. They need humanitarian assistance, and we will have to reprioritise to focus on smaller numbers we have to address”. And this, at the cost of the principles of humanitarian and international laws, added Ramesh Rajasingham.
“A deliberate starvation in Gaza”
“There is a deliberate starvation in Gaza, one of the easiest places on earth to roll into” and deliver aid, underlined Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), a global NGO helping 10 million people in need.
On the growing problem of lack of access in conflict zones, Jan Egeland mentioned the “deliberate attempt to keep us from Zamzam when the massacres took place in western Sudan. (…) It’s an outrage that we are denied access in one place after the other in 2025. That is not echoed enough in capital cities and among decision makers. We have tried for 12 years to get systematically into hard-to-reach places. (…) We are not even in the Russian occupied areas of Ukraine, and we have not had even one truck in Gaza for the last two months. We should be much blunter in saying who is denying us access and call people out”.
The role of humanitarian diplomacy
“In all the crises we see, policy is key,” stated Comfort Ekuase Ero, CEO and President of International Crisis Group, on a panel on the Middle East. “A question I always ask myself is whether Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader at the time, when he masterminded this assault on 7 of October 2023, underestimated the largely unrestrained response of Israel. (…) We cannot sit in this room or any other summit in the world and say never again while this catastrophe is unfolding in front of our eyes”.
When asked what the European Union could do, Hadja Lahbib, European Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management responded: “Budget, money and political will, diplomacy”. After describing how “principles are severely tested on the ground” in Gaza, due to the lack of access for humanitarian aid, she stated: “I hope Gaza will not be the cemetery of international humanitarian law”.
On 20 May 2025, donor countries delivered a common statement signed by several EU member states and other donor countries to ask for unimpeded humanitarian access in Gaza.
Filippo Grandi, High Commissioner of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), speaking on a panel on Sudan, made a strong appeal to the EU to pay attention to the crises surrounding its 27 member states: “Sudan is just one big ring in a chain of conflicts. You have Sahel, you have Sudan, next to Sudan you have Yemen, you have Gaza, you have the rest of the Middle East, you have Ukraine not far. Europe is surrounded by a belt of crises. If we’re not able, at least, to bring help to those that are victims of these crises, there will be consequences for Europe as well in terms of instability, in terms of refugee flows.”
A standing ovation for Philippe Lazzarini
Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees, made a strong statement on Gaza: “We are out of words to describe the hell and horror that people are going through. It’s definitely beyond imagination. But the worst with all this, we are confronted with a situation where, with the political will, the war can stop.”
“I was in Rwanda at the end of genocide and followed Srebrenica, and again two decades later, under our daily watch on social media, we have a similar situation unfolding. We are in a situation today of a man-made famine. (…) Here, it’s completely fabricated: food is being weaponised, humanitarian aid is weaponised to serve and support political and military objectives, absolutely nothing else”.
“On Gaza, we failed. Rarely have we been confronted with a situation where openly, international humanitarian law and humanitarian community have been so disregarded, defied. If you look at only my agency, last week we reached the threshold of 300 staff killed”.
After describing how UNRWA has become a target of this war, with a “massive disinformation campaign, constant intimidation and bullying”, and the “total impunity” at play regarding all the “red lines” crossed in this conflict, his words were welcomed by a standing ovation at the Square Brussels Convention Centre.
The United Nations’ “mighty mission”
Against the backdrop of increasing funding cuts, the European Humanitarian Forum was a particularly important gathering for UN officials. With the contributions of donors such as the EU, the UN assists and protects more than 100 million people every year through humanitarian programmes. More than ever, EU-UN cooperation is crucial, in a rapidly changing world facing multiple conflicts.
The EU is also an essential voice for the universal values of human rights, gender equality, the rule of law, and a rule-based international order. This was seconded by Tom Fletcher, head of UNOCHA in his introductory words. “We have to defend humanitarian law. It cannot just be about the practical delivery on the ground. We have to defend the values and that is why this meeting is so important in Brussels, because many of those values, including core beliefs around equality, are also under attack right now.
(…) We need to rediscover our sense of global solidarity but I believe as stronger as ever in what we are doing. I believe our mission is still mighty and there are people who will back what we are doing”.
