UN Relief Chief tells Security Council Gaza civilians cannot wait for diplomacy

Briefing to the Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Gaza by Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator

New York, 18 June 2026

As delivered

Madam President, Members of the Council,

Seven months ago, this Council came together to pass, without objection, UN Security Council resolution 2803.

A moment of hope – fragile, but real hope.

It followed months of intensive mediation, including President Trump’s 20-Point Plan and the Sharm El-Sheikh peace summit in October 2025.

With thanks to those mediators, this resolution has brought results.

It has reduced civilian harm from Israeli military strikes on Gaza. By that point, over 67,000 Palestinians had been killed and over three quarters of Gaza’s buildings and roads damaged or destroyed. Two years of sustained and high intensity bombardment of civilians and civilian infrastructure.

It brought the return of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas following the horrific attacks of 7 October 2023, when over 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed.  Those able to return are finally back with their families and communities, able to start to rebuild their lives.

It removed some of the barriers to humanitarian access that had constrained our efforts for years, allowing us to reach populations that had endured unbearable and unimaginable conditions.

That progress should be recognized.

I pay tribute to the humanitarians who have delivered over one million hot meals daily and sustained essential services. I thank partners at the Board of Peace for their help in reducing the significant obstacles our teams were facing before the ceasefire.

Six months after the ceasefire, denial rates for our missions have dropped from 31 per cent to 11 per cent.

The share of households reporting going to bed hungry dropped from 92 per cent to 36 per cent. Gaza is no longer currently classified as being in famine, IPC Phase 5, though remains in severe crisis, IPC Phase 4.

We have done more than deliver food: 21,000 truckloads – an average of 108 each day – were collected by the UN and our partners, a 72 per cent increase from before the ceasefire.

We expanded water and health services, including catch-up immunizations for tens of thousands of Palestinian children, and ensuring 44 per cent of health points are now at least partially operational.

We rehabilitated one hundred classrooms and set up hundreds of learning spaces and provided shelter for over 600,000 people. We are clearing 1,500 tons of debris every single day.

So, when humanitarians have protection, access and funding, we can and will reach survivors with significant life-saving support.

But UNSCR 2803 and the 20-Point Plan are meant to deliver much more than that.

These fragile gains are the bare minimum of what Palestinians need and what we can provide – and what international law demands.

They reflect movement away from a catastrophic baseline – not the fulfillment of fundamental needs. 

Gaza is being held together by humanitarian workarounds and Palestinian perseverance. 

And this is unsustainable.

So today, I wish to focus, not just on what has been achieved since [Security Council resolution] 2803, but on the urgent work that lies ahead.

Today, Palestinians in Gaza remain deprived of the basics that you would all demand for your own families: safety, shelter, clean water, healthcare, education.

Despite reduced active fighting, civilians continue to be killed and maimed in daily airstrikes, shelling and gunfire. Since the ceasefire, nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed according to the Ministry of Health, including, our colleagues at UNICEF report, more than 250 children.

This is what happens when children are described as collateral damage and potential terrorists, rather than humans and potential neighbours.

For humanitarians, I’m afraid that Gaza remains the most dangerous place on earth to deliver aid. Almost 600 aid workers killed there in nearly three years – over half of over 1,000 humanitarians killed globally.

For their families and colleagues, we call again for accountability.

Too many Palestinians are being squeezed into an ever-shrinking strip of land. Their lives are shaped by the indignity of constantly shifting yellow and orange lines that define where they can seek refuge.

Seventy per cent of the population needs proper shelter. Essential services are on the brink.

WHO reports that no hospital is fully operational. UNICEF warns that, for 1.1 million children, water remains a daily uncertainty.

Sanitation conditions continue to deteriorate. Doctors report a stark increase in rat-bite cases.

Shortages of generators, engine oil, spare parts are forcing reliance on expensive alternatives, such as prolonged water trucking and complex medical evacuations.

Consider what each of these challenges represents for the existence of a mother in Gaza.

So it is not enough to silence the weapons – we must restore dignity.

Madam President,

Humanitarians still face continued persistent, deliberate constraints. Our work is attacked through campaigns of disinformation and occasionally personal abuse. I hope we will hear no more of that in this chamber.

Humanitarian access continues to rely on one, at most two, operational crossings, when significantly greater capacity could easily be made available for the movement of aid and staff.

Cumbersome approvals and customs procedures, combined with restrictions on so-called ‘dual use’ items, limit the entry of critical humanitarian supplies. For example, WHO notes that at times these have times included prosthetic limbs.

These constraints, compounded by restrictions on essential UNRWA and NGOs services, are leaving too much vital support stalled outside Gaza, and our work undermined by shortages of fuel, spare parts, and armoured vehicles and other protective equipment for aid workers.

These patterns should be considered alongside the rhetoric from some senior Israeli officials who place political conditions on humanitarian support, despite clear obligations under international humanitarian law.

As the Secretary-General stated last week: “Humanitarian aid must never be used as a bargaining chip.”

Six months into 2026, I must be candid about funding: less than a quarter of our appeal has been met.

Behind these numbers are meals uncooked, water not delivered, nearly one million people left without adequate shelter.

So I thank all donors, including members of this Council, for the support we have received.

To date this year, that includes one third of the appeal supported by the United States, 12 per cent by the EU, with Sweden, the [United Arab Emirates], Canada and Japan between 5 and 10 per cent each.

Madam President,

What unfolds in Gaza cannot be separated from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. There, a decades-long deterioration is accelerating rapidly, characterized by calls from Israeli officials for Palestinian ‘voluntary migration’ and an intensification of discriminatory policies and practices.

More than 1,000 incidents of settler violence have been recorded in 2026 so far – that’s six incidents per day.

Forced displacement, destruction of homes and other property, land confiscation, and movement restrictions are hollowing out daily life.

These measures appear aimed at altering the demographic composition of the Occupied Palestinian Territory in violation of international law – and they must cease.

Madam President,

To conclude, the humanitarian community has three asks of this Council.

First, to ensure the protection of civilians, including humanitarian workers.

Second, to ensure safe, sustained, unhindered humanitarian access to all those in need in Gaza, wherever they are.

To achieve this, we ask, once again, for the immediate, full-capacity operation of Erez/Beit Hanoun, Karni and Kerem Shalom crossings to establish a high-volume, multi-route pipeline, but we also need access to critical sites inside Gaza, including the landfills near the perimeter fence, such as Sofa.

We ask you for the immediate removal of Israeli restrictions on essential survival items, specifically medical equipment, including diagnostic tools, but also critical spare parts for water and sanitation, consistent supplies of fuel and engine oil, communication and protective equipment for aid workers.

We ask for the restoration of humanitarian customs waivers and the issuance of long-term, predictable – not month by month – visas for international, UN and NGO staff, alongside streamlined NGO registration processes.

And we ask for the resumption of Government-to-Government convoys from Jordan and scaled-up medical evacuations to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Humanitarian action is not a menu of options – it is a single ecosystem that is severely undermined when its components are impeded. And these are not sequential steps or bargaining chips.

We ask, thirdly and finally, for funding that is timely, flexible and commensurate with the scale of this crisis.

The attention of the world has been elsewhere. The agreement between the United States and Iran and the hopes for an urgent and vital ceasefire in Lebanon should return this Council’s sustained attention to the reality in Gaza, and to the patient, courageous work that lies ahead.

Diplomacy requires your full, unified weight to implement UNSCR 2803, including a genuine ceasefire, the disarmament of Hamas and civilian leadership in Gaza.

We must be guided by international law, by UN resolutions, by the hope of a two-State solution that delivers security, justice and opportunity.

And ultimately by the aspiration of Palestinians, Israelis and the wider region to live together with security, justice and opportunity. 

But civilians cannot wait for a more convenient diplomatic moment to receive the basics for survival.

We cannot allow the summit of our ambition and our will to be a world where children have sufficient calories to survive and are spared constant bombing, yet remain hungry, bitten by rats, homeless and out of school.

Thank you.