The world needs to re-find a sense of “human solidarity and kindness” if it is to repair the damage caused by “cataclysmic” overseas aid cuts from the US, UK and other countries, the UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher has said.
Speaking at an event hosted by the think tank Chatham House, Mr Fletcher, who runs the UN body charged with coordinating responses to disasters, warned that cuts to aid programmes are costing lives across the world
“The funding crisis has been cataclysmic for us,” he said. “The money is going down and the numbers in need are going up. So there’s a pattern of failure and we have to do things differently.”
The UN humanitarian plan to save 87 million lives this year, he added, represents a “hyper-prioritisation” of aid efforts where only people in the most dire need are offered support.
This choice comes in the wake of humanitarian funding falling precipitously – driven largely by US cuts – with the agency’s planned 2026 budget of $23 billion (£17bn) nearly half the $37bn raised in 2024.
When asked what needs to be done to restore foreign aid to levels that would come close to meeting humanitarian needs of today, he suggested that “we need to fight back in different ways”.
“One is to recommit a sense of human solidarity and kindness… and to fight the apathy and the distraction that pulls people away from that,” Mr Fletcher said.
“When people can think of this as one life at a time, it becomes more manageable, because who wouldn’t help that person who needs food or medicine or shelter today,” he added.
In addition, the sector needs to demonstrate that it is well-managed and efficient, and has a “serious plan” to tackle the problems of today, Mr Fletcher added.
He also spoke about the difficulties that the UN faces when offered aid money with certain stipulations – such as aid with restrictions around health and religion offered by the US – which the UN feels unable to accept due to those stipulations contravening the organisation’s founding principles.
“Under the new US administration, US aid funding does have more conditions… [including] restrictions around abortion, transgender rights, and about where the money can be spent to a greater degree,” he said.
“At the moment, I’m in a situation where I’m saying: I cannot take that money under those conditions,” he continued. “But I lie awake at night wondering… how many people will die for those principles because I’m not willing to take that money.”
Mr Fletcher also warned that it is “extremely dangerous” if we “normalise” the kind of rhetoric that has been coming from the Trump Administration during the current War in the Middle East, including around sending countries “back to the Stone Age” or “destroying civilisations”.
“It gives more freedom to all the other wannabe autocrats around the world to use that sort of language, [and to use] those sorts of tactics to target civilian infrastructure and civilians in a way which contravenes international law,” he said.
At the same time, when it comes to humanitarian aid, Mr Fletcher said that the Trump Administration has significantly warmed to UN efforts compared to the attitude held at the start of 2025, when the administration closed down the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
“In recent months and weeks, they’ve been quite complimentary when they see the UN in action,” he said. “The more they see it, the more they think that actually, we are not just a bunch of woke, incompetent, useless, exhausted bureaucrats.”
But he added there remains a lot of “back and forth” when it comes to working with the US, with much of the difficulty resulting from the fact that parties from the UN and the US come from different professional backgrounds.
“Most of the guys I am working with are people with a real estate background. And I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but it’s a different approach to the world,” he said.
“For people doing statecraft, the handshake comes at the end of the process. For real estate craft, you do the handshake at the start… And we then get frustrated because we think, where is the agreement?”
This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
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