Rethinking Humanitarianism | An interview with UN relief chief Tom Fletcher

Melissa Fundira

Global emergencies are worsening. The humanitarian system itself faces a crisis of funding, and relevance. 

 

Tom Fletcher

It's not just our finances that are under attack, but it's also our morale and our legitimacy. 

 

Fundira

That’s Tom Fletcher, the UN’s top humanitarian official. He’s been leading a reform plan he calls “a humanitarian reset”.

 

But there’s what feels like an ideological split in today’s humanitarian sector: Re-tool the system, or re-build it entirely? 

 

Fletcher

I don't think that we've suffered in the past from an absence of ideas in the sector, but we've often suffered from a failure to implement and execute on those ideas. And I think every single person in the sector can recognise that a lot of the ideas have often languished, but I'm determined that we actually execute on these plans, and see them through.

 

Fundira

Fletcher says change has to start somewhere, and that begins with making the humanitarian system leaner, more collaborative, and more inclusive. 

 

So, what comes next? What about more systemic change?

 

Fletcher

We have to be ready to explore whether we're all needed in the same way in the sector. And, maybe my job won't be needed in a few years. Ultimately, maybe none of us will need to be here, because we'll have actually confronted these massive humanitarian challenges. So, if that point comes sooner than I planned, then, I am okay. 

 

Fundira

From Toronto, Canada, I'm Melissa Fundira. 

 

Aloudat

And from Geneva, Switzerland, I am Tammam Alouadat. This is Rethinking Humanitarianism, a podcast about the future of aid in a world of rising crisis.

 

Fundira

I first want to thank our listeners for joining us for another season. This time, I’m handing the mic over to The New Humanitarian’s CEO. Tammam Aloudat brings 25 years of experience as a volunteer, a physician, and an aid worker – most recently with Médecins Sans Frontières. This season, Tammam will be interviewing people he believes have something to say about the future of aid.

 

First up, Tom Fletcher. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. He was also the UK’s ambassador to Lebanon, and authored The Naked Diplomat: Understanding Power and Politics in the Digital Age.

 

When they sat down together in Geneva, Tammam kicked off by asking Tom Fletcher whether today’s reset feels more like a rehash of the Grand Bargain, a reform plan agreed on nearly 10 years ago. 

Aloudat

The first time I read what you've written in March about the reset in the early days. My initial impression is, I wouldn't have been shocked if I read that in 2015...

Fletcher 

And in fact, you probably did read it in 2015.

Aloudat

Exactly my point.

Fletcher 

It was there in the Grand Bargain. It’s been there in countless reports.

Aloudat

So, my initial fear was, have we forgotten 2015 and are we trying to repeat the same story? The indication is, we acknowledge at least that a lot of the discourse, for example, on localisation in 2015 didn't work, on reducing the top heavy. How are you going to make it work?

Fletcher

So, what's different ten years on? 

Aloudat

Yes. 

Fletcher

Some things are, I think. Firstly, we've had more time to test the pilots around localisation, and you've got proof of concept. It's much harder for those who are opposed to dig in so hard, because we've demonstrated that where we do it properly, we deliver. Secondly, there's less money, you know, so we are forced to do things in different ways. We've got to be cynical and realistic about that, and I think that provides an extra impetus for reform that maybe wasn't there in the same way in 2015. I think you're also seeing a stronger message from NGOs - and donors as well, actually - that they will take decisions that will drive this process. Everyone now will be held to account for whether that is true, whether we all play our part, but that makes me more confident that we can genuinely see this power shift in the period ahead in a way that we haven't always in the past.

Aloudat

Where is the resistance, if there's any?

Fletcher

Fair question. And ultimately, power in the sector comes down to money and data. And I think we're all aware that the entire sector is not going to survive in the same shape, and so all of us are going through these horrendous processes of cuts. Now, you know, the big UN agencies, losing a third of their people, a third of their programs. As you get further towards local NGOs and community groups, the cuts are even more brutal. So, everyone is trying to work out, how do we preserve our organisation and preserve our space? And as part of the conversation, what I'm saying to everyone is try and take a step back. We've all got to imagine that we don't need to exist and then focus on the unique things that only we can do. So, in my acronym, the one thing that I should be doing, ultimately, is coordination. If you are doing food, do food. If you are an NGO that does accountability, do accountability, and that's a big mindset shift as well. So, the resistance - sorry, that was a long way around to basically saying - the resistance kicks in when the devil is in the detail, and when people can see the way that money will flow in different ways, and fear that it will flow away from them, and that's perfectly understandable.

Aloudat

And in that sense, obviously you're having to deal with those layers. The hyper-prioritisation is keeping the ship afloat now, so we still have services to be delivered to people prioritised, and that is an acute reaction. There is another one, which is the structuring - or restructuring, that you were talking about - that requires a wider consultation. We've asked a couple of people from local organisations. 

Gloria Soma

Hello. My name is Gloria Soma. I’m the executive director of the TD Foundation in South Sudan. 

Aloudat

And part of what she's saying is, at the country level, only senior UN officials seem to know what is happening.

Soma

There are many claims that local communities and NGOs have been consulted about the humanitarian reset, but at the country level, only very senior UN officials seem to know what is happening. Less than one percent of local actors know what’s going on, and I think the UN has a responsibility to engage affected communities in genuinely reshaping the humanitarian system. The reset should not be about maintaining UN mandates, or organisational interests, hence my question to you is: from a civil society perspective in South Sudan, where is the active engagement of local NGOs and affected communities in really shaping the reset discussion?

Fletcher

I think it's a really good point. I mean, I spend a lot of time in consultations with NGOs in country, and I visited Sudan, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Myanmar, Afghanistan. I always have lengthy consultations with NGOs, and listen hard. But, I think we can always do more, and I think this is an imperfect process. This is a massive sector going through a bigger transformation than at any time in living memory, perhaps since the sector was constructed in this way after the Second World War, and it's having to go very, very fast, because the cuts are kicking in as we speak. So, one of the big shifts in this next phase is that in pushing power and consultation into country, there should be more local NGO involvement to suit the local context. So, I hope those practical changes do shift more power. I'd also say, you know, I'm normally accused of over-communicating, not under-communicating. And I put out every two weeks bulletins which - the UN also leaks everything within seconds of deciding it, of course - but I put out these regular bulletins which give as much information about the reset as I share with OCHA, for example. I'm not sending an internal bulletin to OCHA saying: Here's where we are on the reset. I'm just putting it straight into my public communication. So, in the absence of being able to talk to every single NGO in the world at every point in this process, I hope that signals a shift of receptiveness and body language, and I hope that that then percolates through the system, and that there's a genuine engagement.

Aloudat

Part of the humanitarian attitude, at least in my experience, having worked in it 25 years, is that we think we're in a bubble separate from the world. 

Fletcher

Yeah.

Aloudat 

And I was interested in your briefing in New York on the 15th of May, you said that the rules-based order is facing the greatest set test since its creation. Why do you think that is the case? 

Fletcher

I genuinely believe that, and it was something I was writing about actually, before starting the job. I really worry that this scaffolding that we built around the international order in the middle of the last century, after the Second World War, when we'd learned to our cost, why we needed it so much, that that is really fragile at the moment, and it's not just a financing crisis. It's a crisis of morale and legitimacy, and I think it goes back to the financial crash. I was very involved, working in the UK government at the time, 2008, 2009, and there was a moment at the end of that G20 summit that we convened in London. Gordon Brown convened. I was the one official in the room, where Obama, who was quite new, sort of tapped the microphone and said, Look, unless we fix the wider context in which we're facing this financial crash of growing inequality and a reduction in the power and influence of global institutions, then the next crisis will be so much worse. And we all said, Yeah, absolutely, and nodded along, and then did nothing. And I think we've seen actually through Covid - yeah, I mean in a way you could say Covid, Kabul, Kyiv. You've seen the international system pulling apart in different ways, a retreat from the sense that we can get out there and fix global problems collectively, and a retreat into introversion and nationalism and transactional geopolitics, and that makes it a very hard time to be a humanitarian.

Aloudat 

You're using very diplomatic language as a test and the scaffolding and the moral…which I agree to. But, one could also argue that the order that has been in place since the Second World War is also extractive, destructive, has sacrificed people, and the climate, and Obama, who was talking about the next solution, dropped 16,000 bombs on the last year of his presidency without ever declaring war. What is significantly different now?

Fletcher 

I think it's the lack of public confidence in that system. I mean, I think there was that sort of post-1989 consensus, maybe up until 2016, that overall, we needed international systems, global solutions to global problems. And I think it's that, that has quietly and then suddenly, fallen away in the last decade. But you're absolutely right. This was a far from perfect system. It still doesn't distribute power evenly across the world, and it's still much too hierarchical. And in a way, those of us who probably drank too much of the end-of-history Kool Aid after 1989, it's always been an existential moment for us to recognise that a lot of the things that we saw, that we took for granted as being right, were also inherently flawed, and perpetuated different types of inequality. 

Aloudat

And back to being a humanitarian under those circumstances of, as you said, the lack of public confidence that is leading us to a historical moment, at least in humanitarian terms. MSF, issued a letter to the European leaders talking about the war in Gaza, following patterns consistent with genocide and arguing that Europe is complicit in it. How are we to function in a place where we need to be part of the system, as far as it allows us to work? And being part of the system risks being, you know, in bed with those who might turn out to be complicit in perpetrating? 

Fletcher

This is a massive challenge, isn't it? And the international humanitarian law is not written just for the good times. It's written for the times when the system is under such pressure, and we really are under pressure as a system at the moment. I see that every day, you know, we are mandated, for example, to report on what's happening in Gaza, and we do that. We speak truth to power, and we're honest about what we see, but we're also mandated to deliver as much aid as we can in Gaza, and sometimes the principles, and the sort of practice of what we do, but there's a tension between those. You know, I was taught by the great Jan Eliasson that you've got to be able to retain the idealism of the Charter while also being able to get the deals done that get aid through and lives saved. But it is…it presents you with enormous challenges in all these different spheres. You know, Sudan is another classic example where we spend every day negotiating checkpoint by checkpoint, and border crossing by border crossing, the access we need to get to civilians. We shouldn't have to do that. I shouldn't have to ask to get aid into Gaza or into Sudan, or I shouldn't have to ask that girls should go to school in Afghanistan. And in a way, the moment that you do start asking and get into a political conversation about those things, you've already compromised. And yet, what else can we do?

Aloudat 

And particularly on - you bring Sudan, and I think this is important - my last couple of field work in MSF last year were in Somalia - in Baidoa - and in Sudan - in South Darfur. And now, Gaza was on the news relatively, and then the bombing of Iran and the retaliation starts, and Gaza disappears from the news effectively, and yet there is Sudan, and Somalia, and DRC, and Cox's Bazar, and many others, that aren't on the news. And you've repeatedly talked about the places you've visited, and perhaps some of them are there, how can humanitarianism bring up those neglected population, and even, like the lip service, mentioning Sudan, you mentioned it has to go a few levels lower, hunger in Sudan, 10 million people displaced, girls in Afghanistan, other places being...what are we to do about that?

Fletcher

So, what I've been trying to do is get more visibility. So, I went to Sudan in the first week in the job. Lyse Doucet from the BBC came with me. A massive challenge in all these crises is that in many of them - Gaza is another example - international media can't get in themselves to tell those stories. But also, the international media are cutting back a lot of resources, so even when they can get out there and report, there isn't that same tradition of the media being out there. You think of the Lebanese civil war, I spent a lot of my time reading books about that civil war written by former journalists, all those guys, Randall Fisk, New York Times guy, Tom Friedman, and so on, you know, falling over each other, telling those stories at the time of the Lebanese civil war. You know, we just don't have that equivalent now inside…

Aloudat

How about local journalists?

Fletcher

Local journalists are getting killed in massive numbers, and they're out there telling the story, but it's not getting the visibility in the international media. So, a big, big challenge trying to get that spotlight shone. What I tried to do with this job is to get in, get to places that people say we can't go, try and give a platform to local voices to tell their stories and, you know, just keep making the case, but also trying to get into different parts of the media ecosystem. You know, in a way, I don't need to tell your readers - or you - that these crises matter. You know, that's not what we need to talk about today, but I do need to get onto Fox News, and tell them why these crises matter. 

Aloudat

Good luck with that. I wish you would. 

Fletcher

I’m working on it, and on the podcasts…

Aloudat

And we are also talking about the need to not only reflect voices within our echo chamber, where we agree with each other on everything, and it's difficult. There is a polarisation that is…we stopped being in disagreement, now we are unable to communicate.

Fletcher

And by the way, I think one really key challenge for us as a sector is, okay, yes, I need to try and get on some podcasts and Fox News and so on, but we also need to shore up what should be our base. The natural supporters for what we do. They're not marching in the streets right now protesting about aid cuts. Where are the polls showing that two-thirds of people are angry that we spend 100 times more on defence than on humanitarian work? It's not happening. So, somewhere along the way, we lost connection, sufficient connection, with that group. Now maybe they've just gone quiet, they're a bit distracted, a bit anxious, and they'll come back. But I do think, somewhere along the way, we sort of made it sound as though this was brain science, what we're doing, as opposed to a basic human instinct to be humanitarians.

Aloudat

I mean, yes, people are not protesting this, but they are protesting. In the US, 6 million people protested. Protests for Palestine have been…why aren't we able, as a humanitarian sector, to overlap with those conversations that people already care? Because I doubt that I would go and protest if, you know, some other sector had less money. It sounds too abstract, and... 

Fletcher

It does. So, I think there is a lot of overlap between people who care about humanitarian issues, and people who are on those protests and care about protecting civilians, but that's it. No one's going to march down the street saying, What do we want? The humanitarian reset. When do we want it? Over the next six to 12 months, depending on the implementation plan, and the cluster coordination mechanism. You know, some of what we do is by its nature, boring, and that's okay, but it's that broader conversation around global solidarity, and a moral obligation to those in direst need.

Aloudat

And when we talk about that, I mean the US aid cuts were blunt and massive, and many people have talked about them, although probably not enough about the fact that, you know, just PEPFAR alone risks the life of 3 million people by 2030, but you also visited other donor countries, what's your reaction to donors like Netherlands, Germany, the UK, cutting aid, and sort of hiding behind the US because they're not doing as bad a job as the US, so no one is, how do you deal with that?

Fletcher

Yeah, you're right to talk about the scale of the cut, and the brutality of the cuts, the pace of the cuts, has done particular damage to the sector. And I say that, recognising that over the years, the US has saved hundreds of millions of lives and led the sector in terms of funding 47% of our appeals. But it's not just them, and what the Europeans and others are telling me is that their cuts aren't ideological. The US are cutting because they no longer believe that they should be playing this role globally. What the Europeans are saying is that they're cutting because of insecurity on their own continent, fears of a broadening of the Russia, Ukraine war on their own continent. And so, they're maintaining that it's for a different reason. They are saying to me, our cuts are not ideological. That makes…

Aloudat

Do you believe them?

Fletcher

Well, it makes no difference to a woman in Kunduz who's just had a clinic closed, whether they're ideological or not. 

Aloudat

Germany has cancelled a debt break in their constitution, effectively, to put themselves in a debt for, you know, 500 billion Euros, to buy arms. You’d think the Red Army is breaching the border already if…I mean, there's rhetoric, and then there's... 

Fletcher

But in a way, that stands up what I'm saying, which is that they feel massively insecure. I walked around Stockholm, you know, talking about, what do we need to do to reverse cuts there. And, I saw they were building bunkers, so there was a genuine level of fear there among the population, and in governments across Europe, which is driving a lot of this. And it was explicit, for example, in the British cut, that this was explicitly because of the perceived need to spend more on defence. Now, we have to get out there and win the argument for what we're doing. We sometimes have to do that, not just on the ethical basis, but also in a more transactional world, making the case that if you don't get out there and engage in the world, then you will store up more problems that will hit your own national interests around insecurity, levels of displacement, migration, future pandemics, and so on. It's a difficult argument to get right. I think one other challenge that we have as humanitarians communicating in this space is that the more cynical, skeptical media will say to us, Well, how many people have died because of these cuts? And we can show that programs have closed down. I can tell you people I met in Afghanistan who've lost children because their clinics closed and so on, but it's tricky territory, and that's a difficult one to navigate as well.

Aloudat

I want to put in another question, please, from a colleague, Mohamed Yarrow, who is the executive director for the Centre for Peace and Democracy in Somalia. 

Mohammed Yarrow

Thanks for the opportunity to engage with Tom, and now to Tom: OCHA’s country-based pooled fund is accessible to local organisations in Somalia. The UN talks a lot about pooled funds supporting localisation, and the target to give 25 percent of funding to local organisations, but there’s another pooled fund - the CERF - the Central Emergency Response Fund - that only UN agencies can access. Will you consider allowing local organisations like CPD to access the CERF, rather than making it an exclusive fund for UN agencies? Wouldn’t this advance support for local organisations? 

Aloudat 

Is that something that is on the books?

Fletcher 

So, I don't know yet. I mean, we've got to look at where these different funds have particular value. And the CERF, for me, has particular value around anticipatory action, future proofing against climate shocks, and so on. But I think we should look, with all these funds at this basic point: Is what I'm doing right now, could it be better done by a local actor? And if so, how do I get out of the way? My concern at the moment on localisation, by the way, is that every bit of the sector is setting itself up as the bit that does localisation. So, we're all saying, Yes, we all agree localisation is the right thing. So, give me some money and I'll go off and I'll work with some local actors. I'm talking about a genuine shift of power and money to those local actors, not keeping all those different layers, and a really challenging mindset shift for all of us, as we go through this second phase now of the reset - we did the first phase, now we're in the second phase - is not to just say that everything else gets smaller. We must give more power away, except for the thing that my agency or my NGO does, which is really important. That's what I'm hearing all the time. You know, coordinate everyone else. Everyone else should have cuts, but we must preserve this thing that I'm really interested in. And I can understand that, you know, the English phrase is, Turkeys don't vote for Christmas, and it's understandable. No one's going to say, I'm not needed anymore. But we all - including me - have to imagine what areas where we're not needed and give away power in that space.

Aloudat

And, you talked very eloquently in The Naked Diplomat about diplomacy as a function, or how to function as a diplomat, and you are working for one government which supposedly knows what it wants, and with one country which supposedly - somewhat - knows what it wants, how much more naked are you now, given the whole circle? You know that there's the humanitarian circus is not an expression that doesn't come often so, where's diplomacy here?

Fletcher

I mean, there's a load of diplomacy. There's diplomacy every day in, you know, trying to get the route open into al Fashir or talking to the Taliban about girls' education. Or, you know, in all these environments, there's actually more diplomacy, because in this job, I get to talk to more people than I would have ever done as a British diplomat. And, I enjoy the fact I get to go anywhere, talk to anyone, and that's kind of naked diplomacy in action. In a way, a challenge as a national diplomat - it didn't happen to me all that often, but is that - often you have to suppress your personal view because you're taking a national position. You know, you're there to represent your state's view, and so there are more potential compromises there, whereas when you're representing the humanitarian principles, I don't have to compromise at all because they're my core beliefs, and now I get to basically talk about those. But, there is a responsibility that weighs quite heavy in the position that I can't just sort of say completely what I think about everyone and everything, and Gaza is a good example of this. I have to choose my words very carefully, because there are reasons why we choose our words carefully. So, in that respect, I suppose I'm a bit more clothed than before. There's a responsibility that comes with the position. 

Aloudat

I mean it's good that you still think seven or eight months on that you don't have to compromise, so that's very good news, because I would have...

Fletcher

I do think that.

Aloudat

That is very good, and it translates in your statements about Gaza, for example, if we compare them across the humanitarian...I mean, I was talking to a colleague who's unhappy about what their organisation is speaking out, and they were saying, For God's sake, the UN is much stronger, on Gaza than we are.

Fletcher

Yeah, I don't feel I'm very filtered, you know, I'm being censored a bit by the pros who know what they're talking about. But I'm not on a set of talking points, and I'm quite determined. I suppose that's the naked diplomat bit of it. It's trying to find human language, rather than talking about the shelter cluster or resilience in post-conflict settings, and all the rest of it that you know much better than me. You've been in this world much longer than I have.

Aloudat

Yeah. I mean, I want to then, ask you a question. That goes a few steps further than what I know of previous people who occupied this job, in terms of where you are willing to push - and talking about the previous people, you're the sixth UK citizen and the fifth white man to occupy this job, and I'm sure you have a response to this. Often, it's called horse trading in the UN agencies. How do we think about that? Where is that going?

Fletcher 

Yeah, so I've sat with all of those predecessors, and - at their feet, really, to get their wisdom - and, you know, I said the other day, in a building, I think it was the ICRC or somewhere, we should put up all these illustrious predecessors of mine, that they're amazing people, and they did amazing jobs. We should put their photos up on the wall. And I thought, No, that's a terrible idea, because that tells a different story, and it doesn't tell a story about equality and diversity, to put it mildly. So look, I wasn't involved in - evidently - in my appointment. I ran. I was interviewed robustly by a panel, by the SG. I don't know what happens behind closed doors. I know the Brits nominated about eight people, at least, over time. I just have to do the best job I can. 

Aloudat

And I have, I have no doubt, it's not, it's not a question of your suitability for the job. It's a question about probably how many layers of inherited power structures we have to break through to… 

Fletcher

Completely. But I think it is also a question of my suitability for the job, because I think I genuinely feel, I feel I need to work harder actually to justify having this position because of coming into it with that perception, that this is all part of, you know, P5 power structures and so on. And if there wasn't a bit of truth in the perception, then it probably wouldn't be there. So, I do feel that extra level of pressure. I also feel, and I'm very involved in the work that the SG has launched on UN80 and reform. I think we can have a better system, and I believe we will have a better system. So, my predecessor used to say that he would be the last white male Brit in the job, and I, I will carry on saying that…

Aloudat 

Inshallah.

Fletcher

And inshallah, inshallah, it will be the case. If I had a vote, I wouldn't vote for another white, male Brit to take over, but I won't have any influence over the decision.

Aloudat

And I want to finish with, when you talked to Mehdi Hassan in Zeteo, you talked to Alistair Campbell also, and Rory Stewart about your family, and you talked about going to therapy. And I think, that breaks...you realise that this breaks the mold of the macho, humanitarian who is too tough to think about that. Was that intended to change the perception?

Fletcher

Yes, it was very, very deliberately. I think there is enormous amounts of trauma in this sector, and you see it, you know, and often it spills out at HQ, because when you're in the field, you're charging around, you know, you're in the moment, you're trying to save as many lives as possible. Everyone's exhausted. Everyone's stressed, and it's often only when people then come back to HQ, and so on, it bubbles up in different ways. But I think across the sector, we have a massive mental health challenge. And I wanted to demonstrate that I was going to take my own mental health seriously, recognising that these aren't ordinary jobs, and they do take their toll on all of us, and that there's nothing wrong with seeking help. The other, I mean, I'm really…if I had more time and we weren't doing resets and funding cuts and 20 massive crises and so on, I did a lot of reading before I started on burnout in the humanitarian sector, and I worry that the main cause of burnout - we know from this great book on how to avoid burnout among humanitarians - is when the individual who's very values-driven feels that their organisation or institution doesn't live those values as well. So, if they believe in the humanitarian mission, and what they're experiencing in the office is bullying, and harassment, and back-covering, and risk aversion, then it's that - more than what they see on a checkpoint in Darfur - that actually drives a lot of the stress and anxiety in the system. And so, maybe the most important thing I can actually do for the mental health of the sector is to make sure we're living the values that we believe in.

Aloudat 

And that moral injury has...

Fletcher 

...that's the word moral injury.

Aloudat

...that has demonstrated itself, in my view, in the internal discussions since Gaza started. It has always been an issue, but it's really, in my experience, has been an issue that involved so many in the sector with this massive dissonance between what their governments are saying, what they are seeing, what they want to believe, and it cuts across multiple layers, people who have been there, people who are forced to compromise, and that probably a more honest addressing of the causes of that moral injury than the compromise versus principles would be in interest.

Fletcher

I think that the greatest levels of trauma and stress and anxiety in the humanitarian system are among those who are working on Gaza. I mean, everyone cares about the situation, so everyone, in some way, feels corroded by what they're seeing. And there is this sort of extra level, I think, extra layer in Gaza, almost a sort of Orwellian level to this, where people who've worked all their lives for an organisation like UNWRA, doing amazing work as humanitarians on the real front line, suddenly being told that they're in the wrong, or people who've worked all their lives for USAID, suddenly waking up one day and being told, you're no longer serving national interests. So, it's that dislocation which creates additional moral injury, and I think we'll be feeling the effects of this throughout our community for decades to come.

Aloudat

Thank you very, very much. That was an absolutely pleasure to…

Fletcher 

No thank you for the, I mean, Ahlan wa sahlan. Thank you. Thank you.

Aloudat

 

Tom Fletcher is the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

 

This Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast was produced by Freddie Boswell, original music by Whitney Patterson, with sound engineering by Tevin Sudi. 

 

Rethinking Humanitarianism is back. This coming season, I’ll be interviewing people who have something to say about the future of aid. 

 

In the meantime, please consider subscribing or becoming a member to help us to continue reporting from the hearts of crisis. Go to www.thenewhumanitarian.org to find out more. 

 

Thank you for listening. I’m Tammam Aloudat. Talk next time.