Press Conference: Mike Waltz (United States), Jeremy P. Lewin (United States) & Tom Fletcher (OCHA) on funding to the humanitarian system

Good morning.
I'm J.P.
Freire, Chief of Public Affairs for the US Mission to the UN.
We will take questions at the end of the presentation, but first we will hear from Ambassador Mike Waltz.
Then we will hear from the Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Aid, Tom Fletcher, and then Jeremy Lewin, undersecretary for Foreign Assistance, Humanitarian Affairs and Religious Freedom.
So Ambassador Waltz, Well, there we go.
Thank you.
Good to see you everyone.
Good morning, and really thrilled to be joined by both under secretaries here and thank you, Jeremy, in particular, for coming up to New York today.
We're quite excited to talk with you all today about a Taking the next step in United Nations reform, and restoring America's leadership and bringing accountability, and bringing oversight and bringing transparency to how American tax dollars are being used for humanitarian aid.
I want to stress in particular for humanitarian lifesaving aid.
These funds are for victims of natural disasters, for tsunamis, for earthquakes, for famine, people who are truly in critical need, and how we deliver that, how we're changing, how we deliver that with the United States remaining by far as the most generous nation in the world, not only through this aid, but of course, we can't ever forget the hundreds of billions in private sector aid that go through foundations, charities, philanthropies, and other means.
I'll tell you for certain, President Trump made clear from his first day in office that the days of accepting status quo processes are over.
Here at the US Mission to the United Nations, we've been taking action with this guidance, as you know, and with these fine individuals in December of last year, we signed a historic memorandum of understanding that announced $2 billion in pooled funding to drive reforms through through the humanitarian reset that Under Secretary Fletcher has been leading.
Our partnership, our burden sharing has increased, but duplication and inefficiencies have decreased that cost time, taxpayer money, and frankly, lives.
In many ways, this collaboration on reform reflects President Trump's priorities for the UN and helping it reach its potential His mandate to us is to help the institution reform and help it achieve that potential.
We found that when the UN does what it does best, delivering humanitarian aid in remote, difficult locations at scale with a reliable and affordable supply chain, it can and does succeed.
It's only then when the organization strays from its core mission that it tends to not perform nearly as well as it should.
We're here to support its success and because of the clear commitment to reform and the achievements so far, we are thrilled today, again, with Under Secretary Lewin and Under Secretary-General Fletcher to announce an additional 1.8 billion in humanitarian funding.
These funds will save more lives around the world, but also drive forward the reforms that we put in place for efficiency, accountability, and lasting impact.
Um, this isn't the end to our efforts.
In fact, it's just the latest step.
We still have a lot of work to do, again, to be completely candid to address the bloat that often undermines the United Nations mission.
We have already or excuse me, achieved just this year the first regular budget cut in the history of the United Nations, reducing overhead even drawing down some peacekeeping missions, many of which have been around 20, 30, 40 years.
They've gone on too long or have been unable to actually achieve their mandate, or in many cases, what the peacekeeping commanders told us was to address poorly performing units.
We've put the focus back.
This is more broadly speaking on achieving real results, and most importantly, attaining peace and saving lives.
So To give you a sense of the progress we've made, I think we will hand this over to Tom Fletcher to share his views from inside the UN system.
Under Secretary Lewin will discuss in greater detail our vision for humanitarian funding going forward.
I just want to emphasize again, there's this narrative out there out there in the media space that the United States has walked away.
That is absolutely false.
It's fake news.
The numbers not only that we announced in December, but that we're announcing here today will result in more cents on every dollar actually getting to people in need and that's a shared goal we should all have I can tell you our constituents, it's their money, the American taxpayer, that's certainly something we should be able to look them in the eye and say, this money is being used as efficiently and effectively as possible to save lives around the world.
With that, I will hand over to you, Tom.
Thank you very much.
Ambassador Waltz, thank you, Under Secretary Lewin, for being here today and thank you for not just being here in presence, but as such a key supporter for this lifesaving work that lies ahead of us.
Those of you who are very attentive will remember I was here on the 8th of December and set out a plan for 2026 to reach 87 million people with life saving support at the cost of $23 billion, which as I said at the time was less than 1% of what the world would spend on guns and arms and security.
It's less than half of what Wall Street spent on bonuses a few weeks ago.
It's a fraction of what we spend on fizzy drinks or bottled water in places where we have access to freshwater itself.
An ambitious plan, but one that we had fully prioritized, costed, and which we are determined as a humanitarian community to deliver.
I said at the time that we were balancing three key aspects of this work.
Firstly, to retain our principles and our values around impartial, neutral, lifesaving work.
Secondly, to reform the humanitarian system as we go along for the new realities that we face.
Thirdly, to get out there and raise the money that we need in a period when there is less money around for humanitarian action.
As you've heard me say many times, we are facing rising needs over 300 million people.
Need our support, and we're facing declining global funding.
We are, as a result, overstretched, under resourced, and literally under attack.
I spent much of last night in touch with my colleagues in Ukraine as they responded to a double hit on OCHA convoys near the front lines, completely unacceptable.
We call for full accountability, full investigations, and we expect member states to protect our work wherever we are.
So as I said, we have a plan, and on the 10th of December, Under Secretary Louis and I came together in Washington to announce a tranche of US generous US funding, $2 billion to that plan.
And you'll hear me say something now that you've never heard me say before, and I'll probably say never again, I promise, but I have some slides.
So the plan against the odds is working.
We are fundraising for that $23 billion and up to this point, in advance of the announcement you've just heard, we've raised $7.38 billion from 65 member states plus other public and private sources of funding.
We're grateful for all of that support.
But the most important number that I have for you today on the delivery of that plan is that we have already reached in the first four months of the year 14.4 million people with lifesaving support.
14.4 million people.
That's a headline that we should all be proud of and that we should celebrate.
How did we do this with the first tranche of US funding? That contribution provided us a lifeline at a crucial moment when the sector was facing huge cuts and was at breaking point with supply chains fracturing and partners operations at severe risk across all of the crisis contexts in which we work.
The risk was that millions of people would have been left without support.
It injected resources at a vital moment.
If this is working, you'll see a slide now showing that that US tranche of money, the 2 billion was for 18 crises across multiple regions and that that contribution tripled the funding available through our pooled funds across those 18 countries, with six of those countries actually starting from zero in the pooled funds and four of them increasing almost ten fold.
So on the second slide, you'll see then how we are delivering that work.
Now, there were plenty of legitimate questions about how we were doing this.
Could we allocate those funds quickly enough? Could the humanitarian system deliver at that scale? And could we live up to the standards of accountability that we set ourselves and which are rightly demanded of us by our donors and by their taxpayers? I hope that the data that we'll share with you today and it's all available for you online will show that we resoundingly, collectively, as humanitarians, answered yes to all of those questions.
As of today, we have $1.71 billion of that funding under implementation across those 18 countries and with it, we're aiming to reach 22 million people with the US allocation alone.
Of course, behind those numbers, as you've heard me described to you, many times, are individual names and families and communities living through the most horrendous crisis.
So to break that down a little bit more, over 6 million people will have received food assistance with that support.
10.4 million people will be provided with safe and sufficient water.
We'll be supporting over 690 health facilities.
More than 779,000 households will get direct assistance, one of the fastest, most efficient, most dignified ways to support civilians in crisis.
300,000 girls, 266,000 boys will receive critical support for severe malnutrition.
Critically, a big chunk of that money will go to women and girls who are so often on the front lines of these crises.
They'll have access to safe spaces.
They will get support for those who have survived horrific sexual violence.
Of course, women and girls always bear the brunt of that sexual violence.
On the next slide, I hope you'll see that we're also working with this allocation and with the generous support of other donors to reform the humanitarian system.
To go back to the four D's, and I won't test you on the four D's right now, but I know you all know them very well.
We are defending our values and principles, international humanitarian law, wherever we work, the neutrality, the impartiality of our work, our protection of women and girls, and that Priority of lifesaving work in severity four and five, the most urgent cases.
We are defining that work more clearly around lifesaving work and you'll all have read carefully the global humanitarian overview that we released back in December that describes how we're doing that.
We're delivering much more efficiently and effectively against those goals, reducing duplication and bureaucracy and layers between the taxpayer and the recipient to make sure we do maximize the cents on every dollar that reaches those who so badly need it.
As part of those reforms, we're also devolving power to those country teams, the people closest to the communities we serve to tell us how best to spend that money most effectively to save the maximum number of lives.
That is also, therefore, empowering our local country teams and our extraordinary humanitarian coordinators in the field who are leading such important work.
Final slide, you'll also see that we are doing this, and this is an innovation in the sector with complete transparency.
For those who are really interested, you can dig into these figures.
You can see exactly where we're spending the money, which partner organizations are delivering, and who is having the right results as we seek to reach that target of 87 million lives.
We've established that online portal where you can explore all the aspects of that work.
Of course, as we go along and this is important to our dialogue, and we met last week to review progress in the first quarter of the year, we're learning lessons as we go.
We've had a respondent exercise to assess where we can improve the delivery of what we are doing.
Of course, we've consulted our amazing friends and partners across the Humanitarian committee, the UN agencies that are so vital to this work, our partner NGOs.
I hope that as we learn those lessons, will ensure we do more to prioritize women and girls, particularly around the victims of sexual violence, that we will get more community voices into the debate about what needs they face, that will further enhance the risk oversight, the accountability and impact tracking mechanisms that are such a key innovation of this work.
That we will continue our essential work with member states, including prominently the US, to end conflicts, to deliver ceasefires, to work on the access agreements that we need to reach people in greatest need.
In the Q&A, I'd be happy to elaborate on several areas where over the last three or four days we've made progress on those access agreements, including through the work we do with the US.
I hope, of course, that partners will also continue direct funding to the key frontline agencies involved in lifesaving work.
We will be expanding the country list in response to feedback to make sure that we reach three more countries in urgent need of help.
Of course, just for clarity, we also hope that member states and supporters will continue to support early recovery, resilience, long term development.
I've just returned from Syria with my friend and colleague, Alexander the Crow where we were talking about that transition to government led and national led recovery so that the humanitarians can go home and move on to the next emergency.
So we welcome this new allocation.
You'll see that there's a statement out from the Secretary-General, which, of course, I echo.
With this fresh funding, we will save millions of lives.
It makes the US our single largest national donor and this allocation will allow us to accelerate, expand on the progress made, saving lives, reforming the system, defending the impartiality and neutrality of humanitarian action.
Focus going forward now for the rest of the year is to secure the rest of the funding we need to deliver this ambitious plan and then to get out there and deliver it and to come back to you at the end of the year and ask you to hold us to account for what we've done and the choices we've made.
I can speak for our humanitarians throughout the system in saying that while the challenges are growing, we will not shy from those challenges.
I end by paying tribute to their courage and tenacity and kindness in the face of huge challenges now.
Thank you very much and over to Undersecretary Lu.
I think it's worth maybe taking a step back and thinking about where this started because Tom and I met last year and we were talking about how we can drive reforms that I think both of our organizations recognize are necessary.
To the ambassador's point, there's this narrative that the United States, because of the reforms that the president made early in the term, doesn't care about the United Nations, doesn't care about humanitarian or life civing aid.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
We've countless hours and I think our teams have gotten to know each other.
Tom's team at OCHA and my team at the State Department work together every single day.
We're coordinated.
We've gotten the humanitarian and resident coordinators in all of the different countries synced up with our ambassadors, with our humanitarian people in the field.
They're working on the sector plans together.
They're working on access in all of these different places.
They're working together, I would argue closer than they've ever worked together before.
That's thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of work that goes into making these reforms real.
It's because precisely because the president does care and what he cares about, I think goes back to what Ambassador Waltce was saying, which is that the way we were funding this system before did not work for the United States and our taxpayers.
The UN and the United States are different entities and we have different constituencies.
I think there's no shame in admitting that.
In fact, we should openly admit that.
I think for a long time there was this idea that the United Nations and the United States need to agree on all these issues.
We don't need to agree.
Tom has a very different set of constituencies.
He shouldn't be responsive only to our concerns.
That would be doing a disservice to the people that he serves and at the same time, we're not responsible to the United Nations.
I work for the American people, he works for the American people, no one else.
That doesn't mean that there aren't areas where our overlap is incredibly significant.
One area of particular overlap is that crucial lifesaving aid.
The United States has a long history of being the most generous nation in the world.
But what happened was over a long period of time, we funded an inordinate amount of the humanitarian sector.
Than 40% in many years.
A lot of what we were classifying as humanitarian bled into other sectors, social programs, long term development, other things.
As the needs rose, and there's a recognition that the needs are tremendous, particularly in these conflict countries.
What you would see is Congress would give more and more money to humanitarian work and it wasn't actually reaching the people in the field.
It was getting diverted to terrorist organizations.
It was paying for expensive UN bloat and salaries, overhead costs that were in the double digits for a lot of the UN main agencies.
It feeding social programs that were not actually delivering lifesaving impact.
And so when the president came into office, he said this system is in need of tremendous reform and everyone focuses on the first stage of that reform, which is cutting a lot of stuff that didn't make sense.
I think there's not been enough attention in the media about all the work that we're doing to drive the next stage of humanitarian action around the world and the way that the United States is a partner and funder of that.
So Tom and I had a series of conversations.
I don't think we took each other seriously for a while.
I don't think we believed that this was going to happen, and then we signed that agreement in Geneva.
As Tom said, it was out of stressor for the system, certainly, and an important moment.
And it was a challenge to both of our organizations.
His team came over to the State Department to work out the details right before that and I went down and talked to them, and I think the teams were looking at each other like this isn't going to work.
And many in the media, when we announced it said this was just because we lack the capacity to get the money out or because Tom was desperate for funding or whatever else the media narratives were.
It wasn't the case.
It was months of planning and a very thoughtful effort to reform the system.
What we said in that announcement in December was we were going to focus on funding pooled funds, but a different type of pooled funds where we have, we've picked the countries intentionally to align.
Secretary Rubia said this, even when we're being generous as a humanitarian donor, every single dollar of taxpayer money has to be programmed in the American national interest.
At the first instance, we were able to say, look at Tom's plan because he hyper prioritized it by country in crisis and say, there are a lot of places where our interests overlap.
There are also places where maybe it doesn't and we don't have to fund it, and he has other donors, and that's okay.
We can focus on the areas where our overlap is real.
We were going to focus on pooled funds in those countries, taking the benefits of the pooled funds, which is faster delivery to the entire sector to best place local partners, um, you know, and the ability to reach what the needs are on the ground more efficiently and with less overhead.
While also, you know, increasing accountability, Tom has passed through to all of his partners that requirement to share data, and we've stood up, and the United States has helped to fund impact and accountability teams and that dashboard, which Microsoft also generously donated some of their, you know, services to help the OCHA team put that together.
That's a first.
I mean, the United States has posted a lot of our foreign assistance obligations on the Internet for a long time.
The UN has never really done anything like that.
So that's a huge innovation.
The impact and accountability teams that are getting real time tracking that are identifying waste fraud, abuse, diversion in the field, they're reporting it to the HCRC in the field.
They're reporting it to the OCHA team.
They're reporting it to the United States and to our team so we can take action together.
We're working with the OIGs on that as well.
And those are huge accountability reforms.
But I think what's most important is what those reforms achieve when we're spending humanitarian money and that's the results in the field.
I want to go back to we announced four months ago $2 billion.
Their team has already spent 88% of it and they've already mapped it against 21.1 million real people that are going to receive lifesaving assistance across all of those different countries in record time.
Their time to obligation is several times faster than the United States was on our bilateral awards.
Their overhead fee is three times lower than other UN agencies on bilateral awards.
I mean, I could just go down the list.
We could be talking about all these data points, and a lot of them are going to be in our slides, his slides, the media release, and everything else like that.
But our teams have been working together every single day for the last four months to deliver on every single one of those promises, which is 92% hyper prioritized.
I mean, you guys can challenge me on this.
I don't think any other major donor in any year has ever had its humanitarian money be 92% hyper prioritized against four and five need.
I mean, really, when we say life saving, we mean it.
Hyper prioritized, focused, and focused on the places where we have a foreign policy interests where it aligns with the president's interest and that's where we get to that country, those country selection questions.
I think that's important for both of our systems.
I think it's important that there are places where our foreign policy interests and what the system would perceive as its independence or its institutional interests don't align.
And by avoiding those countries, we're not doing a disservice to the humanitarian sector.
We're allowing us to focus on the areas where we're overlap and we don't think that there needs to be some compromise in their principles, and we can work together on it, while also allowing us the sovereign right to invest in places where it aligns with our national interest.
And that's incredibly incredibly important.
We are adding additional countries, including a couple that you may be interested in, Lebanon, Venezuela, places where there are significant needs.
Um, But it's important, this is not the only way that we fund humanitarian efforts around the world.
We still do have bilateral awards with both UN agencies and private organizations, and we're going to be rolling out a series of macro awards going forward as well that cover a lot of the countries that are not in this allocation, and I think this goes to the pooled fund model, we're expanding it to more countries.
I think there were a lot of questions when we did the first one about, why did you pick these countries? A lot of it was need, a lot of it was foreign policy.
A lot of it was also the capacity to deliver this four months in at scale and actually deliver.
I OCHA team was very honest with us.
This place, we don't have the staff or doesn't have the scale to support a pooled fund model yet.
We are adding countries and we will continue to add countries.
This is the beginning of a process.
But I think it's a recognition on the part of the United States that this is a reform that has to be lasting here.
The way what OCHA is doing, bringing all of the UN agencies together under the leadership of the humanitarian and resident coordinator in country, hyper prioritizing humanitarian work to actual lifesaving action, being accountable, reporting data, focusing on diversion and admitting it.
Um, you know, and ultimately being transparent in a way that the UN never was before is something that needs to stay.
So we're delighted to be able to support those reform efforts going forward, and we think that this is part of our long term strategy in the United States for humanitarian assistance.
You know, I can say pretty confidently that for the rest of the president's term, assuming that Tom continues to deliver like this, we're going to be supporting this model year after year, and that's going to be something that the sector is going to have to get used to because I know there are a lot of criticism from the sector.
They don't like certain aspects about it.
Some of them are fair and we hear those complaints.
We work with OCHA to work on some of those issues.
I know, for example, there were a lot of questions around the six month timeline that OCHA said, all the money had to be out in six months and that's because four months in, look at those results, and that was really important to prove out the system and also because of where the system was last year.
But now, responding to some of what the partner feedback has been for this allocation, it's going to be a 12 month cycle.
So it's going to be more of an annualized cycle and recognition that this is now part of our regular budget process and something that we're going to be working with Congress to fund every year as a major chunk of the way that we fund humanitarian work around the world.
So I look forward to questions, but this is really a recognition of the work that both the United States and obviously OCHA have been doing all around the world, the success of the model and a show of continued commitment in these critical reforms, and there's a lot more work to be done.
So we'll be doing more of these.
But I think it's really important that we started with the results of the last delegation because too often in these settings, we all pat ourselves on the back and pledge more money.
But, you know, the real question is, is that delivering? I think that's the challenge that we've made to OCHA.
I know we were talking about this.
There was a very, um, caught a lot of that we had in our press release in the last one, which is that we were challenging UN agencies to adapt, shrink, or die.
I'd say OCHA has definitely adapted, it's reformed, and it hasn't grown because they're being efficient, but it's grown in what it's doing and it's grown three times as many resources under pooled fund management and under the HCRC leadership, meeting more people than ever through OCHA supported programs, and it's reformed in a way that um, you know, honestly, has been very impressive to the United States, and we want to continue to hold Tom accountable for that.
But this is a continued show of our investment in this approach and it's something that's going to be here to stay for us.
Great.
We are now going to take questions.
Just a quick note.
We will be doing rather 1-145, the New York Foreign Pres Center will be host a briefing from Undersecretary Lewin, as well as Under Secretary-General Fletcher.
That will be on the tenth floor of the US UN building.
So if you have further questions, by all means, check in there.
So we're going to do our first question with Valeria.
Thank you so much.
On behalf of the United Nations Correspondent Association, thank you for this press conference.
It's Valeri Rebecca from Ana Newswire.
Ambassador Watts on Middle East, since Operation Epic Furi, millions have been displaced across the region, Iran, Lebanon, Gaza.
Simultaneously, the humanitarian supply chain through the Strait of Hormuz have been disrupted and so the needs increase.
Reports indicate the State Department has 5.4 billion in humanitarian funds already appropriated for 2026, but not yet deployed.
Can you tell us what is the US plan to respond to this crisis and when will those funds reach the people who need it? Thank you so much.
I think you just saw $1.8 billion of that money.
You saw exactly how we're going to allocate it.
Um, so rest assured, all of the money, there's a plan for it, and it's all being allocated against this and our full year plan.
So I think the idea that there's money that we're just sitting on that Congress gives you money to spend throughout the year and we're working, as we talked about, to make it much faster to get to the field.
There's $100 million in here for Lebanon specifically.
And I know you visited Lebanon a few weeks ago.
We talked about it, and they're working very hard to reach the needs in Lebanon, if you want to talk about the straight or anything like that.
But, I'll just add.
So I guess your number is now what? 3.6.
Right? So I'd hope you adjust since we just announced 1.8.
So that's one piece, but look, that's why you've seen, to your point on the humanitarian aid.
I think it's 80 plus TOM agencies that I'm aware of, both private, UN and otherwise that use, for example, the Dubai free trade zone, use those ports, have to transit the straits of Hormuz, and it's one of many reasons that we've called upon the Iranian government.
In fact, in UN Security Council resolution 28 17, 136 nations, a UN record in terms of co sponsors called upon the Iranian government to stop attacking civilian commercial shipping and to allow that humanitarian aid to go out to areas in need like East Africa.
We just had, as a result of the readout from President Trump and President Xi, another call an agreement.
Um, between the United States and China to call upon uh the Iranian government to demilitarized to stop militarizing the straits, to stop tolling shipping in violation of international law, and to come to some type of reasonable conclusion.
Not only was it in that Security Council resolution, but in the draft Security Council resolution now, there is specific language to allow humanitarian aid to flow, and I'm fully confident in Under Secretary Lewin will obligate efficiently, transparently, effectively the money that Congress has appropriated.
Thank you very much for doing this briefing, Edith Letter from the Associated Press.
Ambassador Waltz, this was a very important donation from the United States for humanitarian needs.
And I can't help but ask you whether there's any update on US payments of arrears to the regular and peacekeeping budgets.
And, Mr.
Fletcher, You said that there are 300 million people who really need aid, and the UN is aimed only at about 85 million.
What happens to all of those other people? And is that a realistic target? And just to clarify, Mr.
Lin, because I think where some of us are slightly confused about the timeline.
The original 2 billion was for six months.
And the announcement of the 1.8 billion today is for a year starting now.
The simplest question is that one.
So I OCHA set said the money had to be obligated within six months, and that was to kick the sector and say, they've got to get it out the door and get it to the field.
So there's a different time as they do the pooled fund allocations, there's going to be a little bit more time to assess where the needs are greatest and obligate onto actual projects over a little bit longer of a timeline.
That's why four months later, they've gotten almost all of the original 2 billion out the door.
It won't be quite as fast, not in the terms of the actual once they've identified a project, it'll be super fast, but they'll have a little more time to spread it out over a longer period as needs continue to evolve.
Thanks, Ed.
Just very quickly on those three to me, firstly, I would love to sit here and say that I was going to get the funding to reach those 345 million.
I wish that funding was there, but I have to be realistic about what's out there.
We've given ourselves on the basis of data and the work our teams have done, a stretch target of reaching 23 billion.
I hope we go through that and that we can then reach many more than that.
But the responsible thing for me to do is to work out what we're likely to get and then heavily prioritize to make sure that that's being spent in the most principled way possible, which means identifying the people in the highest severity, the most urgent cases.
I can't justify taking food from them to spend on less higher priority projects.
But we can give you and I can share with you the plans we have for if we receive much, much more, but we've got to start somewhere with that rigor and clarity and honesty about what we're doing.
Um, is it realistic? Uh, Call me back at the end of the year and we'll see.
I know that we'll do everything.
We're busting through those checkpoints, we're busting through those donor meetings.
We're working around the clock, people risking their lives out in the field to deliver these outcomes and to get us to that 87 million number.
The situation as Ambassador Walters was already identified in the straits of Hormuz actually makes it harder for us because a lot of the supplies, the food, the fertilizer, the natural gas is held up, which could actually mean that that 345 million number in need goes even further up.
I've just come back from Somalia and seen the direct risks there.
So You know, this is a difficult world and this is a difficult job, but we were determined to deliver.
Finally, on the allocation, I was the one who was very keen that we delivered that first allocation fast for several reasons.
The sector was in real jeopardy and we had to get support out to the front lines very, very quickly.
Also, it was a challenge, as Jeremy has said, to all of us, to see if we could deliver and we have delivered over twice as quickly as we normally do with our allocations.
Also, thirdly and frankly, to demonstrate to the US and to other potential donors that we had a model that could work in the hope that we would get to point, this happy point here, where we're hearing about a subsequent allocation.
The next one, we've got a bit more space and we can learn some lessons.
We can make sure that particularly local organizations have the time they need to put together their applications to this funding and that we can deliver as effectively as possible.
But just to be clear, I'm not going to be saying to the sector that we can take our foot off the accelerator here.
We have a lot of lives to save this year, and this is a great boost to that effort, but we won't be, I'm afraid, folks relaxing.
Do you want me to answer.
Let me just answer that last one because I just want to point out, I would love for you all to be able to go and ask the IRGC and ask the IRGC Navy, ask the Ayatollah why they are responding to our actions built around their nuclear program by attacking humanitarian aid, attacking civilian shipping, attacking ports.
So this is squarely on Iran's shoulder.
And again, it's why we've had one resolution passed and another one in draft that as of today has 120 co sponsors calling on Iran to stop attacking civilian shipping and lifesaving that's moving lifesaving aid on the regular budget because I will look, we've seen, I mean, first, let's just set the record that the most substantial part of the arrears started in 2024 in the last administration.
Moving forward, well, let's just look at what we're talking about today.
We've seen significant reforms in the humanitarian space, pulled warehouses, pulled vehicle fleets, pulled back offices, lower administrative costs.
We've seen those reforms move forward and we're now announcing another tranche of significant funding.
On the regular budget side, we saw the first budget cut in the UN's history on its regular budget.
We're seeing 3,000 headquarters bureaucrats that will be cut and will push people out into the field.
We've seen reforms on the peacekeeping side.
As a result, we had 159 million delivered in January, and we will have an additional substantial tranche towards our regular budget coming soon.
Sean Brice Vy South Afican Broadcasting.
I'll start with Tom Flitch and I've got for you also Ambassador Waltce right here in the front.
A Tom, you were at Chatham House on April 20th, and to quote you, you said, for every day of the Iran conflict, 2 billion is being spent.
You say, my entire target for a hyper prioritized plan is to save 87 million lives is $23 billion.
We could have that funding in less than a fortnight of this reckless war, you said.
Now, of course, we cannot.
You also went on to describe the relationship with the United States as an absolute roller coaster, but that some progress was being made in that relationship.
I wonder if those words still stand true today.
Ambassador Walce, In terms of the cuts that you've engendered at the United Nations, you talk about the bloat that you've been managed to cut here.
I wonder if that is not undermined by the exponential costs to the US taxpayer by the war in Iran.
Yeah, you've heard what I've said and I've said it in this room as well.
I wish there was more money being spent on humanitarian action and less money in the world being spent on war.
I would love much more of that funding to be going to the plan to help us raise that 23 billion.
You can do the maths.
I've told you I need 23 billion to save 87 million lives.
I I'm sad that a lot of money at the moment is being spent on drones.
We're seeing it in all of the crisis areas where we're working.
The arms dealers are getting richer at the moment at the expense of the people who I serve and it's driving up humanitarian needs.
But we're here with a piece of good news today about a very significant chunk of US funding that they have chosen to spend on humanitarian action and I welcome that as say, of course, the SG.
Is it a roller coaster? At some point, we'll release our memoirs about the last six months longer than six months.
Yeah, it's an exciting dialogue that we're having.
But it's a dialogue that gets results.
This is a significant result.
The 2 billion allocation has saved millions of lives.
Just over the last 48, 72 hours, I'm in touch with US envoys on the Middle East, on DRC, Sudan, on Syria, actually on very practical ways that we can work together to help to save lives in those areas.
That's a partnership and a dialogue with a key member of a key permanent member of the Security Council.
And a key actor in so many of these regions.
Can I just say something for 30 seconds? We are by far the largest donor to this plan and to the humanitarian sector this year.
And so, you know, there are a lot of countries that are sitting on the sidelines and making criticism of the United States and talking about humanitarian impacts.
Many of them are wealthy, many of them have not shown up for this plan or any other plan.
All of the other developed countries have cut by much more than us, and they are putting their money towards things that are less hyper prioritized towards lifesaving aid.
They're saving social programs at the expense of lifesaving aid.
There are a lot of countries that criticize the actions of President Trump, but when it comes to humanitarian lifesaving aid, and you can do all the math, it's visible and Thomas said it.
We are still here as the most generous country in the world.
I can't resist.
I mean, frankly, it's just a ridiculous question.
Yeah, we can have tough conversations.
Reform is difficult, reform is uncomfortable.
Doing things better isn't easy, but the results that we just listed out speak for themselves.
That's one.
Number two, to Under Secretary Lewin's point, Finally, after decades of asking, NATO, for example, has increased their defense spending, but they've done a lot of it at the decrease of their aid budgets.
I wonder if our colleagues in Europe are getting those same type of questions.
I probably doubt it.
Then thirdly, if we want to talk about costs in the Middle East, let's talk about the costs that have been incurred by Hezbollah destabilizing Lebanon, attacking its neighbors.
Let's talk about the costs of the Iranian backed Assad regime for decades and decades and the slaughter.
Of the Syrian people.
Let's talk about the cost to humanity of the 40 to 50,000 Iranians.
Not over a period of years in a weekend how many machine gun bullets is that from the Iranian regime on its own people? Let's talk about the cost of lifesaving aid that's going to be incurred in East Africa.
I'm happy, I don't know where you are to talk about costs that have been incurred by a genocidal regime, the largest state backer of terrorism, One, that United Nations resolution after resolution here in the Security Council has called upon to not seek a nuclear weapon that we just had snapback provisions of the entire world agreeing with us.
Let's talk about the cost of God help us if they could hold the world hostage with a nuke.
I'm happy to have that conversation about cost and I'm thankful that we're arresting this problem before it gets out of control.
One last question from Online.
Then we got to go with Magdalino.
Hi, I'm Magdalena Del Valle from Bloomberg News.
I'd really love to hear some more details about how the funds are going to be used.
I know in December you said they were going to be going to a pool, but is this going to be more earmarked? Then how are you planning or not on attributing future funds? Are there some goals that the organization needs to meet in order to guarantee that more money will flow in? So it's the same model that we pioneered.
And as Tom said, they've produced a public dashboard so you can see exactly where the 2 billion went.
It's built on a hyper prioritized plan global humanitarian overview, and then our teams went down country by country, sector by sector, targeted it to the lifesaving needs.
And so it's a pooled fund vehicle.
You know, I think we signed that framework agreement.
There are requirements around accountability, around impact tracing, about prioritization, about ensuring no diversion, about all of those other things.
But other than that, it's not you know it is supposed to be flexible because we've done all the work to identify exactly what we're spending it on, which is core lifesaving stuff.
Yeah.
Just to underline that.
Thanks, Angelina and to mention that the other country that we didn't men earlier which is being added to the list is Central African Republic.
I know that Ambassador Bartos was there just recently and our teams made a very strong case for their inclusion on the list as well.
It's a longer list of countries, but you can find all of that online and you can see the different sectors that we're supporting the different organizations we're supporting throughout these efforts.
As we described earlier on, we have adapted and one small correction to Jeremy's point, it's not just OCHA that's adapted.
It's the humanitarian system, the humanitarian community that has adapted as a whole, and we're continuing to learn and adapt and evolve and make sure we maximize the amount of funding that we get to those who are in such desperate need globally.
Do that, of course, you know, as part of the UNAT reforms that Ambassador Waltz also described, improving procurement, supply chains, common premises all under the leadership of the SG's UNAT initiative.
So this is real practical progress, but we can't relax because those needs are out there and we're determined to deliver.
Thank you.
Can I just make one more comment on a The ultimate way to drive down the people in need and therefore, the cost to save their lives is to continue with processes for peace, with political processes.
Whether that's Azerbaijan, Armenia, DRC, Rwanda, Sudan and the Quad process, Libya, Western Sahara, I can continue going.
On and on.
This administration is driving those processes not only through our special envoys, but here in the Security Council.
That's how we work.
Tom and OCHA and this entire humanitarian sector.
If we can't eliminate it significantly reduce it and we have to.
I just wanted to be sure to tie those two things together.
And the president has spent so much time personally on peace.
Many of you guys will criticize every little thing.
Oh, this deal has stalled or everything else like that.
He is dedicating a lot of time and attention and political attention on peace processes in places that for a long time have been forgotten like Sudan, which is the world's greatest humanitarian crisis.
I mean, not to get overly political here, how much time did Joe Biden spend on Sudan as that crisis was getting out of control? How much time? I'm serious.
Not a lot as the needs kept on growing and growing and growing.
So they spent more and more poorly targeted money year after year and said, that's how we're going to fix it.
President Trump is focusing on peace, which is the root of it all, while also focusing on the humanitarian sector at the back end.
Thanks everyone.