Tom Fletcher shook up the United Nations Security Council in surprisingly dramatic remarks on the war in Gaza recently, even as members have heard scores of speeches on the inhumane horrors happening in the territory for the last 19 months.

“For those killed and those whose voices are silenced: what more evidence do you need now?” the UN emergency relief coordinator asked the Council’s 15 members on May 13. “Will you act — decisively — to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law? Or will you say instead that ‘we did all we could’?”

Given the reluctance of UN Secretary-General António Guterres to use the word “genocide” in relation to Gaza and a similar reticence on the part of the British government, which nominated Fletcher for the UN post in 2024, his bold remarks roused many observers who regularly tune into the Council’s sessions on the Israeli-Hamas war.

Does Fletcher’s vehemence represent a new approach on the part of the UN and the UK, both of which have been cautious criticizing Israel and its principal supporter, the Trump administration? And what do they tell us about Fletcher, who took up the position in October?

His ascent to the role of UN Emergency Relief Coordinator and head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has been a case study in how a well-connected British national with international experience can rise to the top of the world body’s network of humanitarian organizations.

Born in 1975, Fletcher was educated at an upmarket school in Kent, a prosperous part of England. He proceeded to gain a first-class degree in modern history from Oxford University’s Hertford College. In a characteristic Oxford appointment, he returned to that college as its principal in 2020, having spent the intervening years building a successful diplomatic career in Nairobi, Paris and Beirut. He was also private secretary to Baroness Valerie Amos (who became a UN relief chief as well) and served as foreign policy adviser to three successive prime ministers.

There had never been any doubt that the UN’s top humanitarian job would go to a British national when it became vacant last year, as the UK has laid claim to the post since 2007, when Sir John Holmes (another Oxford-educated diplomat) was appointed to the position.

Many UN and nongovernmental organization staff expressed disappointment that a woman was not selected for the position this time, but the issue of gender equity was not a primary consideration for the recently elected prime minister, Keir Starmer, who also completed his studies at Oxford. A determinedly centrist politician, Starmer was surely impressed by the views of the former Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown, who described Fletcher as “indispensable and indefatigable,” as well as the former Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, who had remarked that Fletcher was an “essential source of information on virtually every country on earth.”

So, what are we to make of Fletcher’s first months in office? He has been criticized in the humanitarian world, especially by aid experts who have worked in the sector for years and have an instinctive distrust of anyone who has achieved public prominence elsewhere. David Miliband, a former UK foreign minister who became the high-profile president of the International Rescue Committee, provides another prime example of a privileged landing in the humanitarian arena.

As to Fletcher, the criticisms (largely whispered and rarely attributed) have taken three main forms. First, he lacks experience in the humanitarian world and as a result is discovering problems — and solutions to them — have been on the table since OCHA was established in the early 1990s. Fletcher’s call for a “humanitarian reset,” for example, based on his alliterative slogan “define, deliver, devolve, defend,” does not cut a lot of ice with UN and NGO personnel who have been through many previous efforts at reform.

Second, Fletcher has adopted a highly personalized approach to his new role, bombarding social media with a constant stream of videos, photo opportunities, TV interviews and radio appearances. At the same time, Fletcher has been issuing regular “humanifestos” (humanitarian manifestos), often belaboring the point that they are written midflight, on the way from one high-level gathering to another.

Fletcher has thus fallen prey to the humanitarian celebrity syndrome, an affliction shared by other luminaries in the aid world, including David Beasley, a former World Food Program director who shared a Nobel Peace Prize with the organization, and Amy Pope, the International Organization for Migration chief. In the words of a former UN official: “The head of OCHA is a coordinator, not an implementer. He doesn’t need to be at the center of every narrative.”

Third, despite his impeccable diplomatic credentials, questions have been raised as to whether Fletcher’s intense determination to prove that he is innovative and energetic betrays a certain naïveté.

On a recent visit to China, for example, Fletcher pulled out all the stops for his host, saying that he was “blown away” by the country’s climate-forecasting capacity and space technology, as well as its “early support” for the relief effort in post-earthquake Myanmar.

China, he declared, “dominates global clean technology manufacturing and could drive a green humanitarian model, with supply chains that swiftly reach those in most need.” It is a generous view of China, and certainly one that would not be shared by many UN colleagues involved in the fields of human rights, humanitarian action and climate justice and who are highly suspicious about the country’s intentions in Myanmar.

But are such criticisms of Fletcher too harsh? He joined the UN as the international aid system is on its knees, urgently crying out for financial support from countries other than its traditional donors, the United States and Europe. It is also normal for senior UN officials to extol the achievements and ignore the faults of the countries they visit, especially one with the clout of China.

While Fletcher is evidently not a dyed-in-the-wool humanitarian, in his professional life, not least in Lebanon, where he was the UK’s ambassador, he has been exposed to the plight of vulnerable populations and the innards of the aid system. As for his flamboyant, media-hungry style, it irritates many aid workers and shadows the people who are caught up in crises from actually being able to speak on their own behalf. But at least, Fletcher’s cameo appearances keep humanitarian crises in the public and political eye.

In his remarks to the Security Council on May 13, Fletcher brought a welcome bluntness to the situation in Gaza, naming Israel directly by saying it is “deliberately and unashamedly imposing inhumane conditions on civilians.” He also pointed out that “hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have, again, been forcibly displaced and confined into ever-shrinking spaces. . . . “

Fletcher asked, “. . . what action we will tell future generations we each took to stop the 21st century atrocity to which we bear daily witness in Gaza?” And underlining the need to prevent a genocide and ensure respect for international law, he reminded members and the global audience tuned live into the Council meeting that day that they — rather than the beleaguered agencies of the international humanitarian system — have ultimate responsibility for these tasks.

There is an overwhelming need for the next emergency relief coordinator (and, indeed, the next UN secretary-general) to be a suitably qualified woman from a developing country. That will require ending the arcane practice in which senior positions in the organization are filled based on people’s nationality and political connections. Within the current constraints and despite reservations about Fletcher, he has many of the attributes that are required to be an impressive humanitarian leader. If only he could spend less time and energy cultivating his international image and instead nurture his more earnest instinct to saving lives.

Jeff Crisp

Visiting Research Fellow at Refugee Studies Centre

Jeff Crisp is a research fellow at the Center for Refugee Studies in Oxford, UK, and was previously head of policy development and evaluation at the UN Refugee Agency from 2006-2013.