wherever there is war, there is human suffering. in gaza, israel's relentless military offensive, triggered by that murderous hamas attack of last october 7th, has killed more than 31,000 people and left two million in urgent need of food, water and shelter. there are other wars, other humanitarian emergencies also crying out for an international response. from ukraine to sudan, ethiopia and beyond. my guest is jan egeland, secretary general of the norwegian refugee council. are aid agencies overwhelmed in a world seemingly incapable of protecting the vulnerable?

jan egeland, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. you've been in the humanitarian and aid business for a very long time now. you're very recently back from gaza. were you shocked by what you saw? profoundly, profoundly. i wasn't really prepared. even being as old as i am in humanitarian work for the devastation, the destruction and this utter feeling of hopelessness among the population which is crammed together in southern gaza, in rafah. so i was there three days, two nights, spoke with the mothers, the fathers, the children. and i must say, it's in 2024 and we're allowing this to happen. it is beyond belief. you talk about the hopelessness of the people living through that experience.

what about the hopelessness of people like you who are supposed to be making lives better, protecting those vulnerable people? we're not giving up. when i go to such places, i become enraged. isee... i need to fight harder. i need to get more resources. i need to get more colleagues there. i need to help more people. and we're succeeding. so i think one of the things that we're fighting at the moment is this sense that it is indeed hopeless. gaza, sudan, ukraine, syria, yemen, etc, it's hopeless. it's not hopeless. we'll touch on the bigger picture, but let's just stay with gaza for the time being. you've said some very powerful things. you talk just now about your rage, your fury at some of the things you saw. there's been a very, very passionate argument between israel and international aid agencies about who is responsible for the failure

to get adequate relief supplies to the 2.3 million people living in gaza. you accused the israelis of outright lies. what is your evidence that they are lying when they say they are not responsible for much of the logjam 7 because they control the borders. they are even controlling what goes in over the egyptian border. if you haven't cleared and they have looked at every kilo of a truck, you cannot go. so the lines of trucks which i saw in rafah, which is lining up to get in the line to go to kerem shalom on the israeli side to be cleared of an unloaded shalom on the israeli side to be cleared, often unloaded, often they would say, oh, these are green, sleeping bags — cannot go. these are bladders for water storage — cannot go. unload everything, return, etc.

it is a system that is broken from a to z, and the us, the uk and germany hasn't even been able to say to us, "well, israel, you're a belligerent here." you cannot control the the humanitarian access to the civilian population. we set up an international system. then we would have had five, 600 trucks per day instead of the 100 that we've had every day since october. the un says that in the north of gaza, where it's been most difficult to get food supplies in, one in six children are now suffering from acute malnutrition. you have people on the ground in gaza. are people, particularly young children, going to starve to death? they will in the north unless we're able to scale up dramatically. even in the south where i was, it was very clear that these children were malnourished. there was epidemic disease, there was diarrhoea,

there was, you know, scabies, all sorts of things that is connected to us not being able to provide what they need because of the war and the siege and the occupation. there are so many obvious ethical dilemmas in your operations in a place like gaza. we have heard in the last 2a hours, israeli officials say that they have a plan now, a plan to move a million people or more from rafah, where they have gathered from other parts of gaza to try and seek safe haven. they are now going to move them because they are determined to push ahead with a military operation inside rafah. and those million people will be sent to what are being called humanitarian islands somewhere in the middle of the gaza strip. will your organisation cooperate with an israeli operation like that? we will not. we've already refused before. so did the un when they said, oh, it's convenient for us

militarily to move everybody to a place where morsi is on the beach. on the beach? yes. set up a large camp so that we can hurd people there. can herd people there. we said, no, these are not cattle. these are human beings like us, like israelis and us, norwegians or brits. we will not do it. of course, where people flee, we will follow. that could endanger, cost more lives. if you refuse to cooperate, and if the israelis are determined to do what they say they are going to do, surely in the end, much as you may dislike it, disapprove of it, think it is entirely unacceptable, you have an obligation to try to save life. yes, always. so we will follow people where they are. number one, first, we will resist this. people should be able to stay in rafah, this is the last escape. it's the last place that was not devastated. the people there should stay. so i'm fighting against

the plan to plough through with the military machine and something which is a refugee camp. and when the israelis tell you, listen, mr egeland, we've known you a long time, you know that we don't tell lies about our military targets. we're telling you the senior hamas leaders like yahya sinwar are hiding in tunnels right in the middle of rafah. that is why we have to conduct this military operation. what do you say to them? target that man and target those militants. don't go after women and children. these are women... you think they're going after women and children? they are, they are smashing the entire place. this was disproportionate from day one. it was disproportionate since the mid—0ctober after the murderous, which you rightly said, hamas and jihad and other, you know, going into israel, murdering women, children and taking the poor hostages that are still down there

in the tunnels somewhere. go after them. don't go after the civilian population. 0ne quick word on some of the workarounds that the americans appear to be keen to pursue to get more aid in, even if israel will not unblock the roads. they have tried airdrops, sometimes with disastrous consequences. we believe at least five palestinians have been killed by pallets landing on them. they're also talking about investing in a major pier construction off the gaza coast. in your opinion, again, with all of your experience of humanitarian affairs, do you think these workarounds make sense? not really. worst is, of course, the airdrops. the airdrops are good on tv, bbc, tv, it looks good because a lot of parachutes and so on. it's six tonnes per airdrop and they are chaotic

and the strongest men are able to get wherever it drops. it's not going to the most vulnerable group. i like the idea of a port, by the way, but it's there in two months, people may be dead by then. why not us, uk, germany...? and i again list the three that are the closest allies of israel. why not open the borders? there are border crossings next door to gaza city where there is famine, and they haven't been open for ages. i've known you as a diplomat before you were a humanitarian affairs leader and you've been involved in the middle east in a diplomatic sense going back 30 years. you know how it works. in your opinion, if the united states, the biden administration wanted to force israel to open those crossing points, open the roads through the gaza strip,

including to the north, could they? do they have that kind of leverage? as the united states, beyond a doubt and together with uk and germany and and the other western powers. so why aren't they? well, i think it's actually a little bit more complicated internally. the us congress is very, very pro—israeli, and gave a green light, as did many of these partners of israel, to more or less do whatever you want after the 7th of october. instead of saying, we did a big mistake after 9/11, we went over to the dark side. there was torture, there was black sites and we lost afghanistan and public opinion for that, why lose the moral high ground? the whole world is on your side. the more you talk to me, jan egeland, the more i think you're probably treading a very fine line. here you are, right now, a senior voice

in the aid business. you lead one of the world's most respected organisations — the norwegian refugee council. and yet, you are sounding deeply political and deeply critical of israel. is that really wise, given your current position and your current responsibilities? well, i would say i'm very critical of israel, the military power as such, what they've done of late, as i was condemning the terror, the gruesome nature of everything that happened on the 7th of october. and i also said to everybody who said, oh, this is a natural response against the occupation and against humiliation. this is liberation. no, it's killing of women and children and it's condemnable, what happened on 7th of october. sure. but you've gone now to a place where you characterise israel's military operation as, quote, "a disproportionate, relentless onslaught on a besieged civilian population." i mean, that, frankly, is one

way of describing a war crime. and there could and there is probably massive war crimes now on both sides, including by israel. and it's before the international criminal court ofjustice. am i...? then hang on. hang on. let's go through this piece by piece. are you saying that you, given what you've seen and your teams on the ground of reported to you, would be prepared to go and testify at the international court ofjustice in that case, which south africa is pursuing, on the basis of israel committing genocide in gaza? i'm not, i've been asked to do that. i refuse to do that precisely because i'm humanitarian work. myjob is to to help people on the ground. the human rights organisations do that. but i'm also, one, an advocate for the civilian population and the right to not be indiscriminately killed and have their homes destroyed and pillaged,

as has often happened. and that's why i call a spade a spade. i've done that all my life. i'm just struggling, frankly, to see why you wouldn't testify. when you say things like this, and you've been very public, you say of the israeli actions, you say this is not a war on terror, it is simply vengeance, and it's going to come back to haunt those who unleashed it. well, one way of it coming back to haunt them would be if you and people like you were prepared to testify. yeah, but i never said it's genocide, i have never sided... it's not yourjob to decide whether it's genocide, but it might be yourjob, or at least your moral obligation, to go and testify and describe what you have seen and what your teams have done and seen and heard. and that would be a bridge too far for me as a humanitarian worker. i'm sure i and others are being cited in that case, because we've been outspoken, because we're eyewitnesses to what's happening on the ground. i have 60 colleagues inside gaza.

and i've been there and i've seen, i've heard the stories of the women and the children, how they have been repeatedly attacked, humiliated, as they have been hounded all over the gaza strip. for three decades of involvement in middle east peace. israel's palestinians, israelis and palestinians came to know you very well as one of the architects of the oslo accords. we're so very far from that. you recently said those 0slo accords are dead. very briefly, what went wrong? very briefly, we overestimated the forces that would help us to bring peace, and we underestimated the enemies of peace on both sides. on both sides. it's very interesting. would it have been better if you'd never tried? no, because we when now they come back to a peace process, as they will, much of the basis of our

process will be used. there is a palestinian administration that has been in the two places. palestinians were for the first time able to teach their own children. they've been under occupation for so very long. there is a palestinian identity, there is a flag. there is a lot of things you can build on. but it's not going to be a new 0slo agreement. it will be something very different. let's take that bigger picture now. how on earth do you prioritise your activities at the moment? i think the nrc, your council, has a budget of something like, what, $700 million — your presence is in a0 different countries. given what's happening in sudan, what's happening in ethiopia, what's happening in ukraine or myanmar, how on earth do you sit in your office and decide what to prioritise? it's through needs assessments. we're governed by humanitarian principles of neutrality and independence, but also impartiality. and impartiality means we go

where the needs are greatest. so indeed, i was now also very recently in eastern chad. close to the sudan border. exactly, where we work for the people of darfur in sudan. and again, it was gut—wrenching, really. the these are, again, mostly women and children. the women have been raped. the men have been killed, and the children are traumatised. this is the reality there. but is the world ready to listen? i struggle to get the attention to these neglected emergencies. so the media organisations like bbc world that do cover. aljazeera, if you are this, most national media have become nationalistic. i mean, they are so interested in neighbourhood problems and in the domestic power struggles, etc. where is the humanity that was there even 20 years ago, when darfur was on the global agenda

and prime minister blair, president bush, the french president, the eu commission was seized by the matter every single month. so you think fundamental changes in the international community, because i'm just, again, looking at the data. if you look at the last five years of un appeals, which of course has added up to hundreds of billions of dollars for different crises and humanitarian disasters around the world, there's been a pretty consistent average of a 40% shortfall in gathering together the international monies to deal with those problems. and you have said, quote, "there is this introverted, nationalistic wind blowing across the world." across too many countries indeed. at the same time, i would also... you're talking about the western world. you're talking what about..? no, i'm also talking about gulf states. and where are the large asian economies? i mean, the many asian

countries who are much richer than my country was when we reached the goal of 0.7% of gross national income in foreign aid. i mean, the the malaysias and the singapores, the asean countries, etc. where are they? india puts up a spaceship on the far side of the moon. and they're not giving anything. could it be — and it's maybe part of the mood you refer to around the world that there is a much greater focus on keeping displaced peoples out of their countries, these migrants who are fleeing, many of them literally for their lives, a lot of governments around the world simply want to build walls, build barriers, ensure these people don't come to their territory. they also give some humanitarian assistance. yes. and for some of them, this motive seems to be let's try to keep them where they are. but we're overstretched

and underfunded like never before because their needs have gone so up. there could be another reason why it seems the international community is less convinced of the argument to keep on giving to assistance and aid operations like yours. it could be because many people have decided it doesn't really work. ijust interviewed a former prime minister of haiti. i pointed out to him that, in the 21st century, haiti has been the recipient of roughly $14 billion worth of international aid and assistance. it hasn't yielded results for haiti. in fact, haiti is more broken than ever before. all of this money — it doesn't work. well, what doesn't work is all of the efforts for peace and mediation and for nation—building and diplomacy and so on. the humanitarian work is more effective and efficient than ever. i would question any other thing being better spending of british pounds or us dollars than our work

where we put people in school — we put up three new schools in eastern chad, and it costs nothing. and the children are again back to school. but even there, i hate to say it, because, goodness knows, building schools for kids like that is a wonderful thing. but there's a problem with it because the argument goes, and it's an argument used by people like jakejohnston, i'm going to quote him. he's at the centre for economic and policy research in washington. and particularly he's talking about haiti, but he could be talking about chad or a number of other countries. he says, "the billions of dollars that you spend as outsiders on nation—building only contribute to the erosion of the state that you're trying to help." in other words, you break the contract between the citizen and their own government. the citizen doesn't believe any more in that government and that fracturing of the relationship, it's a tragedy and it's dangerous. that's a different thing from what i am arguing. we have a moral international obligation to save lives

through humanitarian aid that should also lead to education, livelihoods and a way out. and there are numerous examples of countries, sierra leone, ivory coast, i would say angola, etc, where we had large programs, where we have now exited east timor, there is a lot of places where it has gone much, much better. partly, though, it is about empowering local communities who can then do things, build resilience for themselves. you were a prime mover in this grand bargain initiative, which was supposed to make sure that much more international aid went directly to local communities. they use the jargon "local stakeholders". i look at the figures, it's been a failure. the idea was to get to at least

25%, you're nowhere near 25%. but is going in the right direction now. i see also my own organisation. and on this one, i would say we have reason to be introspect because we have had the culture of going to places like gaza and darfur and so on, setting up very effective and efficient operations and too slow and involving the local groups. we're doing that in all places where we're at the moment and so are nearly all of our peers. so it's happening. the figures will change dramatically. a final thing, i want to bring it at the end back to you personally. itjust seems to me yourjob is almost undoable. i mean, the stress must be extraordinary. you've just been to gaza. you've just been to the chad border with sudan. you see the worst of human suffering. has it led to you losing faith in humanity? no, on the contrary. i've done this now for a0 years and ifeel energised every time i go to a place like...

how can you feel energised after a0 years of looking at the way in which we human beings can do the most terrible things to each other? because i see we succeed more often than we failed. i see that aid reaches people. i saw that even in gaza, we were able to provide hope. we were able to help. mothers were crying of relief when they got a tent a tent after their home had been bombed. shouldn't we give them the minimum when we can? and we can, and we will be in gaza until we have rehabilitated the destroyed homes and until they will have hope for a better future. thejob is not even half done, but we're more effective and efficient than ever before in humanitarian work. so i'm energised like never before. jan egeland, we have to end there, but thanks very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you.

hello there. we're into some much milder feeling air now with temperatures in the mid—teens quite widely on sunday with a wet start to the day for some of us. but we saw some sunny spells emerging such as here in nottinghamshire, and there's more sunshine on offer as we head through monday — it's a similar looking day. for the vast majority of us, it should stay dry, some low cloud, mist and murk to begin with, but then it will brighten up quite nicely. but overnight there are some weather fronts just gradually clearing eastwards. a lot of the showery rain is starting to fizzle out on the easterly track. and this is how we'll start off the day on monday. temperatures between five and eight degrees. it's a cooler start than yesterday morning across much of england and wales.

but still temperatures in mid to high single figures, so mild for the time of year. lots of dry weather around, these areas of cloud just pushing further eastwards, the rain fizzling out. a lot of dry weather, some sunshine, clouds thickening from the west through the afternoon. and there will be some rain across northern ireland for the second half of the day, too. a brisk south—westerly wind blowing, particularly for irish sea coasts. and it's still mild, it's warm but not quite as warm as on sunday, perhaps temperatures 11—16 celsius. and there's more rain on monday night. it's just dragging its way further eastwards as we head through the night and into tuesday. so tuesday we'll see this front sinking southwards and eastwards bringing more cloud across east anglia, the far south east of england. showery outbreaks of rain pushing east across scotland. but for many central areas there'll be some bright spells and perhaps a scattering of showers, too. it's turning cooler now in the north and the west. but still, that mild air hangs on further south and east, 16 degrees celsius here. and you can see that quite nicely on the air mass chart

here with that milder feeling air, still the south—westerly wind, colderfeeling conditions taking hold across the north and the west. now, as we go through wednesday, we're going to start to see this wave develop on this front, and that's going to bring us perhaps some further outbreaks of rain, but still a lot of uncertainty regarding just where this rain is likely to be. it could clear away from eastern scotland towards the end of the day. and i think many northwestern areas could stay largely dry, too. look, it's still very mild across the south east of england, 17 degrees celsius perhaps here. as we go through thursday though, we're likely to see some more rain, especially in the south of england and wales. and it could turn a bit colder by friday. bye—bye.

live from london, this is bbc news. vladimir putin wins a fifth term as russian president. he says he'll prioritise the war in ukraine, following his overwhelming election victory. the israeli military launches an overnight raid on gaza's al—shifa hospital saying hamas was back in the building. hamas says the idf is violating international law.

a bbc investigation has found that many women from malawi working in oman are being abused by their employers. and how income from film and television productions is proving vital in keeping britains stately homes afloat. hello, i'm sally bundock. we begin in russian, where vladimir putin vows to strengthen the armed forces and prioritise what he calls russia's special military operation in ukraine. speaking after a presidential election which delivered him more than 80% of the vote, mr putin said the result had demonstrated people's trust in russia's current path. he said when russians were united, no—one could intimidate or suppress them. as our russia editor steve rosenberg reports, mr putin

also mentioned his late critic, alexei navalny, by name.