Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator - Full Transcript of Press Encounter, 15 November 2023, Geneva
UNOCHA - United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
The reason I wanted to speak to you was to outline to you something very specific about Gaza, of course, which is about the approach being taken and planned by the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies to provide aid to Gaza.
A very specific thing - and the reason why I wanted to talk about this is because, of course - there have been allegations from certain quarters that we aren't ready, that we don't have the trucks, that we don't have the fuel, why shouldn't we use safe zones, and so forth. So, this is intended to demonstrate and to give some details, and I know that you've seen some of this already, of the approach that we plan to do.
Now, number one, we plan to follow the standard experience and procedures that humanitarian agencies have had all over the world. This is not new in itself. The extent of the suffering is insufferable, but the approach of humanitarian agencies, depending on the requirements of international humanitarian aid and support, is going to be the same in Gaza as it might be in Ukraine, in Sudan or elsewhere. And I will describe what that might look like. And I'm saying this obviously in the context of the increasing flow of population down from the north to the south of Gaza. Clearly that's the perspective. That's the context in which I'm speaking.
So, I'll go through these 10 points and then open up for questions.
First of all, to facilitate the agencies' efforts to bring in a continuous flow of aid convoys safely. The key word here is "continuous." Aid needs to be reliable, on the day, on the next day, on the next week. People need to know that there will be aid coming tomorrow or the next day. They need to know that they have time to consume these supplies because more is coming at the next moment.
Number two: Crucial, crucial for the logistics - is to open additional crossing points for aid and commercial trucks to enter into Gaza, including Kerem Shalom from Israel. Now, much has been made of the importance of the need to provide opportunities for commercial aid to get into Gaza. By the way, once again, that's a very common feature of the aspects of an urgent humanitarian program. Sudan was exactly the same, we had very similar points made in the early days, you remember the evacuation from Khartoum. But it's particularly important in Gaza because of the total dependency of a population which cannot move outside the territory. So more crossing points, including that Kerem Shalom, which used to carry more than 60 per cent of the truckloads going through before this conflict, this recent conflict started. So please, Kerem Shalom. Please Israel, give us that for our crossing point.
Next, allow the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations access to fuel. Now, you've heard a lot about the need for fuel. I believe [Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)] Philippe Lazzarini has also issued a quote today, this afternoon, saying that they received about 24,000 litres of fuel. I just want to say a couple of words on fuel, probably to repeat what you've heard elsewhere. Number one, fuel is the driver of so many aspects of the humanitarian response. It's the driver of desalination. It's the driver of electricity. It's the driver of effective hospitals. It's the driver of trucks that will go from Rafah on entry to the distribution points. The 24,000 litres - most welcome, no question about it - is not enough to provide the fuel that we need daily to get to the whole of Gaza. My understanding is that to cover the whole of the Gazan territory and therefore all of the people in need, we would need about 200,000 liters a day. Now, this has been happening for years. UNRWA has extensive experience in this. UNOPS [the UN Office for Project Services] has extensive experience also in helping make the distribution of fuel. And we understand the need for monitoring. But the idea that we have been pursuing daily and nightly in negotiation with Israel, Egypt, and with the assistance of the United States, is to replenish the stocks in the UNRWA depo near Rafah and then take it from there to be used by trucks going around Gaza to where people are able to be.
Number four: This is bedrock, of course: enable humanitarian organizations to deliver aid throughout Gaza without impediment or interference. I haven't witnessed in my many, many decades of dealing with war, an occasion on which so much attention is being paid to the requirements of international humanitarian law, otherwise called the rules of war. One of them is to allow people to go where they decide to go, they will decide where they're safe. They will decide when they want to move and not move. And the same goes for us - that we need safety to deliver aid to wherever those people go.
Number five: Allow us - humanitarian organizations - to expand the number of safe shelters for displaced people in schools and other public facilities across Gaza. This is an absolutely central part of UNRWA's preparedness - UNRWA, which thank God for UNRWA, is in existence and is still the buffer between survival and tragedy for so many people in Gaza. And it needs the opportunity to expand the number of safe shelters across the south. For example, it could take an agreement with the Palestinian Authority to use PA schools to expand shelters for those fleeing south. We've all heard about the way in which UNRWA institutions, schools, hospitals and elsewhere are flooded with IDPs [internally displaced people]. We need to expand the numbers of such institutions in the south. I'm not saying that all the people will go all to these shelters where we raise the UN flag to say, this is a UN-protected institution. But it gives us at least a little bit more chance to help people be safe.
[Number six]: Improve a humanitarian notification mechanism. Can I spend two minutes on this? I expect it's familiar to most of you. But in all countries in conflict - whether it's Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, where I spent a lot of time, and indeed Gaza - for many, many years, the humanitarian community has used a notification system, a humanitarian notification system, to deconflict specific places which are protected, either protected under humanitarian law - like hospitals, schools and other places - or to tell the parties this is where we will be moving, from A to B to C, to deliver aid. We notify the parties, whether it's in Ukraine, or Gaza or elsewhere, of what our plans are, so that they are on notice not to attack us, to allow what humanitarian law again requires: the safe passage of humanitarian assistance.
Number seven: Part of the approach, in the south, is to set up, establish and work from relief distribution hubs. There will be people who take shelter, as I have already referred to, who can receive aid directly where they are. There will be other people who are in houses or moving around or other places to live in. And we will need distribution hubs to which they can come or from which we can go to deliver food, medical supplies and other items to them on a continuous basis. I spent some time in the last year in Ukraine, for example, where these distribution hubs, especially through the winter, were key, the key part of a humanitarian operation. It should be no different in Gaza.
Number eight: Fundamental - allow civilians to move to safer areas and to voluntarily return to their residences in the north, if they so desire. The freedom of movement of civilians in war is a fundamental privilege and requirement of international humanitarian law. You will have seen various statements of my colleagues in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee about the idea of safe zones, opposing the idea of safe zones. The United Nations has a history on safe zones. We remember Srebrenica, we remember what happened then, and we know the requirements - legally and operationally - to make a zone safe, including, by the way, for example, that all parties should agree to this being a safe zone. So, we are not enthusiastic about such safe zones. But we also insist that, in any case, it is not for us or others to decide where people should go. They should decide, if they want to decide to go to where is designated and is proposed as a safe zone, let it be. Let it be their decision, and we will, of course, provide assistance to them there. But we will not be part of an establishment of a safe zone which does not meet the requirements that we have found, through our own bitter experience, so demanding.
Number nine: Funding, boring as it is, $1.2 billion of an emergency appeal for the operation. I think we are into [$132] million so far. I was talking yesterday to Lynn Hastings, the Humanitarian Coordinator, based in Jerusalem, for the Occupied Territory, and I was asking her the question you write, which is: What do you really need now? She said fuel, money - money to fund the operation. We have incidentally around 460 trucks in Al Arish, in Rafah area, ready to go in. And I am very grateful to hear today through the Secretary-General himself, grateful to hear, that the Israeli Government has decided, and we thank them, not to put a cap on the number of trucks going in. We have the trucks, we need the fuel, and we need the money to fund the delivery. And then we can do the job that we are there to do.
Finally: Implement a humanitarian ceasefire. There has been a huge, huge discussion, particularly in the Security Council and elsewhere, on the difference between truces and hudnas and pauses and ceasefire. I have spent 50 years dealing with different words to describe something which is essentially very, very simple: Silence the guns. Stop the fighting to allow the people to move safely. Do it for as long as possible. Allow them to move safely on their own, not hindered and not pushed. And silence those guns long enough to give the people of Gaza a breather from the terrible, terrible things that have been put on them these last few weeks. This is very, very important.
So, these points together constitute for us an approach which we are applying - it's been going for some time - which we are applying for Gaza and we would apply elsewhere, if for example, the Occupied Territory became severely afflicted.
It's not new. It won't be perfect. It will be messy. It requires from the parties an adherence to humanitarian law and humanity. It requires from the international community funding urgently and quickly and requires from us and my colleagues the courage, which I think they have shown amply in these last few weeks, to go where others would not, but where the Gazans are and where they need their presence. Thank you very much.
Q: Thank you for the briefing. In your plans, you are not talking about hostages, so what are the chances that Israel will agree with that and what will be the risk if Israel disagrees with everything because of that?
Under-Secretary-General Griffiths: Look, for me, as I have said very often, publicly and privately, the release of the hostages is not part of a humanitarian plan - it's an obligation on all those involved. I am one of those who had the misfortune or privilege, depending on how you look at it, of seeing some of those videos of what happened on that day of October 7th. And I have always spoken publicly about the fact that these hostages need to be released unconditionally, not conditional on some quid pro quo - unconditionally, all of them and out.
And so I don't include it in the plan, because that would look as if it's a condition, and I don't think it should be conditional. I think it should be done, because we are all very well-aware of the terrible suffering, and I met in Jerusalem some of the families of those who are still missing, still don't know whether their three-year-old sister taken from one family is still alive or not. So, I am aware of the terrible stress on it.
Now, the second part of your question is: Will Israel agree with this or not? Israel, we have these daily negotiations with them in their COGAT [Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories] committee, as you know, which meets daily and nightly. It's very welcomed that they've said today there'll be no cap on trucks. It's very welcomed that they have released some fuel. This plan will allow all the parties, not just Israel, to understand what we understand to be the basis of the humanitarian operation. And what I found interesting, when I was in Israel last week, was the degree to which the Israeli officials were saying to me, we need humanitarian assistance. You remember the disorder that was starting when there was nothing going in? That people were desperate? The UNRWA warehouses have been taken apart? And why wouldn't they be? There's a reason for humanitarian assistance. It's partly and mostly for us, of course, it is completely about humanitarian, but it's also to try to calm a situation of such terrible danger. So, we will negotiate this daily and nightly from now on. I have no doubt it will fluctuate according to events, but we will not relent with what we know we need.
Q: Thank you, Mr. Griffiths. Can you tell us please some details about your meeting this morning with Iranian Foreign Minister. Did Mr. [Hossein Amir-]Abdollahian have any maybe initiative or message from Hamas concerning your plan?
Under-Secretary-General Griffiths: I won't give you any details, I never do of discussions I have with visitors. He can if he wants to. As you can imagine, we discussed the situation in some detail. I'm one of those, and I imagine you are, and of course I said this to him - there I am breaking my rule already - worried about the expansion, the expansion of the war into the north. And if there is to be a war in the north with Hezbollah and Israel then I fear the worst. I fear the worst, and we know that we can easily imagine the worst, because it will be a war that makes even Gaza with its awful horrors of daily struggle look like just the beginning. It will be a regional war which will affect so many parts. We already see potentially impact on Syria. My own country Yemen has been involved. So naturally the worry about expansion was the topic I discussed mainly with him. And, of course, he agreed with me that such expansion would not be a good thing.
Q: Mr. Griffiths, the 10 points that you are raising are not mind-boggling. That is what you would have said three weeks ago already. Why do you think saying it again is making a difference now?
Under-Secretary-General Griffiths: I'm saying it again because people keep saying we don't have a plan - and we always did. It's not mind-boggling. I deliberately said at the beginning, this is standard practice for the humanitarians.
But we still have people saying, governments, including in the region saying, but you don't have a plan, what you're going to do, why aren't you allowing the safe zone? How are you going to cope with the 800,000 or 50,000 or the different figures of people who south? I want to put firmly on the record exactly, which we have not done before, by the way, in this level of detail.
I want to put firmly on the record what the priorities are of our action. I'm very pleased, if that's the right word, that this is not mind-boggling - if it was mind-boggling, we'd be in trouble.
There is no magic to this operation. You know the thing about, could I make an additional personal comment on that, the thing about international humanitarian law is that it's essentially the simple repetition of humane obligations, isn't it? It is not a recondite science - it is a simple repetition of how we should treat people in the middle of war.
My 10 points, if I could shift to them, are a simple repetition of the basics of a humanitarian aid operation as we go into war. By the way, we're very happy to have another discussion with you on Sudan and the similar things that we would need to see, you know, in Sudan now, finally, we're meeting the parties together in Jeddah, and we would be talking about access, we'll be talking about many similar things.
But in Gaza, we have been accused from time to time by [people] saying, you're not ready, you don't have the trucks, why didn't you put trucks over yesterday, etcetera, etcetera. That's why I was clear to say: We have the trucks. We have the plan. We have the people. We are in Al Arish. We are ready to move. We need Kerem Shalom. We can do this. We can do it professionally, according to the requirements of independence, neutrality and impartiality. And people should not accuse us anymore of not being ready. Thank you very much.
<[div]> 15 November 2023|
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