'I hold children who will probably not survive because of the cuts I'm forced to make', says UN aid chief UN

And moving on from Gaza to Congo, South Sudan to Myanmar, attacks on humanitarian workers are on the up as funding for their day job is going down. And as the EU prepares its long-term kitty from 2028 to 2034, a fight is unfolding over how development, humanitarian aid and geopolitical priorities can be financed. For more, we sat down with the UN Aid Chief, Tom Fletcher, who passed through Brussels for the EU's first ever conference on the protection of aid workers. and we started by asking how bad their plight was. Take a look. Oh, it's been terrible. I mean, we've lost a thousand colleagues in the last three years. And so the question being asked at this conference is how do we stop people killing aid workers? We shouldn't have to ask that question. I mean, the protection, the law is meant to be there to protect us. We've got our humanitarian neutrality. We should be able to go and deliver food, medicine, shelter without people killing us. And yet a thousand dead colleagues in three years. And the way people are being killed as well is even more vicious, more sophisticated. It's terrifying. And remember, you know, these are people who wake up, they kiss their kids, you know, goodbye in the morning. They're going out to work. They're going into danger. They know the dangers. And somewhere else there are other people thinking, how do we kill them? You know, I can't get my head into into the mindset of the people who are killing aid workers. And there's no accountability, never investigations. And the weapons, as you say, becoming more and more sophisticated, including I was in Kherson just recently in Ukraine. You know, the drones being used there, the AI drones, that become more lethal as they get to the end of their battery life because they're programmed to find a target and to kill it. What role will AI play going forward? As you say, it's already playing a role in Ukraine, also in the war in Iran we've seen. In these new weapons right now, in Sudan, in Somalia, South Sudan, Lebanon, Gaza, so many of the places we're working, people are telling us right now that they are an atrocities lab. that these weapons are being developed, that they're, you know, like a lab they're being experimented on with these new weapons. And it's becoming terrifying because you're getting these kill zones in which nothing can survive. And meanwhile, that's happening on the ground and here in Brussels politically. Just last week, we saw the EU summit. There was lots of squabbles over the EU budget. There's lots of talk of cutting development aid, overseas aid. What would that mean for these areas? And of course, fragile and conflicted states. It would be devastating i mean we faced enormous cuts already in the last few years and as a result at least a third of the sector has had to be cut now i then go out to the field and i'm in places where i know that people will die because of the cuts because of choices i'm then having to make i was in Afghanistan recently where you know we've cut the clinics and so therefore women are cycling much further to get to give birth and as a result they're losing their kids because they're dying on the road. You know, again and again, I'm holding children who I know will probably not survive because of the cuts I'm being forced to make. So we desperately need this to be a budget of solidarity and generosity for the people in the world who need it most. And that's one of the reasons I'm here. And when you hear messages like those coming from France, from Marine Le Pen, whose party is doing very well in the polls ahead of those elections next year, she's saying that she'll be cutting funds even to Ukraine. What does that make you think? Look, I've been in Ukraine Recently, I've seen how great the needs are. I was in Kiev overnight when they had a terrible night, ballistic missiles, huge missiles landing all through the night. I was in Kherson up on the front line. I drove down what they call the road of death, where so many of these drones are attacking, hitting civilians. So those needs there are massive. And I think, you know, there are many politicians in Europe who make the case for cutting aid. But actually, if you're not dealing with these problems at source, then these problems will come in your direction. You can't put a tariff on a pandemic. You can't build a wall large enough to keep out the waves of migration that the climate crisis and the aid cuts will drive. So, you know, we'll keep on making the argument and hope that there are enough people of solidarity and generosity there to see it through. And just finally, we're coming, well, it's already one year since the ceasefire in Gaza. Coming into the winter, what does the situation look like there? It's grim. And, you know, a year on from the ceasefire, we have managed to get the hunger levels down. So about half the number of people who were reporting going to bed hungry a year ago are saying they're still going to bed hungry. But that's still almost half the population going to bed hungry. You know, we're being blocked from bringing in the shelter materials for the winter, the tents that people need. We're being blocked from all the work we need to do to clear the rubble in Gaza, under which people's loved ones are still buried, so they can start to rebuild their homes and their lives. So some things are improving. We've got 100,000 kids back into school. But those kids should never have been out of school. And now we're facing into a really, really rough winter.