Olivia O’Sullivan
Good afternoon, everyone, and a very warm welcome to this discussion on “Aid, conflict and global leadership, a conversation with UN Humanitarian Chief, Tom Fletcher.” Thank you for coming and thank you for your time today. My name is Olivia O’Sullivan, and I direct the UK in the World Research Programme here at Chatham House. We’re delighted to have Tom Fletcher with us here today. There’s an awful lot to talk about and we’ll dive into it shortly. Before we do, just a brief word about how this event will run. I will put a few questions to Tom, we’ll have a bit of a conversation, but then we will open up for audience Q&A, and hopefully, we’ll have 15 to 20 minutes or so for that.
So, while Tom and I are talking, please do be thinking of questions that you would like to ask. And when it comes to that section of the event, if you’re in the room, you’d like to ask a question, just raise your hand, a mic will come to you. If you’re online, please use the Q&A box and I’ll put your questions to Tom. If you’re comfortable, please do tell us your name and organisation, and please do ask a question with a question mark at the end of it, rather than make a long comment, if that’s okay with everyone, then we can get everybody’s contributions into the event. A reminder that this event is on the record and is being livestreamed, and a very warm thank you again for joining us.
Tom, thank you for being here. You became UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator in November 2024, so it’s not exactly been a quiet time to be in the job. Conflicts are proliferating, Ukraine, Iran, Gaza, Sudan, alongside a lot of long running and less noticed crises, Haiti, DRC, the Rohingya crisis. But, at the same time, in your time in the job, aid budgets have cratered, in particular the US dismantled USAID, formerly the largest humanitarian funder in the world. Now, not only cut a lot of funding, but also quite a difficult and challenging relationship with multilateralism, international institutions itself, but we’ve seen other donors too, including the UK, quite significantly cut aid budgets, and it’s a big time for the UN as well, a time of transition, partly because of those cuts, right? A lot of reform, a lot of thinking being done about the future of humanitarian aid itself and the humanitarian system.
So, I’d love to cover all of that with you…
Tom Fletcher CMG
Good.
Olivia O’Sullivan
…in the short hour that we have. It feels like a very urgent moment to talk about the future of the UN itself and of humanitarian aid. So, let’s start with some of the immediate events that are going on. You were in Lebanon this month. I’m sure people here have been hanging on the headlines about the very fragile ceasefire there. Talks between the US and Iran hang in the balance right now. A lot of the conversation about this war here in the UK has been about the enormous economic consequences, from closing the Strait, the consequences for our relationship with the US, but there’s humanitarian consequences too, right, to all of those things. So, tell us a bit about those. Tell us what you saw in Lebanon. Over to you.
Tom Fletcher CMG
So, you’re right, I mean, since the escalation just over a month ago, I mean, you’ve got different circles of impact on what we’re doing, and remember, of course, we’re already overstretched, under-resourced and literally under attack, you know, 1,000 humanitarians killed in the last three years. So, to have this on top of that, you know, it’s really compounding the levels of crisis. So, you’ve got the – the first circle really is that direct impact, particularly on Iran itself, where now over 2,000 people have been killed, and I’ve allocated 12 million from the emergency fund, but we’re also – we had a, sort of, tricky first few days because the Iranians were very clear that they didn’t need a big surge of humanitarian support. And we wanted to be clear that it was there, and we wanted to make sure that education, water, shelter was getting in, of course, but while also respecting that, and also, you know, it was a warzone. So, we’re now getting more teams into Iran to really assess the damage.
Then you’ve got the effect, of course, on Lebanon in particular, and again, there are over 2,000 people killed, including over 100 health workers and humanitarians. And the south in particular, south of the Litani River, really badly smashed up. So, a lot of civilians we spoke to over the weekend were going back to see if it was possible to go back permanently, they were driving back. Of course, these are people who are going back to their homes and communities, and the homes have gone, the villages have gone. Many of those villages completely destroyed, Bint Jbeil, for example, you know, it’s just rubble right now.
So, massive humanitarian needs there, but you’ve also got 200,000 people displaced. One in five people in Lebanon right now is displaced. So, as I was going across into Syria, 200,000 people had crossed in just a couple of weeks. So, massive humanitarian needs spread around the country, and many of those people moving into areas where – you know, and Lebanon is a very fragile patchwork of different groups, areas where they’re not necessarily welcome, and where host communities are being told, “If you take in people from this area, you too are a target.” So, that’s a really toxic mix.
And then you’ve got knock-on effects for places like Gaza, where we then had more restrictions on what we could bring in because of the war. And then beyond those rippling circles of impact, you have the Straits of Hormuz, fuel prices up 20%, food prices up almost 20%, our humanitarian convoys blocked. We’ve had to take those convoys by air and by land, and the impact, which I think we’ll be feeling for years, of those price rises on sub-Saharan, East Africa, pushing way more people into poverty.
And then final circle, you have the impact of the further corrosion of international law and international norms. The idea that suddenly it’s okay to say, “We’re going to blow stuff up, we’re going to bomb you back the Stone Age, we’re going to destroy your civilisation,” you know, normalising that kind of language is really dangerous. It gives more freedom to all the other wannabe autocrats around the world to use that sort of language and those sorts of tactics, targeting civilian infrastructure and civilians in a way which is, of course, completely contravening international law, and it also makes the world less generous.
So, for every day of this conflict, you know, $2 billion being spent, and my entire target for our hyper-prioritised plan this year to save 87 million lives is $23 billion. So, we could have funded that in less than a fortnight of this reckless war, and of course, now we can’t, and whether you’re cu – making the cuts for ideological reasons, or because you’re too busy bombing someone else, or because now you feel more insecure at home and so you have to invest more of your money in defence and less in generosity, all of that ultimately has an impact on the over 300 million people that we’re here to serve.
Olivia O’Sullivan
I want to pick up on the point, there’s a lot of points to pick up on there, but you mentioned the ways in which international law, international humanitarian law in particular, is being undermined. The number of humanitarian workers being killed in the line of duty has climbed every year since 2015. Is there anything the UN can do to enforce accountability over that or to bolster those systems of law, and what is that?
Tom Fletcher CMG
I mean, this is the subject that mo – I have a lot to get angry about in this job, but, you know, just this last weekend, you know, talking to UNICEF colleagues who lost two colleagues in Gaza, in the last few weeks, we’ve lost colleagues in DRC, in Sudan, drones, you know, all this ingenuity going into these deadlier and deadlier weapons. You know, 90% of victims of drones are civilians, and many of them, including a colleague just recently in Goma, are humanitarians. So, they’re increasingly being used against us, and there seems to be no accountability for that.
I briefed the Security Council two weeks ago and talked about this stat, 1,000 dead humanitarians in three years. You know, when did that become normal? We’re the emergency service, the fire engines, the ambulance workers, going to support the survivors in these crises, and somehow, it’s become acceptable that we’re being killed in these numbers. And there isn’t the accountability around the people killing us, the people arming those killing us and the people giving them the instructions, because so often these health workers are being targeted across the Middle East, we’re seeing it in Ukraine, across these crises like Sudan. And so, my ask of the Security Council is always, “Don’t just give us a generic statement where you say, “Humanitarian workers should be protected.” Make the phone call, call out the people killing us, stop arming those who are doing it.”
Olivia O’Sullivan
What do you think is stopping the Security Council from doing that?
Tom Fletcher CMG
I think the same thing that’s stopping the Security Council doing very much at all at the moment. It’s completely polarised, and we’re in this much more transactional, geopolitical moment, where those big powers do not see the Security Council as a mechanism they should be working through for global peace and to stand up international humanitarian law. I mean, the things – even me saying that, I wouldn’t have thought I’d need to say that a couple of years ago, that we sh – that the Security Council should be defending IHL, International Humanitarian Law, and yet here we are.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Let me – I want to come back to some of these questions about funding and accountability but let me just stay in the Middle East for a bit, because I wanted to also ask you about the crisis in Gaza. You know, you – since you’ve been in the job, so much of it will have been focused on this battle to get aid access into Gaza, on the War in Gaza. It’s been about six months since the ceasefire, that ceasefire included stipulations to enable aid access, to enable reconstruction of Gaza under international supervision. What’s happening now? Is that aid access being enabled? Is that reconstruction happening in the way it should be? What do people need to know?
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah, so I’ve been into Gaza twice in the job, including most recently just after the ceasefire agreement. I was in Sharm El-Sheikh, where we got that 20-point plan agreed, and then I went straight in through Egypt and into Gaza, and of course, nothing prepares you for that, the, sort of, desolation and the destruction and the sense of despair. I think in terms of the aid getting in, it is better than it was pre-ceasefire. Pre-ceasefire, we were facing massive blockages on all fronts, massive restrictions. Post-ceasefire, we’ve been getting in enough to feed 1.5 million hot meals a day, for example, tens of thousands of shelters. We’ve got 100,000 kids back into some form of education. We’ve just finished a big vaccination campaign. So, there’s a lot of very good things there happening that we weren’t being allowed to do before the ceasefire. And there’s been a big shift in that in that the Americans are actually helping us and facilitating that, to a large extent, which we didn’t have before the ceasefire. So, that’s the, kind of, glass half full bit of that.
Against that, we have, you know, until a couple of days ago, we were only – we only had one of the five key crossings open, Kerem Shalom, Karem Abu Salem. So, that’s already a big restriction on what we can bring in. We’re still facing a lot of restriction on dual-use items, including things like wheelchairs, and so on, and school materials that we can’t get in at the scale we need, and our NGO colleagues are still facing massive registration issues. So, we really rely on those NGOs. We’re a community here, and especially in a time of massive cuts, it can’t just be the UN agencies. We need that, kind of, that partnership with the NGOs, and they’re facing huge restrictions on what they can bring in. So, I’m not going to celebrate the gains while kids are still dying of hypothermia through the winter, but I’d say I’d give us, kind of, six out of ten on food, probably four or five out of ten on shelter materials going in, three or four out of ten on health.
You mentioned reconstruction. We’re at one out of ten there at best. We’ve started the rubble clearance, so we’ve got – you know, and while I was there, I was seeing the scale of that job ‘cause you’re clearing out lots of dead bodies from the rubble and away from the roads, but you’re also then trying to clear the unexploded ordnance from underneath those buildings, and people are going back and putting their tents on the rubble and so, we’re getting lots of injuries as a result of that. We haven’t moved properly to that phase two, where we can really talk about even ‘early recovery’ as we call it in the business, or – and proper reconstruction, and we hear a lot of talk about ‘Rivieras’ and so on. You know, Gaza, let me be absolutely clear, is not a Riviera right now.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Yeah, indeed. Let me – so much of what you’ve said has been coloured by this context of really significant funding cuts and really difficult shortfalls, for NGOs, as well, not just for UN agencies. There’s been a real cratering. I mean, in the last year, OCHA’s humanitarian appeal raised only $12 billion, right, which is the lowest in decades, lower than what you were aiming for. You yourself have said that funding isn’t coming back unless we can make a fresh argument.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah.
Olivia O’Sullivan
What is that fresh argument? How do you think you can win it?
Tom Fletcher CMG
So, you’re right, I mean, the funding crisis is, sort of, cataclysmic for us, and, you know, I think if I was the Chair of a group, which in some ways I am, a group of agencies and NGOs that’s delivering this global response, and I’d gone from being a, sort of, 50 billion group to being 20 billion if I’m lucky this year, well, I’d have probably been fired by now. I mean, that’s not – my stats aren’t great. My money is going down, and the numbers are needed going up, so it’s a pattern of failure. So, we’ve got to do something differently.
And of course, it’s not just – we talk a lot about the American cuts, which of course are the most significant by scale, because 40 to 45% of all the funding coming into the sector was coming from the US, saved hundreds of millions of lives over decades, and that’s now been cut really dramatically, and we can come on to the specifics about American funding right now. But also, it’s cuts elsewhere, it’s cuts across Europe, it’s cuts here in the UK, which, you know, for decades, most of my working career was the – you know, 0.7 was this talismanic cross-party commitment, and that’s all been blown away in the last couple of years. So, the cuts have a massive impact.
I think we fight back in different ways. One is to recommit this sense of just human solidarity and kindness at the heart of this, and to fight the apathy and the distraction that pulls people away from that. You know, when people can think of this as one life at a time, it becomes more manageable. Who wouldn’t help that person who needed that food or medicine or shelter today? ‘Cause people feel, sort of, overwhelmed by it all.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Yeah.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Then there’s a, you know, admittedly quite technocratic fix, it’s boring but important, if we’re going to regain people’s trust, and that’s that we’ve got a serious plan. That we’re not going to spray money around this system of acronyms, logos, egos, silos, that the sector has become, but we’re going to have a single, hyper-prioritised plan. We’re saving 87 million lives this year. It’s not a number I’ve picked from the air, if I had, I’d have picked 100 million. It’s a lot more of a, you know, punchy number. 87 million lives is based on the data of what we could – it’s our stretch goal, of the lives that we could save this year if we raise $23 billion, and that’s 1% of what the world will spend on guns and arms and defence on this year.
So, I’m not asking to be – to – I’m not competing between a hospital in Westminster and a hospital in Kandahar. I’m competing against that massive defence budget, 100 times what I need to just save 23 billion – to save 87 million lives. And trying to just show that we’ve got a much more prioritised plan, we’re much more efficient, we’ve taken out the duplication in the sector. We’ve had a massive reform programme, the humanitarian reset, over the last 14/15 months to really push through all of that bureaucracy and duplication, and that we’re genuinely giving away power. Shifting power away from people like me in suits, in headquarters, to local organisations, grassroots organisations, and really building up our leadership in country.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Hmmm.
Tom Fletcher CMG
So, getting the right people to lead this effort closer to the people that we serve, and doing all that while we continue to defend really robustly our principles and values and don’t compromise on those principles around needs-based humanitarian response. It’s very difficult now because it’s so politicised.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Yeah. Well, one of the tough questions in your job is exactly how you deal with governments with a very – who take a very politicised view of aid, in particular the Trump administration, right? So, in December, UNOCHA agreed an MOU with the State Department, got $2 billion of funding out of the US administration. It’s much less than they’ve habitually given in…
Tom Fletcher CMG
Hmmm.
Olivia O’Sullivan
…previous years, but a lot more than many people expected them to give in this year.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah.
Olivia O’Sullivan
But that didn’t come without conditions, right? Some conflicts were excluded from that funding, particularly Afghanistan and Yemen, and there were a lot of stipulations about aligning with the administration’s principles in order to get that funding. It’s my understanding from the way they’ve described it, but how do you balance – how do you see that deal?
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah.
Olivia O’Sullivan
And how do you balance pragmatically dealing with the Trump administration and governments like them against principles of humanitarian neutrality?
Tom Fletcher CMG
It’s very hard, but the bedrock has to be you don’t compromise the principles, because if you start transacting those away, you’re just one more transactional actor in a world of transactional actors, but that’s really difficult. A great predecessor of mine, one of several great predecessors, and I’ve sat at the feet of all of the people who preceded me, but there’s a guy, Jan Eliasson, who was really the first person to do this job in its current form, and he said to me, “You’ve always got to be the person that holds the Charter but also can do the deal on the checkpoint.”
Olivia O’Sullivan
Yeah.
Tom Fletcher CMG
I’m out – we’re out there every day, I’ve done some this morning, doing access deals to get us through this checkpoint, through that checkpoint. You know, I deal with the Taliban, M23, Hamas, Hezbollah, you know, all of these actors, and I have to do those deals so that we reach the people who need our aid. But if I only do the deals, then I lose everything. If I only hold up the Charter, then I’m just a, kind of – then I’m not getting anything done. So, I’ve got to do both but never let go of the Charter.
Almost every donor, no matter what they say, is hyper-transactional with us. I’ve had, in the last week – and I’ll come with the US, don’t worry, in the last week, I’ve had one of our most principled donors say, “I’ll give you some more money, but only if you spend it on jobs in our city,” which is one of the most expensive cities in the world. More jobs for the UN in a big, expensive city. I’ve had another say, “We’d like to do more, but can we have a one-to-one after the meeting? We want these three jobs, and we’re not happy that we’re not getting enough jobs in your organisation.”
And I’ve had – and the gold standard is still the unearmarked multi-year funding, and you get most of that from Norway and Denmark, they’re our two most principled donors, but from every serious donor, they will choose which countries to fund. The Americans aren’t the only ones doing this. You know, they’ll choose, “We’ll fund more Ukraine,” ‘cause Ukraine is a European political issue, “than we will fund for Central African Republic,” even though the needs are greater. So, we’re always dealing with those issues and the – and we just have to keep insisting with donors that, in a way, it doesn’t matter who gives me the money, as long as we’re spending it in a principled way. I have to take money from all sorts of places.
The Americans are really interesting at the moment, and they’ve had the most focus, because they’re the big one.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Hmmm.
Tom Fletcher CMG
So, the two billion agreement at the end of December wasn’t under these new conditions, and I’ll come onto those. The conditions that were on it were that they picked the 18 countries, and we wanted Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan to be in there, but they weren’t willing to do that, but it’s still more countries than most donors have agreed to fund. We didn’t put OPT, Palestinian territories, and Lebanon in that agreement because it was for pooled funding. And I would have spent that money in a principled way, and that would have gone to organisations that the Americans weren’t willing to fund. So, I wasn’t able to take that money for those two crises.
And the really interesting thing with that, with the American money, was that as it came into us, it was less conditioned than previous American funding, because they’re giving it to 18 country pooled funds, which then redistribute based on humanitarian need. Whereas before, they’d have been saying, “We’re going to give a bit to this organisation, a bit to this organisation, we’ll choose which organisations to fund. And if there are organisations that we’re a bit more aligned with, they’ll get a bit more, and others will get a bit less.” Instead, they put it straight through the co-ordinated humanitarian system.
So, there were pros and cons from all that, and I wish the number had been much higher, but we had to really fight for two billion. It wasn’t a choice between two billion and 17 billion, it was between two billion and zero.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Hmmm.
Tom Fletcher CMG
And remember that for much of last year, we were in a, kind of, arm wrestle over very, very different and much more damaging models, I mean, I won’t call them humanitarian models, that they were trialling in places like Gaza. So, that was a real complication.
Now, the big question now, and this is where – you know, to the heart of the dilemma, is that under the new US legislation, US aid funding does have more conditions. It’s called “protection of human flourishing and foreign assistance,” and it involves restrictions around abortion, around transgender, around how and where the money is spent, to a greater degree. And the question is, should we take money under those conditions, knowing that it will save millions of lives, or not? And at the moment I’m in a situation where I’m saying, “I cannot take that money under those conditions,” but that’s – you know, I lie awake at night, wondering if my principles on that and the sector’s principles, and I will hold the line, but how many people will die for those principles because I’m not willing to take that money? And, you know, there’s a trade-off there.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Is there – I mean, how have you found dealing with the Trump administration? Because you – as you say, that two billion, it was a journey to get even there. In some ways, it feels like they have really upended the traditional American approach to international institutions, to diplomacy. How are you navigating that? How do you expect to navigate that future conversation about stipulations over the money they give?
Tom Fletcher CMG
It’s an absolute rollercoaster ride. Day-by-day, week-by-week, I mean, it’s back and forth, it’s very transactional, as I say. I keep using the word ‘transactional’ because that’s how the world feels to me right now. So, I mean, it was I think seven or eight months ago, the Americans were calling in the Security Council for my resignation, so I’ve had some pretty dark moments with the American administration. And they’ve noted, and I, you know, I got called in very soon after they started appointing people, and they read out to me – don’t worry, I won’t do any more book plugs, but I launched ten years ago here, just here, “The Naked Diplomat,” on this stage with Jeremy Bowen and Sarah Brown and so on, and, of course, they’d found lots of bits in “The Naked Diplomat” where I used fairly undiplomatic language about President Trump and about the dangers of President Trump being elected. And our new American colleagues found all those and read them out to me one-by-one.
So, you know, it’s been a very scratchy relationship. But I’ve always tried to insist on what we do and why we do it and to keep demonstrating practically that we’re the people best placed to do it, whether it’s Gaza or anywhere else. So, I think you’ve got to be practical. In recent months and weeks, they’ve been quite complimentary about what they’ve seen of the UN in action. The more they see it, the more they think that actually, you know, we’re not just a bunch of, kind of, woke, incompetent, useless, exhausted bureaucrats. But that, ultimately, you know, times like these, this is what we were invented for as the UN, and so the critique has receded, but it’s still back and forth.
And I think the big – in terms of the day-to-day, there’s a difference between statecraft as I know it, and real estate craft, and most of the guys I’m working with, people I’m working with, are people with a real estate background. It’s a different – I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, it’s a different approach to the world. So, for the – so people doing statecraft, the handshake comes at the end of the process. You know, you do all the work, and then you have the agreement. In the – for real estate craft, you do the handshake first, you think, do I trust this person? Then let’s go and do the agreement. And we get frustrated, like, “Well, where’s the agreement? Where’s the plan?” And they’ll be like, “Well, that happens next, because now I trust you.”
They’re much more interested in personal relationships, not institutions. So, walking in with a UN flag or something doesn’t help you. It’s like, do I think this person is someone that I can actually work with? And Diplomats, the statecraft people, we love certainty and stability and process. We – you know, look at what we’ve designed around protocol and maps and flags and stuff over the years, all the stuff that actually I slagged off a lot in “The Naked Diplomat.” We love that order. Actually, for the Trump administration, they think the disorder is more effective, the unpredictability, knocking your opponent and your friend off guard, and they think they get more results, and we’ll see.
You know, ultimately, if President Trump ends, I don’t know what it is now, 11 wars he’s up to, allegedly? I think he’s talking about 11. If he ends 14 wars, you know, bring on the Nobel Peace Prizes, you know, because it’s those 14 conflicts which are driving up so much need in the world, but let’s actually end them rather than talking about ending them.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Yeah, well, indeed, I mean, as you say, there’s maybe some advantages in – to these shifts in diplomacy, and it’s interesting here the way the Trump administration operates, but in actual fact, those 14, however many, conflicts have not been resolved and have not…
Tom Fletcher CMG
Not at all.
Olivia O’Sullivan
…ended, right? We’re still in a very…
Tom Fletcher CMG
No.
Olivia O’Sullivan
…uncertain place over Iran…
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah.
Olivia O’Sullivan
…and over a number of the other conflicts that they talk about. So, I’m just wondering how you – you were a Diplomat before you were a humanitarian. This is, kind of, your business too. Reflecting on that sweep of your career, how is international – is international diplomacy functioning at all now?
Tom Fletcher CMG
Well, people often ask me if the international order is going to break in this period, and I can tell you, having been in Kunduz, Kandahar, Kabul, Goma, Darfur twice, Gaza twice, Beirut, driving across Syria just after the fall of the Assad regime, Juba just a couple of weeks ago, for the people that I serve, the international order is already broken.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Hmmm.
Tom Fletcher CMG
I – you know, they’re already at war, they’re already facing devastation, weaponised sexual violence, famine. You know, for them, the world’s not there, you know. So, it’s the time the rest of us woke up to that reality. So, I’d say the international scaffolding is under sustained attack.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Yeah.
Tom Fletcher CMG
The scaffolding we built after the Second World War, to prevent ourselves from doing this stuff to each other, and that is very, very shaky. It’s been vandalised over the last few years, but it was already deteriorating, and the impact of that is, you know, the new Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, you know, around war, greed, massive international indifference and apathy and distraction, and then the impunity that I described earlier on, the sense of lawlessness in the world. And we’re going to continue finding out what happens when you take that scaffolding away, and it won’t be pretty.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Hmmm, indeed, and speaking of that scaffolding, one of the big drives in your role has been towards UN reform, right? Towards reducing duplication, better co-ordination, acting more efficiently. Tell us about that process. I mean, is that a genuine process of reform, or is this, basically, a response to – is this a contraction because you’re losing a lot of funding, looking at 20% job cuts? What kind of UN can you see coming out of this?
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah, it’s a work in progress. I mean, what I can tell you is that the current Secretary-General, even though he’s in his last year, literally, as I walked here, and what’s the time in America, I mean, five-hour difference? You know, he called me as I walked here to basically, say, “Where are we on your bit of the reform programme?” Which is around boring but important stuff on supply chains, common premises, logistics across the humanitarian sector.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Hmmm hmm.
Tom Fletcher CMG
So, he is going to absolutely, sort of, thrash this to the last day with the capital that he has in his last year in the job. But then beyond that, we’ve got to use this process for electing the next Secretary-General to really bake in some massive reforms. So, that whoever gets it – what normally happens is the big powers, classically the P5, stitch things up so that whoever gets it has made so many commitments to them that they can’t really reform things, and we’ve got to reverse that and make sure that whoever gets it has an obligation to reform. So, there’s a reform period that needs going through, there’s regrouping, finding new alliances, new constituencies who are most at risk of artificial intelligence and climate change, future-proofing the world for those challenges ahead.
Reform, you’ve got to, I’d say, cut the number of senior people at my level by half, and at the level below. We’re too top-heavy. We need fewer agencies; we need to get more people out of HQ. The UN wasn’t a ship that was built to stay in harbour. We’ve got to reconnect with that sense of idealism and the Charter. We’ve become, over time, too bureaucratic and institutional, and so there’s a trust rebuilding that’s needed. And in the midst of all that, we’ve got to – there’s got to be reimagination as well. Again, it’s not just a technocratic exercise. We’ve really got to get future generations who weren’t around when the UN was forged and didn’t see it at its best, didn’t see why it was so necessary, we’ve got to reconnect with them.
But each time you hear someone attack us, ask yourself why – what they gain by weakening these structures, weakening the UN? And can the next Secretary-General bring the voltage and the momentum and the ideas and the passion and creativity to push these reforms through? I would say, yes, she can.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Is the process of that reform, though, something that can really – really reimagining the UN, is it something that can sit in the UN, or is it actually a political argument that needs to be made and won in member states? And do you see that happening?
Tom Fletcher CMG
Exactly right, member states. So, you can – I mean, I don’t want to be rude to my colleagues and friends in the UN, but it’s – you know, turkeys don’t vote for Christmas here, and it’s ultimately the member states that have the power to direct us. If member states want us to do more peacekeeping, give us more money for peacekeeping and clearer direction and political support for the peacekeeping we’re doing. If member states want us to save more lives, then fund us to save more lives, and push us and incentivise us to do the reforms we need to maximise the money that is going on lifesaving work.
So, at the moment there’s this – it’s almost a bit of a Catch-22, where the UN system is saying to member states, you know, “Come on, tell us how to reform,” and member states are saying, “Come on folks, tell us how…
Olivia O’Sullivan
Yeah.
Tom Fletcher CMG
…to reform.” And I don’t think that – you know, I don’t think that’s worked anywhere else or at any time in our history, and so we need a much more radical moment. With the – with this transition, with the SG now, with the new SG coming in, with anyone who wants reform, you know, working alongside those member states to just take it to a completely different level.
Olivia O’Sullivan
One of the big questions around UN reform is not just making the UN more effective, but making it more representative, and one of the, kind of, hallmarks or UN habits is that top jobs tend to go to particular nationalities.
Tom Fletcher CMG
I can see where this might be going.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Including your job…
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah.
Olivia O’Sullivan
…which tends to go to a Brit.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah, it has, yeah.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Do you think that is right and should it continue?
Tom Fletcher CMG
He pours a cup of water. I don’t think it’s right, at all, actually. Now, I’ve been – I look at my predecessors in this job, and they’ve been great. You’ve got Martin Griffiths, you know, one of the world’s top mediators, you’ve got Stephen O’Brien, you’ve got, you know, Valerie Amos, I mean, Valerie, you know, one of my great heroines. You’ve got John Holmes and his focus on the diplomacy of what we do, you got – you had Mark Lowcock who was there…
Olivia O’Sullivan
Yeah.
Tom Fletcher CMG
…and, you know, a great, sort of, systems reformer. Mark, you know, knows more about the development sector than almost anyone on the planet. So, it – I’m not for a second criticising that group, who bring lots of very, very different, amazing skills to this, and have done extraordinary work over the time that the UK has managed that nomination for the job, and it was a complicated nomination, by the way. You don’t just get, kind of – don’t just send a name and, you know, you get put into it. So, I – but I think there are two really strong reasons here why things have got to be different.
One, the UK has slashed its budget significantly, and by the way, and Will and others are here, the officials did a great job with what they had. They did a good job with a bad hand of what they were allocated for defence – for humanitarian development, and I can dig into that later if you like. But the UK can no longer claim – when the UK, kind of, turns up at big conferences and says, “Oh, we’re the thought leader in this,” then everyone – you know, people giggle, because the cuts have been so severe and dramatic. So, the UK has to be humble, I think, about whether we – ‘we’, I say, I slip back into we, whether the UK is still that thought leader in the sector.
But also, more importantly, I think this is the moment where the system can end the national nominations. I think that if you look across the P5, the big players are probably not as attached to holding those nominations as they were. They probably all think they’ll get one of the big jobs in whatever the configuration is. So, if you don’t do it at the – before a new SG is elected, then you can’t do it through their mandate.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Yeah.
Tom Fletcher CMG
And so, this really is the moment, and I’m aware that is a very self-defeating argument to be making personally, but I – you know, these jobs, must all – you know, must be based on merit. We must have the best person for the role. And so, I – you know, whenever my successor arrives, I hope that they are the best person on the planet to do that job, and if they happen to be British, then that’s also good too, but that’s not the criteria.
Olivia O’Sullivan
I want to get to people’s questions, but let’s stay on the Brits. I wanted to ask you a bit more about the UK and its role in international aid and development. You were a UK Diplomat for a long time, and as you said, in the era when the UK was a real leader in development, committed to spending 0.7% of GNI on international aid, now it’s aiming for 0.3% of GNI. It’s gone through about 40% cuts of its aid budget. You just said, “When the UK shows up to international conferences” claiming to be “a thought leader, people giggle.”
Tom Fletcher CMG
That’s a bit harsh of me, actually, sorry. I mean, ‘cause there’s still lots of good ideas coming out of the UK, so I’d slightly dial that back.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Well, so what can the UK do to regain credibility? The UK Government’s hosting a global partnerships conference on development next month in May, they’ll be hosting the G20 following this year. Can the UK play a role in all of the problems that you’ve been talking about, scleroticism at the UN, funding cratering, massive need for reform, conflicts proliferating? Is that credible? What should it be? You know, we’ve got folks from the FCDO here, what do they need to hear from you?
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah, so I think – and this is maybe more of a point to Politicians here, rather than FCDO colleagues, former colleagues, I mean, I think the UK is in a bit of a circular firing squad moment now, it has been for about ten years. That’s a long time to have a circular firing squad going, and I’ve just been doing the Today programme and of course was asked about the latest episode of all that drama. So, we’ve got to, at some point, you know, get out of this, sort of, very defensive crouch. And I think the UK can play a major role right now, quietly just standing up for liberal democracy and, you know, the basic model, and holding the line on that at a time when liberal democracy globally is really in retreat and the scaffolding is going.
The UK can play a quiet role backing up international organisations, the UN, and so on. The UK talked a lot more a couple of years ago about the rules-based international system. It’s not sexy. No-one’s marching down the street right now saying, “What do we want? The rules-based international system. When do we want it? Well, let’s build it in our lifetimes.” You know, it’s, like, it’s not – just there’s no-one, and this really worries me. You know, and I’m conscious that this is a room of people who care about these issues and, you know, probably looking forward and internationalists and all the rest of it. I didn’t see the protests after the cuts to the UK budget.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Hmmm.
Tom Fletcher CMG
I didn’t – I know there – and there was some great NGO work and some great campaigning work, but I think they would say too, “Where was the, kind of, movement out there,” going, “How dare we cut this much? How” – you know, these are such tiny changes in the UK budget, and yet they have a – such a disproportionate impact on the number of lives that are saved globally, and they give cover to so many others to do their cuts, as well. And I know there’s an explanation and, you know, we’re worried about Ukraine. Of course we’re worried about Ukraine, and so on, but it didn’t have to be so severe, and it didn’t have to be – I don’t like people boasting about aid cuts. I really do not like people boasting about aid cuts. By all means, make the explanation, but the, sort of, political football point is not a good one.
I think UK more broadly, and this goes back, and this is a cross-government thing, and maybe it’s unfair to pick post-2016 as a date, but, you know, the chapter starting in 1989 that ended in 2016, there’s a reason we keep coming back to it. But since that time, there’s been a tendency to really vandalise the Crown Jewels, the real assets the UK has. I’d say leadership on aid was a big one that was right at the heart of that. Like, the BBC, you know, the creative industries, the soft power that we have. Often, and I say this as a Brit rather than as a humanitarian, you know, the military strengths, and so on. All of that, there’s been a, sort of, casual approach to all of that, rather than a really strong defence of those areas, those strengths that other people see in the UK.
I mean, assuming – I mean, I hesitate to give any advice to my colleagues in FCDO and so on, because I know how tough those jobs are in normal times, and this – these are not normal times, and they – you know, those colleagues didn’t impose the cuts that they are – they’re going through. But I did a report two or three years ago, and actually it was just with Moazzam Malik, one of the guys I wrote it with, along with Mark Sedwill and others. And one of the things we said was, you know, “The UK should be – we tend to be overconfident where we should be humble and then too modest where we should be confident.” Right now, quiet competence is good. We don’t have to go around being world-beating at everything. You know, just get some quiet stuff done well is a good place to restart. And I’ve got at least 20 peace processes that haven’t been fixed yet, despite the – some – the claims from some quarters, and the UK could have a crack at a couple of those and put some real resource and time and energy and patience into them.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Hmmm hmm. I mean, on that topic, the – particularly the focus on conflict-affected states, right, during this process of the UK cutting its aid budget, the government was keen to say it wanted to protect funding for conflict-affected states, especially Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan. But in the final reckoning, it will be about a 25% cut, well, certainly according to the International Development Committee, out of the UK budget to fragile and conflict-affected states particularly. Are you worried about just the lack of resources and the, sort of, abandonment of long-term focus on parts of the world that are…
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah.
Olivia O’Sullivan
…affected by conflict?
Tom Fletcher CMG
Really worried by that, but one positive in all of this is that with the budget allocation that the team had here, more of it now is going – a higher proportion is going to the hyper-prioritised plan. So, more of it proportionally is going to our hyper-prioritised plan, which is in many of those countries where conflict is having such an impact on people’s lives. And that’s what we’re asking of the world right now. You know, we know the money is going down overall but at least help us to spend it in the most effective way possible to save as many lives as we can, in the situation that we have and with the resources that we’re given.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Tom, thank you. Let me give people in the room and online a chance to ask you some questions now. I’ll take a few in a group so that Tom has a chance to think about his answers.
Tom Fletcher CMG
I’ll be shorter, I promise.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Let’s start with the lady right in the middle of the row here. Just behind you.
Jane Kinninmont
Thank you. Jane Kinninmont from the UN Association UK. Thank you, Tom. You talked about the traditional donors that are cutting aid. Can you tell us a bit about newer donors? Who else is stepping up? And are you worried that Gulf humanitarian aid is going to suffer from what they’ve lost during this war? Thank you.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Thank you. Great question. Let’s go to the lady on the end of the row here.
Karen Page Bel Khadem
Thank you. Hi, Karen Page Bel Khadem, I’m a postgrad at SOAS. Keep up the good work, Tom, great. My question is, what event is it going to take for there to be meaningful, proper reform of the Security Council, which will therefore strengthen international law, hopefully?
Olivia O’Sullivan
Great, thank you. Let’s take one more. Let’s go to the gentleman in the glasses here.
Tobias Ellwood
Thank you. Tobias Ellwood, former Foreign Office Minister, and, Tom, great to see you, and I echo the great work you’re doing. It is Parliament that I believe is perhaps the problem and the biggest challenge that you might have, and I just pose the question that were you to make it clearer how soft power helps prevent migration, how soft power at source – at the locations, how soft power prevents pandemics from growing, how soft power prevents extremism from flourishing, all these three things and more wash up on our shores, but costs are far less when we deal with them at source. And it was General Jim Mattis, who I know you know well, who says, “The less we spend on aid, the more he spends on bullets.”
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah.
Tobias Ellwood
From a marketing, promotion, communications perspective, isn’t that what we should be doing to our Parliamentarians? There was a cheer in Parliament when the aid cuts were made and the money was slid across to defence, and that was shocking, and that shows they don’t understand the value of the budgets that you are so urgently trying to protect. Thank you.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Let’s take those three.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Great.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Newer donors, Gulf, Security Council reform, how you tell the story.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah, I mean, three – I mean, such good questions. The – so, Jane, I mean, newer donors, it’s tough, if I’m honest, at the moment. I’ve spent a lot of time actually with traditional donors in the last year, more than I planned. Because you come into this job, and of course, one of your things is, we’re going to find new sources of funding and I’m going to go places that aren’t currently – you know, but when you face almost a, sort of, 50% cut across the board, what you’re trying to do is just, kind of, staunch the flow. So, I’ve got my thumb in several dykes at the moment, and it’s really rough.
The Gulf are good donors over the last decade. Less predictable than many, and the num – and it’s always important to make sure that the number announced is the number committed. And one of the things I’m doing much more of is actually publicising what really comes in, rather than what’s announced. I’ll do it with the Sudan money from last week in Berlin, so the 1.5 billion, we’ll see – let’s see what come – really comes in, and we’ll be honest about who’s actually hitting the numbers that they are announcing.
So, the Gulf are generous in this space, but at the moment, the last month, so I don’t think we’ve taken in very much at all from Saudi, Qatar, UAE, you know, some of our traditional partners over the last month. I think that will be rectified over the year, but, understandably, they’re inward-looking right now. They’re feeling very defensive, and of course, as I touched on earlier on, the knock-on effect, Straits of Hormuz, whatever happens in the Red Sea, supply chain crises and so on, will be that all the other countries become less generous, as well.
You know, I was with one really good, fantastic donor government, European donor government, in Berlin last week, I won’t say which one, and they had pulled their announcement that day of Sudan funding. They were still giving it to us, but they said they didn’t want any publicity because they were facing protests at home, fuel prices and so on, and they didn’t want to announce aid money while that was happening, which really comes back to Tobias’ point.
Karen, I mean, well, what will it take to make Security Council reform possible? You’ve really got to have a shift in the attitude among some of those key P5 members, and at the moment, there’s, you know, there’s no major incentive for them to want it to work better. But I do listen very carefully to the US, for example, that is saying, you know, it doesn’t like – doesn’t think much of the UN overall at the moment, but it thinks that we do good humanitarian work, it thinks we should do more politics and more peacekeeping, more peacemaking, as well, and so maybe there’s something we can work with there.
I think, you know, just to, kind of, take your question to the grim – its grim conclusion, I hope it doesn’t take, you know, a global conflict for us to say, “Okay, now we realise why we needed the UN and why we needed the Security Council.” The first year of a new SG’s mandate is the sweet spot, I think, for reform, and so, a lot depends on how much support she gets in the role. I’m choosing my pronouns carefully, by the way, did you notice that? It’s – okay, good, I hope that the subtlety…
Olivia O’Sullivan
Oh, good, yeah.
Tom Fletcher CMG
…of that is not lost on everyone.
Olivia O’Sullivan
It’s okay, we’ve got a very subtle audience here.
Tom Fletcher CMG
It’s…
Olivia O’Sullivan
They’re good, they’re fine, yeah.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah, they’re very – it’s like that cricket audience that claps when someone reaches, you know, 200, but – right, Tobias. I mean, Tobias, of course, you are one of the people in politics who actually understands this connection, having been in defence and been in politics and been in aid. So, thank you for always making that argument, including in Parliament. As some of the campaigners here in the UK have been saying in recent dates – days, “Aid is the first line of defence.” I think that’s a – Jim Mattis and others are exemplars of explaining that.
You know, in – again, I’ve got to be careful about name – I mean, I’ve been mean to the UK and I’m now defending all of our other traditional donors, but in one capital last week, I was with Parliamentarians and they were the pro-aid Parliamentarians. And so, I was doing my normal pitch and, you know, “Can you carry on being generous?” And they said, you know, “Do you mind just, like, forget all this ethical stuff, all the moral stuff. All we need is a stat for, if we give you a Euro – for every Euro we give you, how does that stop migration to our capital?” And this is a capital that’s taken on – a country that’s taken in a lot of migration. So, that pragmatic trade-off is always there alongside the, sort of, ethical arguments that I think people in this room would want to make for aid.
And somehow, we don’t land this, in a transactional world, we’ve got to be able to show that you, you know, you can’t build the wall that keeps out climate change, or the one billion people who will move because of every degree warming of the world. And you can’t create the tariff that keeps out the pandemic, and at some stage, people will come back to reason on that, and we really do need that political, “Hold the line, please,” among the political class for, kind of, reason and strategy, actually.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Let’s take another round. Let’s go to the lady in the front here with the glasses.
Prashanie Dharmadasa
Thank you very much. Hello, Tom. My name is Prashanie Dharmadasa. I’m founder of SORAA3, and I’m also Chief of Staff for LinkedIn covering EMEA, Latin America and now Africa, so quite a expansive region. I wanted to just pick up on the point that the lady made around alternative, you know, or non-traditional donors. And I’m curious to understand, you know, the old model, you know, when we talk about funding, funding is the right thing to do according to the old model. The new model is more around, show me how this serves my interests and then I may, you know, decide to invest.
And the reason why I’m asking this question is because, obviously, you mentioned everything is becoming more and more transactional, and without transacting the humanitarian principles, I’m curious to understand from you if you’re seeing more traction in the private sector for a willingness to, you know, to bridge that shortfall in funding. And, also, how will we articul – or how are you, sorry, how are you articulating the second-order consequences for these private sector institutions if they don’t invest in humanitarian efforts? And, also, I will say this, without obviously, kind of, compromising the notion of neutrality, for example, when you are having these conversations, so I’m just curious to hear about that.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Thank you. Great.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Let’s go over here to the gentleman here with the blue shirt.
Jason Pack
Hi, Jason Pack, host of the Disorder Podcast. It was great having you on two or three years ago.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah, nice to see you.
Jason Pack
This has been a masterclass in communication, Tom. I think that the world has always been transactional.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah.
Jason Pack
There are opportunities, as some are trying to disorder, that you and the UN can order. Trump doesn’t want to bilaterally be, for example, having to fix governance in Central America. It seems to me that there’s a huge trick that’s been missed. Give us X amount of money, support our institution, and exactly as we’ve just heard, there’ll be these benefits in terms of decreased migration. Could there be an opportunity to actually gain function at the UN, given the current climate?
Olivia O’Sullivan
Let’s take one more. The – that way, the gentleman just in the middle there.
Dr Nick Westcott
Thank you. Nick Westcott, currently at SOAS. Good talk. You said there are some countries that are trying to weaken the UN, undermine its efforts to enforce the norms. Which countries will support it?
Tom Fletcher CMG
[Inaudible – 55:39].
Dr Nick Westcott
Where is your constituency for backing that up?
Olivia O’Sullivan
You can, kind of, see that one.
Dr Nick Westcott
Thank you.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah. That’s great, yeah.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Let’s stop there. So, we had private sector actors.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Right, and I’ll try…
Olivia O’Sullivan
Is there a more transactional offer?
Tom Fletcher CMG
…and do short answers and get round again.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Yeah.
Tom Fletcher CMG
The – so that is, in a way, Nick, that’s the – and good to see you, Nick. That’s the, I hope, the silver lining of this crisis, because you can, kind of, see who’s attacking us fairly overtly, including, you know, at least half of the Security Council, of the permanent members of the Security Council, let’s put it like that. So – but what you’re seeing in response is many of the other countries that maybe weren’t as vocal before, particularly in – and you feel it in New York a lot around the conversation around UN reform. And so, you have countries, you know, much more like, say Singapore, for example, on UN reform, a real player in New York. You’re seeing countries like – well, you’re – Qatar, Türkiye, Pakistan now with the recent work on US-Iran, pushing into that peacemaking space, and basically, saying, “Well, if you lot won’t do it, then we’ll take that, we’ll take that space.”
So, I do think you are seeing countries emerge in that space. We’ll probably have – the next SG will probably, if it is done in the conventional way, will be from Latin America, and so there’s a lot of interesting openings there, I hope. We – you know, we – the more I think that we can be a genuinely global institution and one that represents citizens, not just states, and I know that’s a controversial view, the stronger we’ll be, and so, they are out there. People who – basically, the countries and people who lose out most in a, kind of, hard man, macho, transactional, military, 19th century world.
Prashanie, that – I mean, this is one of those things we really wrestle with and, you know, so we go out and try and find those non-traditional donors. I think one – and this slightly comes to Jason’s point, as well. One thing I’ve been trying to do is get – is speak in terms of outcomes more, of things that we can do, as the UN, as humanitarians. It’s why – like, if you’re in the sector, you’ll have heard me talking about this campaign to save 87 million lives, and you probably don’t like it all that much, because it’s ignor – you know, it’s not prioritising. By prioritising saving those lives, we’re not prioritising the work to save 345 million lives, the people in need globally.
But my argument is, well, we have to start somewhere, and the principal thing is to start with the most urgent, highest crisis. You know, I have to prioritise, I can’t pretend the money’s coming, so I have to prioritise somewhere. But also, it’s about demonstrating outcomes, not just inputs. It’s a – something David Miliband speaks very eloquently about, “judging ourselves by the lives saved, not just by the money we raise.” So, that’s – so now what we have is every month we put out the data on how many lives we’ve saved. So, January, we saved seven million lives. I mean, I should be much happier about life.
You know, that’s extraordinary that humanitarians, the NGOs, the UN agencies, local community organisations saved seven million lives in January, and we – and it’s there in black and white on paper. And I need to get the February stats, ‘cause that feels like quite a long time ago, but, you know, they’re being crunched because it’s a proper process. And I think if we can show that impact, then, and to your earlier point, we can start to rebuild trust in what we do. Whereas if I just stand up and say, “Oh,” you know, “300 million people, not enough money, you know, you’re all too tight-fisted, give us more help, Security Council’s broken,” you know, I want to have a, kind of, positive agenda initiative at the centre of this.
Data is a really interesting contested part of this, I mean, it’s important to what we do. Data is now, as everywhere, a battleground in our sector. I don’t know who will emerge to control humanitarian data, and I worry a lot about the implications of all that. I could probably do much more with the tech companies if I trusted them more, and ten years ago when I launched “The Naked Diplomat” here, I was going, “Oh,” you know, “Facebook, Google, this is, you know, the future,” you know, “Twitter.” I’m a little bit more chastened now about the likelihood of tech companies being trustworthy with the data of the people we serve. So, how are we going to manage all that to ensure that we save more lives?
Final thought on private sector. You know, two or three years ago, it was easy to do an event with private sector, and you’d fill a room, everyone’s a bit CSR, you know, we’ve all got our, kind of, our corporate social responsibility person at a high level that we actually let them into some of the meetings with the people making the decisions. You know, brilliant. Now, you know, suddenly one change, one election, maybe a few more, and it’s unfashionable, CS – like, like, you know, don’t touch that stuff. I was at Davos, I’m sorry, I went to Davos, but I was there in February. No-one is – apart from me is talking about these issues and so, real difficulty.
And I’ll stop here, don’t worry. The – when I left government, it was partly because I was so determined to work on getting a million Syrians back into school, because I felt that in my diplomatic work, we’d failed that group, whatever your views on whether we should intervene in Syria and so on. And I worked a lot with the private sector then, and there were some amazing organisations, many of them in education, that wanted to do stuff with us on education. Great, but there were also a lot of organisations that were treating people in greatest need as either a laboratory to experiment on, or a market, fine, or an ego trip, and sometimes all three at the same time.
And so I’m more cautious now about – ‘cause at all the conferences I go to, the easy thing to say is, “Yeah, we’re going to work more.” Again, if I come in and said, “I’ve got my three big things,” you know, new funders, Jane, you know, the private sector, but the reality is actually getting them to part with their money and focus on solving some of these problems they’re causing is, I’m afraid, much harder than it sounds.
Jane Kinninmont
I’ve experienced that myself.
Tom Fletcher CMG
Yeah.
Jane Kinninmont
So, I could share some stories.
Tom Fletcher CMG
I bet.
Olivia O’Sullivan
Great. We’d be keen to discuss. We need to stop there; we’re bang on time. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. I think all that’s left to say is thank you, Tom. That was a tour, I think, through current crises, UN reform, what the UK should do, what needs to happen next. We’re really grateful for your time, really appreciate it.
Tom Fletcher CMG
No. Well, thank you all very, very much for giving up your time. Thank you [applause], great.
