Remarks of Mr. Tom Fletcher, UN USG for Humanitarian Affairs and ERC, on World Humanitarian Day

Thank you very much, Steph [Dujarric, Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General], and thank you for those words and for the Secretary-General’s statement of solidarity with humanitarians globally. It’s a tough day for us. It’s a sombre day for us, and I join you in paying tribute to humanitarians who run these extraordinary risks – risks that they shouldn’t have to run – because behind those grim numbers that Steph read out are names, they are colleagues, they are our friends, they are families, and they are the best of us. 

And this is not a temporary spike that we’re seeing. This is a stain. It is the normalization of violence against our community, and we will not accept it. We do not accept it. We will not allow this violence, this killing of humanitarians, to be normalized. And so we do grieve today, and we honour the memory of our friends and colleagues, and we recommit to this mission, the mission that they loved and ultimately died for. We recommit to that mission in their memory. 

As Steph said, nearly 1,000 aid workers were killed, injured or kidnapped, with States dominating that violence against humanitarians. And behind it all, this sense we feel of impunity, of a lack of accountability for those who pulled the trigger, those who gave the order, those who supplied the weapon, those who created the environment in which it could be used in that way. I’ve been in the job now for almost two years, and I struggle to think of meaningful investigations into this litany of killing that we’ve seen. 

So this is why I’m in Ukraine at the moment for World Humanitarian Day. I’ve been in Kherson for the last two days, which is a real epicentre at the moment – it’s saturated by the use of drones against civilian areas. It’s become one of the places, I’m afraid, where you get to really understand this dystopian reality that lies ahead, potentially, for many of us, but is an existence day to day for people here and in so many of the crisis areas in which we work, from Somalia to Sudan to Gaza to Lebanon. 

As Steph says, this day was born from tragedy, the Canal Hotel bombing 23 years ago. But those tragedies are now continuing day to day, and we’re seeing them increasingly powered by a chilling alliance between technological ingenuity and modern warfare, and the victims are civilians and they are humanitarians. 

I was really struck – I drove the road four times, actually, that Ukrainians call the "Road of Death," between Mykolaiv and Kherson, and until you see it and experience it, it’s hard to describe driving for miles and miles, kilometres, kilometres along these roads covered in netting to try and keep out as many of the drones as possible. That sense when you’re walking around of the constant threat, the alarms going on everyone’s phone incessantly, and the sense of collective anxiety that these drones create. 

I’ve not been anywhere – and you know, I spend my time in pretty tough neighbourhoods – I’ve not been anywhere where drones are so much part of the conversation. Everyone – from the kids I met in shelters, civilians, humanitarians, my colleagues – can tell the difference between the sound of a first-person-view drone and a fibre-optic drone and medium-range drones or loitering munitions, which are such a threat to our work. And so these weapons have become part of life and part of the language of people here, and that’s pretty chilling. 

I met, of course, civilians who've lost limbs to these first-person-view drones that are everywhere. And of course, the terrifying thing here is that the operator of that drone knows exactly what they’re doing. If they fly around the person selling fruit and vegetables in the market, or the humanitarian delivering food, they have a good look at them before they take the shot that will kill or maim them for life. 

I visited a hospital where doctors told me around 70 per cent of their wounded patients have blast injuries from drones – 70, seven-zero, per cent – and where they’re moving the wards and the theatres underground to try and escape those drones. We had to run to avoid one example of that. You know, and the drone that had caused such damage to Kherson Hospital, you know, I handled that drone. It was a $300 drone. So, increasingly cheap and available munitions.

And of course, I met the families who are trying to continue their lives in the face of these challenges: sleeping underground, learning online, desperately surviving day to day. And who keeps going – they keep going despite those challenges. I met Serhii this morning, he – an extraordinary humanitarian – delivers hot meals for his local humanitarian organization, and a drone attack cost him his leg. He turned up at the hospital and asked them to stick it back on. Went back to work within weeks, coordinating the teams delivering food to people who need it. 

I met the doctors working around the clock in conditions of extreme danger. The volunteers evacuating people from the communities on the front lines. We were just a kilometre away yesterday from those front lines, and, as always, it’s the civilians who are doing the most to help their fellow civilians and local organizations on whom we depend. And I again pay tribute to their courage globally in the face of these challenges. 

So you see this dystopian reality of these kill zones and kamikaze drones increasingly putting lethal power into the hands of more people, and all of that without the accountability that [...]. 

We have a sense that it’s not just the killer who’s further from the victim, but that accountability and justice are further from the victim, and that the technology is changing every week as these drones become more sophisticated. 

But what doesn’t change or must not change each week is international humanitarian law. The law is meant to protect us, meant to protect civilians from all weapons, however sophisticated they are. So we need those investigations. We need accountability. We need the international community to uphold the law. 

And, of course, this isn’t just a Ukraine story. I’ve seen the way that armed drones are transforming war around the world. I was told in Somalia a few weeks ago by women that they were fleeing not famine or violence, but the drones that are following them around, as people are experimenting with cheaper and cheaper and more available technology. So, from Sudan to Colombia to Gaza to Lebanon, these cheap armed drones are extending the reach of war and allowing people to kill at greater distances. A thousand civilians killed in Sudan in the first five months of the year. 

These numbers aren’t static – they are going up, including the numbers of kids killed. 

So we need States to uphold the law, and we need the companies that are manufacturing and supplying these weapons to understand international humanitarian law, to understand how these weapons are being used and to understand their obligations and responsibilities. I fear, otherwise, that the death toll from these weapons will continue to rise, and we’ll be back again next year with another grim litany of stats to share with you. 

Concern from Member States is not enough. We need action right now. 

And, of course, drones can help us in humanitarian work. They can deliver vaccines to communities that we can’t otherwise reach. I was in Venezuela a few weeks ago, in the aftermath of the earthquake, and saw how we’re using drones to locate survivors amid the rubble. So they do have positive uses, but so much of what we’re seeing is inhumane and reckless. 

We need to ensure that if the global economy is being put, as it is, on a war footing, that we are also training these weapons in the right way, and that we’re also ensuring that technology does not outpace humanity and that technology does not outpace accountability.

So I close where I started, paying tribute to our extraordinary humanitarian colleagues around the world who continue to do this work, local organizations, NGOs, UN humanitarian agencies, local partners who continue to do this work with such courage and creativity in the face of such challenge and danger. 

And an attack on any one of us in our humanitarian movement is an attack on all of us. 

Media contacts:

In New York: Eri Kaneko, kaneko@un.org, +1 917 208 8910
In Geneva: Jens Laerke, laerke@un.org, +41 79 472 9750