Welcome. It is a pleasure to be here in Nairobi for the launch of the Global Humanitarian Overview for 2025 to address conflict, climate, and localization challenges in crisis response.

I want to start by thanking the African Union for hosting this event with us today – this is the third consecutive year that we have joined forces on this launch.

This underlines our shared commitment to addressing conflict, climate, and localization challenges in crisis response across the globe, and in Africa.

And I would like to acknowledge the African Union and its efforts to strengthen its humanitarian capacity.

These ongoing efforts include operationalising the Africa Humanitarian Agency; reviewing its civil-military coordination processes with OCHA and the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross]; as well as working with OCHA on the African Union’s Humanitarian Diplomacy Framework.

On the latter, I want to commend the African Union for its humanitarian diplomacy on the deeply troubling situations in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

We very much look forward to continuing this collaboration to address conflict, climate, and localization challenges in crisis response, which serves as a model for a regional approach to humanitarian assistance.

Partnerships of this strength and depth are crucial to tackling the immensity of the humanitarian challenges we face and the need to address conflict, climate, and localization challenges in crisis response.

In 2025, 305 million people will require urgent humanitarian assistance and protection. 305 million people, this includes 85 million people in Southern and Eastern Africa; 59 million people in the Middle East and North Africa; and 57 million people in West and Central Africa.

What makes these staggeringly high numbers so unconscionable, is that the two main drivers are unfortunately both man-made.

The first is conflict, in addition to climate and localization challenges in crisis response.

In 2024, we have seen the continuation of devastating wars in Gaza and Sudan – both marked by a callous and blatant disregard for human life, a lack of respect for international law, and the deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid.

Violence and unresolved conflicts have also continued to rupture people’s lives in Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, the DRC, the Sahel, Myanmar, Haiti and many other places. Conflict, climate, and localization challenges in crisis response are highly prevalent.

I’ve had the unfortunate pleasure of visiting all these countries in the last year. Unfortunate because of the wars, the conflict and the pain and pleasure because these are beautiful countries with beautiful people.

Read the full article about localization challenges in crisis response at OCHA.