Press Remarks by Commissioner Lahbib at the Foreign Affairs Council on Development

Yesterday evening we discussed the future of development, along with the important link between humanitarian aid and development, together with key stakeholders. Today we turned to the humanitarian challenges and the reform of the humanitarian system.

Because nearly 240 million people depend on aid to stay alive. They are in Ukraine, Ethiopia, the DRC, Gaza, Afghanistan, Haiti, Yemen, and the Rohingya refugee camps. There are more than 130 active conflicts in the world, and humanitarian aid and access are being used as weapons of war.

Humanitarian work has become harder and more dangerous. Warehouses are full of food and medicine, while people a few kilometres away go hungry. Aid and medical workers, protected by international humanitarian law, are arrested, kidnapped, and deliberately targeted. Last year was the deadliest on record: more than 300 aid workers killed.

Funding cuts make all this harder, so Europe has to stand firm. Together, as Team Europe, we remain one of the world's largest humanitarian donors. We are focusing on three areas: protecting aid workers, delivering aid faster and more efficiently, and thinking differently to bring everyone on board, strengthening humanitarian-development-peace nexus, and engaging with the private sector.

First, we must protect aid workers, wherever they are under threat. We all see the headlines. Just last week, in Sudan, an airstrike killed a WFP driver while he was delivering aid, and this is becoming the norm.

That is why humanitarian diplomacy must be part of our foreign policy. It can get an aid convoy past a checkpoint or to keep the lights on in a hospital. I took that message to the UN General Assembly in New York last week, with partners from the Global South and EU countries.

Humanitarian diplomacy means negotiating with everyone who controls access. It can open doors for aid and stop a crisis from spiralling. Often it is the last channel left when political dialogue has broken down.