UN officer falsely claims 14,000 Gaza babies risk dying in next 48 hours
On 20 May Tom Fletcher was interviewed by Anna Foster during the BBC Today Programme. He is the Under-Secretary General in the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).
He stated during that interview that “There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them”. This was not true. It was apparently based on a report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Partnership.
Israeli media heavily criticised Fletcher for this false report. The Jewish Chronicle for example said on 21 May that the IPC report reveals that the 14,000 figure refers to the number of children at risk of “severe malnutrition” by March next year, rather than by the end of the week. The number is a projection and would not take into account any increase in the supply of aid between now and then.
The full interview is transcribed below.
AF: We’re joined on the programme this morning by Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. Good morning.
TF: Good morning Anna.
AF: I’d like to get your thoughts first of all on that statement, on the strength of it, on the language it uses and whether or not you believe that is enough at this stage.
TF: Well, these are robust words and it’s welcome. I mean, there’s clearly a dialing up of the collective international position because the situation is dire. The real test of the words will be whether we can get that aid in. We are there on the border right now. We have thousands of trucks ready to go. We know how to do this. We’ve done it before. And we are demanding that the world back us in pushing Israel to let us get in and reach those people who are starving right now.
AF: And yesterday it was five, five trucks of aid that went in, not fit for purpose in this case.
TF: No, that’s a drop in the ocean. And let’s be clear, those five trucks are just sat on the other side of the border right now. They’ve not reached the communities they need to reach. And let me describe what is on those trucks. This is baby food, baby nutrition. There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them. This is not food that Hamas are going to steal. We run the risk of looting. We run the risks of being hit as part of the Israeli military offensive. We run all sorts of risks trying to get that baby food through to those mothers who cannot feed their children right now because they’re malnourished.
AF: You’ve spoken out already about the new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, essentially the mechanism that Israel wants to bring in to distribute aid, to get it into the Strip and to get it to people once it’s there. Humanitarian organisations and you say that what you have in place already works perfectly well. So when that UN aid is requested by this new distribution mechanism, you’re left with a really difficult and delicate decision to make about whether to hand it over. What will you do?
TF: We’ve got to keep on getting as much aid through our mechanism as we can. We can do this at scale. We did it during the ceasefire, 42 days, 600 trucks, 700 trucks, dwarfing anything they’re talking about doing through this dodgy modality. We know how to do this. We can do it in line with humanitarian principles. And the world, the international community, the donors who provided that aid are very, very clear with us that this is the only way to do it. To go with the other modality would actually be to support the objectives of the military offensive and to further dehumanise and humiliate those civilians who badly need that aid.
AF: So you won’t be handing over, as the UN, you won’t be handing over that aid to this new mechanism to be distributed through them?
TF: We’ve got to get the aid in ourselves. We reckon clearance for 100 or so trucks to go through today, I hope. Now, it will be very tough. We get impeded at every point, but we’ll load those up with that baby food and our people will run those risks. I’ve been talking to them this morning. They’re incredibly, incredibly courageous. They know what’s lying ahead of them, looting, insecurity, the war overhead, the war all around them. But people inside Gaza are so desperate right now, and we will do whatever we can to get to them.
AF: That looting and insecurity, that is the reason that Israel has given for trying to change the mechanism. I just wonder, looking ahead, Israel has made it clear that they only want this new mechanism to be used to distribute aid. So potentially, we are in a situation where, as you say, there is thousands of trucks, thousands of tons of aid waiting to be used, and it might not get there if you won’t give it to the new mechanism. What would you do in that situation?
TF: We are insisting and will carry on insisting with all our partners, and you’ve heard those strong voices raised across the international community, that we have unimpeded aid in line with humanitarian principles. We know how to do this. We’ve got the people inside. We know how to stop Hamas getting anywhere near this aid and making sure it gets to the civilians who so badly need it. There isn’t an alternative to that. And so we’ll keep trying. And I think you’ll hear those voices very, very clear across the international community in support of what we’re doing.
AF: You talked about the need to prevent genocide in Gaza, and obviously your use of that word as a member of the UN has attracted attention. Have you had any pushback about your, I presume, well-informed choice to use that word?
TF: Well, I did pick my words very carefully in the Security Council and weighed with great thought and care what I should say. I felt that we needed to jolt the international community. We needed this wake-up call. People can see what’s going on but we, as humanitarians, because we’re on the ground, we’ve got the most informed view. We’re there every day.
And of course this is crisis that as journalists, you can’t get in to cover. So we know what’s going on and I felt it was important to drive that home to the Security Council. I’m not a lawyer. It’s for the lawyers and the politicians over time to decide what this has been. But I’m very conscious that with previous war crimes, Srebrenica, Rwanda, et cetera, we didn’t move fast enough to call on the world to prevent it. And I’m doing everything I can to raise my voice and encourage others to raise their voice to prevent that.
AF: So on that point, looping back to that statement that we were talking about, it talks about if Israel doesn’t cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, “we’ll take further concrete actions in response”. In your opinion, what do those actions need to be and how soon do they need to happen if there is no change in the situation?
TF: I think the challenge here is that it doesn’t really matter what I say. It really matters what Israeli ministers are saying. Several of them, very prominent ministers, are clear that they want to use starvation as a weapon of war and that they will do everything possible to prevent us getting that aid in to save lives. So I think you’re seeing that clear ratcheting up from those countries and beyond those countries, incredibly strong statements in the last few days. You’d have to ask them what they might do next. There’s a big conference coming up at the end of June at which several countries may recognize a Palestinian state. Several countries have trade deals. Some countries are still providing arms to this Israeli military offensive.
So they do have a toolkit of measures that they could take. For me right now, what I most need them to do is insist unequivocally that we get in at scale. I want to get thousands and thousands of trucks through. I want to save as many of these 14,000 babies as we can in the next 48 hours. We need to flood the Gaza Strip with principled humanitarian aid.
AF: 14,000 babies in 48 hours is an extraordinary figure.
TF: It’s chilling. It’s utterly chilling. But this is what we do. We keep going. It will be frustrating. We will be impeded. We will run huge risks. But I don’t see a better idea than getting that baby food in to those mums who at the moment cannot feed their own kids.
AF: How do you manage to calculate those figures in a situation like this?
TF: So we’ve got strong teams on the ground. And of course, many of them have been killed in the Israeli offensive. We’ve lost over 300 colleagues since October the 7th inside Gaza. A massive number of very, very brave, principled colleagues who were part of that effort. But we still have lots of people on the ground. And so they’re at the medical centres, they’re at the schools, we had another school bombed yesterday, trying to assess needs. And this is why our mechanism for getting aid in, it’s imperfect. Of course, it’s not perfect. Nothing could be perfect in this context. But it’s why it’s the best way to get support through because we’ve got that network. And we’ve got the support of the civilian communities around us who know us.
AF: So how soon do actions need to follow words? Give me a time scale for at what point you need those concrete actions to come in response to what we’re seeing.
TF: A year ago, six months ago, if not then now, today. Ministers should be picking up the phone to their counterparts. They should be picking up the phone to colleagues and partners in the American administration who have been more robust in the last couple of days. And Israeli ministers are clear that they’re only letting us take this baby food in today because of pressure from allies in the US. We need that chorus of voices in support of saving lives to be loud and unequivocal and right now.
AF: Tom Fletcher, thank you for joining us. The UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.