Congratulations, Excellency, thank you very much for inviting me to attend, participate, speak in this beautiful location. It's a pleasure and a privilege to be here, the third one. Gets bigger every year. It's a unique event. Huge thanks to the presidency, the Belgian people, the Belgian government, and thank you, of course, to Janez , ECHO, EU for this opportunity.
As international attention frantically races from one big crisis to the next, we are failing to resolve those that came before: Syria, Yemen - as I know - and Mali alone account for almost 35 years of war. Across the world, civilians and humanitarians are being killed in unconscionable numbers - and a moment of peace for the leadership of UNRWA and the tragedy of those who have fallen in Gaza.
Women and girls facing entrenched inequality and as has been said by Janez a pandemic, indeed, of gender-based violence. I grew up in the Congo, in your era, and the terrible facts of what is going on in the east of that country makes us wonder whether we share any common humanity. Soaring climate change, pushing more and more people towards the mouth of disaster.Janez to you to protect humanitarian funding amid challenging economic times.
We need to become less reactive, more proactive, better at building community resilience by the community. That woman in that camp, 12 years, with no livelihood, and but an hour from her old home. We need - thanks to Germany also for their leadership in this - more anticipatory action, to help people get ahead of predictable crises, reducing humanitarian impact and cost.