INTERVIEW: UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien

“At the end of the day, every life saved is an achievement in itself.”

09/21/2015. Stephen O’Brien has hit the ground running since taking up his post a couple of months ago as Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, having seen first-hand the devastation wrought by ongoing conflicts in South Sudan, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.

The British national with more than 20 years of experience in international development and public health understands the many complexities of humanitarian assistance, which range from ensuring food, shelter and safe drinking water to appreciating the psychological trauma experienced by those affected and the importance of providing hope.

We try to save 80 million lives a year and need to raise about $20 billion to do it. So you can see the scale of what has to be done is absolutely vast…

Read the interview on the UN website


Related Articles

Countries in crisis: rethinking the role of development aid

02/23/2016. On the occasion of the 3rd National Conference Humanitarian the CEO of the French Development Agency invites us to consider development aid as an investment.

World hunger on the rise as 820m at risk, UN report finds

07/15/2019. Eliminating hunger by 2030 is an immense challenge, say heads of UN agencies

Humanitarian trends and risks for 2016

12/15/2015. ACAPS, The organization, based in Geneva has just published a report in English on the evaluation of risks and trends in humanitarian in 2016.