Tom Fletcher

I'll just take these two questions.

Thanks very much, minister, thank you for a very interesting presentation and I was reading the other day that Tom Fletcher, who I think will also attend the humanitarian conference in Brussels.

run by the Irish Presidency and Commissioner Labib, that he was working on the humanitarian recess for the UN, but also in tandem having dialogues with the new FCDO about just how to deal with projects that are perhaps too large and pillars that are too strong.

How do you break them down and keep them agile and flexible? And so he came out in front of the UN and spoke to the press as well about his list of 10 priorities.

It, it feels new to us politically and conversationally, but this is not new.

Like, I had a briefing last week, or I was present at a briefing last week, uh, with, uh, uh, Under Secretary General Tom Fletcher from the U- United Nations, who spoke about AI drones being used in the battlefield right now in, in Ukraine, and these, what makes them different from regular drones is that they're programmed to kill and target a, a, a military target in the first instance.

But when it starts to run out of power, it then is programmed to just kill, uh, indiscriminately.

Mm-hmm.

How do we get out of this? I, I, I...

Maybe we should ask, uh, I think you're three brilliant minds, I think we should ask Tom Fletcher to step aside for a day, and then we, uh, nominate the three of you to be ERC for a day, and you then have to come with your solution on how to reform this.

We start with, uh, Olivia.

Well, just to say I would not want Tom Fletcher's job.

He has a very difficult job.

I do not envy him.

Aid teams also collected medical and education supplies and food from the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south of the enclave, as families face a fourth winter in tents and makeshift shelters.

In an appeal for greater access, the UN's top aid coordinator, Tom Fletcher, stressed the need for more funding for fuel to prevent a dangerous slowdown of healthcare, water provision, rescue operations, debris removal and other critical services.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.

land aid cuts, but also all the donor retrenchment, I hear humanitarians talking about, you know, just wondering where the community was, where the support was for people who would march out into the streets and support aid.

To mom, you and I spoke with Tom Fletcher around this time last year, and he was talking about, well, you know, we need to find where these people are, where we lost them along the way.

And, you know, what Philip Proudfoot was saying was, well, they're still here, but maybe they don't look like you think they do, and maybe they don't necessarily see themselves as humanitarian in that way.

There is a huge population that cares.

Maybe in a more general sense, what I'd put forward in terms of what's stepping into the void is whoever can tell the clearest narrative.

I think we've seen success from people who are able to communicate.

And I think the best communicator the formal system has is Tom Fletcher.

He sold the humanitarian reset as this narrative of change when it's really not a reform movement.

The Atlantic notes that this still lags well behind what the United States spent after comparable disasters in the region, including the Haitian earthquake of 2010.

Tom Fletcher, who runs the UN relief effort, says another $300 million is needed to reach more than a million people requiring life-saving support.

Meanwhile, the opposition, the people who would have to form the elected government that could actually unlock any of these assets, has not been having a good time either.

Maria Carino-Maccato was barred from standing in the 2024 election, spent much of the following year in hiding and won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her work promoting democratic rights and for unifying the opposition behind the demand for free elections.

In a separate development, US Ambassador Mike Huckabee announced that America will soon begin construction of a permanent embassy facility in Jerusalem, a move that solidifies the US presence there since the embassy's relocation in 2018.

Meanwhile, a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly between aid chief Tom Fletcher and Iran's foreign minister reportedly sparked outrage, with Israel's UN envoy Danny Danon questioning whether Tehran's humanitarian work against protesters was discussed.

Within Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu has denied meeting with Egyptian intelligence chief Arbas Kamel or receiving any pre-October 7th warnings from Egypt.

He announced his intention to file a defamation suit, alleging a foreign-backed left-wing media campaign aims to overthrow his government.

But in the meantime, also, we need to have the protection to be able to deliver safely and have access to the most vulnerable.

Earlier this year, As It Happens spoke with the UN's Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher.

He told us about a push to raise some $23 billion in funding to meet the organization's needs.

And he highlighted the billions being spent to fund the war in the Middle East, saying that money the UN needs is there, but it's a matter of priorities.