Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths Statement to the Security Council on Ukraine, 7 March 2022

New York, 7 March 2022
As delivered

Madam President,

We are here, of course, to speak about the humanitarian situation in Ukraine. And yet, none of us want to be here today.

We already had enough on our hands, many other unnecessary and unwanted conflicts leaving misery in their wake.

We had no need for another war, which would have such a swift and sweeping impact for what Filippo Grandi has called the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War.

Today, indeed, is not a day we had in mind.

In the weeks before the military offensive began in Ukraine, and despite the din of commentary and rhetoric and prediction, humanitarian organizations went about their business.

They have been working in the Donbas region providing 1.5 million people there with humanitarian aid. A business they have been doing quietly and without fanfare these past eight years.

And they are doing it still today, however and whenever they can.

But, of course, they – the humanitarian agencies – also prepared for worse to come.

Two weeks ago, few thought the scenario in which we find ourselves today – one of such intense conflict – was thinkable. It was essentially unplannable from the humanitarian operational perspective.And yet that humanitarian community did plan.

We looked to the possible numbers, with UNHCR and IOM and our NGO partners, and UNICEF and WFP. We estimated together who might be in need, who might be on the move, or those vulnerable people who might need help at home.

We looked at possible routes and methods of delivery. The World Food Programme mobilized its considerable logistics to get supply chains up and running, from a standing start.

We knew that this operation would need the best of talent. And all humanitarian agencies, and including my office, sent in surge staff in the days before that offensive began.

And as the unthinkable became the reality, the UN and its humanitarian partners started a scalable and agile, adaptable and resilient humanitarian operation fit for the changing situation. They started it.

The Secretary-General, at record speed, appointed Amin Awad, a person of the widest experience of fast-moving operations, including in that very region, as his Crisis Coordinator.

Amin, supported by Osnat Lubrani, the experienced Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, is in Ukraine as we meet here today.

In the first days of the offensive, our staff, like so many in Ukraine, spent their days and nights working from bunkers and basements.

Yet they managed to produce the two robust response plans, launched last week in Geneva, to a very generous donor response.

Madam President,

Do I need to describe what we have all seen and heard on the news? Simply put, millions of lives shattered.

People can’t stay home with shops shut, power and water cut, shells falling, phones switched off. They can’t find what they need, even if they have money to pay for it. And as we have seen, even as the TV cameras roll, many can’t flee in safety either in this conflict. It’s been 11 days of escalating violence, fear and pain. As of 6 March, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported at least 1,207 civilian casualties, including at least 406 dead. And I guess the real figure could be considerably higher.

UNHCR reports that more than 1.7 million refugees have fled – and that figure is probably out of date already – in 11 days.

Madam President,

Humanitarian assistance has continued in areas where security permits. Under the leadership of the Crisis Coordinator and the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in country, we have new plans now, of course, on how to deliver where humanitarian needs are most acute. This includes the cities that we have seen so much on these last days, such as Mariupol, Kharkiv, Kherson. Our response is being scaled up from hubs in Vinnutsya, Uzhorod and Lviv.

The UN and our partners, and we will hear I’m sure from Cathy in a minute, have already provided food to hundreds of thousands. The World Food Programme is setting up supply chain operations to deliver immediate food and cash assistance to 3-5 million people inside Ukraine.

WHO has shipped trauma care, emergency surgery equipment and other supplies that will help, that will help, in days to come, thousands of people. And more supplies are on their way.

UNHCR is providing assistance, albeit at a small scale at the moment, through a network of shops in Mariupol, in collaboration with NGOs. MSF never left. It’s training trauma surgeons, providing support for the people in that city.

UNHCR is bringing in thousands of blankets, mattresses and other non-food items from Poland – thank you to Poland – and shipping them to transit centres.

And we’re going to hear, and I look forward to hearing a lot more about the experience of children from Cathy, from the vital work of UNICEF and its partners.

The Ukrainian Red Cross has distributed humanitarian assistance to thousands via its emergency stockpiles, including hygiene and food kits, warm clothing and medicine.

And I would like to take the chance here to salute the more than 4,000 Ukraine Red Cross volunteers across the country used to conflict, of course, the community workers also of local NGOs, the truck drivers carrying basic necessities into volatile areas. These are people all in harm’s way, who have no hesitation in carrying out their mission.

Madam President,

I see three immediate priorities to lessen the pain and suffering we are all watching unfold in real time:
First, the parties need to take constant care to spare civilians and civilian homes and infrastructure in their military operations. This includes allowing safe passage for civilians to leave areas of active hostilities on a voluntary basis, in the direction they choose. All civilians, whether they stay or leave, must be respected and protected.

Second, we need safe passage for humanitarian supplies into areas of active hostilities.

Civilians in places like Mariupol, Kharkiv, Melitopol and elsewhere desperately need aid, especially life-saving medical supplies, the kind that are being brought in in these past days by WHO. Many modalities are possible, but it must take place in line with the parties’ obligations under the laws of war.

And thirdly, we urgently need a system of constant communication with the parties to the conflict and assurances to enable the delivery of humanitarian aid. And we have seen these systems in place in other countries, of course, as you know well. A humanitarian notification system, as we term it, can support delivery of aid at the scale needed.

I have already conveyed these three points to the authorities of Ukraine and to the Russian Federation.
And on the third point, thanks to the cooperation with the Russian Federation, my office has sent a team to Moscow to work on better humanitarian civil-military coordination that can allow us to scale up precisely to begin to establish a humanitarian notification system.

This follows last Friday’s phone call between the Secretary-General and the Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation, Sergei Shoigu. UN teams have held the first technical meeting with the representatives of the Ministry of Defence.

I welcome cooperation by both sides and sincerely hope to see further progress in the hours ahead.
Madam President, People are watching as this unnecessary conflict engulfs cities and civilians. As well as what’s happening in Ukraine, they have an extra sense of dread over the impact this will have on the wider world. I include myself in this category.

I am deeply worried about the consequences on vulnerable people living half a world away.

Food prices are spiking, supplies are uncertain. We didn’t need that either. People in the Sahel, in Yemen, the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan, Madagascar already face profound food insecurity.

Record-level fuel prices mean life becomes harder still in places like Lebanon, where generators keep hospitals open and water treatment plants working.

And the extraordinary generosity, which I welcome and praise, of donors to the launch of the Regional Plan and the Ukraine Humanitarian Response Plan. We hope that this will not divert those donors from other pressing humanitarian crises. This may be the latest one, but not the only one.

So while we have planned, we have mobilized, we have fundraised to meet the challenge we face, we have the capacity and, I think, the know-how to meet the most urgent needs in Ukraine, on the basis of cooperation with the parties.

But – and here I would like to stress this particular last point – make no mistake: we are unable to meet the needs of civilians today. All those points that I have made are points in preparation, in supply, in redeployment, in getting to the right place. But we’re failing to meet the needs of civilians today, at this time.

I hope we will not fail them tomorrow.

Thank you, Madam President.