00:00Alexandre de Gros, United Nations Development Programme Administrator.
00:04Welcome. Thank you for joining us on Euronews.
00:07My pleasure.
00:08Now, your agency has recently put out a report warning that military escalation in the Middle East
00:14could push more than 30 million people into poverty.
00:18What has the UNDP, your agency, what has the response been in the region?
00:25First of all, people agree because typically governments of the region feel this on a daily
00:36basis, how increasing energy prices, but especially also disruptions in the food systems, have
00:44a thorough impact on the daily lives of their populations, but not only in the region.
00:49And this is one of the elements that we want to emphasize in our report, is that the impact
00:54goes way beyond the region.
00:56For example, Sub-Saharan Africa is severely impacted by what is going on in the region.
01:03Small island states, for example, in the Pacific, you start to have a few islands that just don't
01:09have enough fuel anymore.
01:10So the impact of the war and the blockade that is linked to it has a deep impact.
01:18And it shows that war is development in reverse.
01:23It takes decades to lift people out of poverty.
01:26It takes six weeks of war to push them back into poverty.
01:30So wide-ranging repercussions, as you're saying there.
01:34Are you confident that a diplomatic solution can be found between the US and Iran?
01:39Because we're obviously seeing now in the Strait of Hormuz these blockades, which is making
01:44the conflict more confusing.
01:47Am I confident?
01:49I have no crystal ball.
01:51Am I hopeful?
01:52Yes.
01:52And that, of course, is the first measure, is to stop the war, or at least come to some
01:59type of normalization of the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz.
02:04But even if the war would stop today, you will need economic interventions to avoid that whole
02:12countries and whole populations are being pushed back in poverty in a structural way.
02:17And this is what we explain in our report, is that these type of interventions are typically,
02:24yeah, it's macroeconomic interventions that international financial institutions can do
02:29on, for example, providing targeted and time-limited cash-outs to populations who are impacted,
02:39or providing free access to fuel, cooking gas, and so on.
02:47If you don't do these targeted, timely macroeconomic interventions, you will have many more ripple
02:55effects.
02:55And we have not talked about the ripple effects of poverty, of food insecurity.
03:02That could lead to additional conflicts, that could lead to more displacement and migration
03:08flows, that could lead to other types of extremism.
03:11So there is a need for interventions beyond just trying to have an agreement and stopping
03:18the hostilities.
03:19And now one of the countries that's heavily impacted by this crisis is Lebanon, where around
03:251.2 million people are displaced.
03:27Now, we just heard the news that there is this 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.
03:33How dire is the situation in the country?
03:36And how necessary is the ceasefire?
03:40Oh, it is very necessary.
03:43We're talking about hundreds, thousands of people that are being displaced, or that are
03:47leaving Lebanon, and for example, leaving Lebanon to Syria, which is, I mean, remarkable,
03:53knowing that in the past or the past decades, it has been the opposite.
03:58But there's multiple dimensions to it.
04:00First element is, look, these interventions are in disregard of international humanitarian
04:08law.
04:09The human loss is massive.
04:14But also, the material loss is massive.
04:17And I think that, I mean, Lebanon, the international community has invested so much in stabilizing
04:23the country, in providing hospitals, schools, and other type of infrastructure.
04:28All that is now being blown up.
04:31This is people's taxes that are just being blown up in military action.
04:39This is just, as I said, development in reverse.
04:43And so, a ceasefire, that's a good thing.
04:48We can only hope that it is really a ceasefire and not a diminishment of fire, as we've seen,
04:54for example, in Gaza.
04:56But we will have to deal with the consequences of what has happened over the past weeks in
05:03having hundreds of thousands of people who are displaced, who lost their homes, who lost
05:09their livelihoods.
05:13And immediately getting into a logic of stabilisation, recovery, and rebuilding is the right thing
05:21to do.
05:21I mean, people don't need necessarily handouts and food.
05:26They need someone who is willing to help them in reconstructing their lives.
05:30And you're obviously part of the UN, an institution which has been heavily criticised
05:36recently by the US President, for example.
05:39There are fears that his Board of Peace could replace it.
05:43What does the UN bring to the table in this geopolitical context that we're facing now?
05:51I think, first of all, respect for international rules.
05:55And I think we see what happens when international rules are not being respected.
06:02Secondly, I think we bring trust.
06:04In that part of the world, people know what we stand for.
06:08I mean, we are there to help them.
06:11We are there to reconstruct their country.
06:14And we have multiple UN organisations that, despite the criticism, and I'm not deaf for the
06:20criticism, are very, very much appreciated by the populations with whom we work.
06:27Now, the key element for us is to have access.
06:32For example, in Gaza, which is a really desolate place these days, more than 85% of people have
06:40lost their homes and are living in the middle of the rubble in tents that are not even worth the
06:45name of being a tent, we can help many more people.
06:49We can provide way more assistance.
06:52But we're not getting the access.
06:54We're not getting the possibility of bringing in goods.
06:58We're not getting the possibility of getting in technical equipment.
07:03I have no problem confronting the criticism to the UN.
07:08My attitude would be, game on, let us show what we're capable of, but then also give us
07:15room to do so.
07:16For the moment, there's no access for UN organisations, but no one else is doing it.
07:23I'm open to work together with the Board of Peace.
07:26I think the Board of Peace is based on a Security Council resolution.
07:30It has helped in bringing a ceasefire or the diminishment of fire in Gaza.
07:36These are good things.
07:38I mean, these are realisations of the US administration.
07:42But now we need to move into the next phase.
07:44And moving into that next phase really is urgent in helping people to reconstruct their lives.
07:50But just to touch on that UN Security Council that you mentioned, a lot of the criticism
07:55has touched on the fact that you have this veto mechanism here, which is, in fact, systemically
08:02blocking the UN from solving conflicts.
08:04How do you tackle that?
08:08Look, these are the rules today.
08:10And we can have a lot of philosophical reflections on those rules.
08:16I would just make it more practical.
08:19The five permanent members of the Security Council have an incredible power, which is their veto.
08:28But to me, power always goes together with responsibility.
08:32That power also gives you a lot of responsibility and understanding that a stable world really is
08:40to the benefit of everyone.
08:45And we've seen over the past years the instability increasing in a dramatic way.
08:50And that's not a good thing for anyone.
08:52It's not a good thing for the people living there.
08:54But we also see the economic consequences of this.
08:57I mean, the IMF came out with their new predictions two days ago.
09:01I mean, they decreased worldwide growth rates by 0.3%.
09:05That's huge.
09:07I mean, this is costing jobs throughout the world.
09:10This is costing prosperity throughout the world.
09:13This is just, I mean, by due to human activity, we're just shooting in our own foot.
09:19And that's worldwide.
09:20The reduction in growth rate for the Arab region is minus 3%.
09:25I mean, this is really, really impacting, as you said in your introduction, more than 30 million people.
09:31Now, the good thing about human action is that human action is reversible.
09:35So we can only plead for intervention and for making clear that what is happening right now has quite some
09:46impact.
09:47And if we want to avoid it, it has a structural impact.
09:49We need to intervene with some macroeconomic measures.
09:51And now, just finally, to close, I want to go a bit closer to home.
09:56I want to turn to the elections in Hungary.
09:58Now, obviously, you were Belgian prime minister between 2020 and 2025.
10:02So you often shared a seat at the table with Viktor Orban, the now outgoing prime minister.
10:08What do you think the victory of the TISA party means for Europe?
10:12And maybe more importantly, what does it mean for Ukraine, where your agency is very active?
10:19Look, I'm not going to comment on European politics.
10:23I mean, we don't take political positions.
10:26What is important to us, and this is a big part of our work, is organizing elections and making sure
10:36that you have a political representation in a country which is fair and which is representative.
10:41And to me, the Hungarian election shows that elections do matter and that despite anything that sometimes people do to
10:53make elections less powerful in the impact that it can have,
10:58here it's quite clear that if people have a certain position, elections do have an impact.
11:06Now, we will have to see what that means.
11:09I mean, we have no position on one person or another person in a certain country.
11:15Of course, if the position of a country is to support neutralism and to support the idea that countries are
11:23stronger when they work together, we're happy with that.
11:26But we will try to work with anyone.
11:28But to me, the main message is elections do work and elections do have an impact.
11:33Mr. Alexandre de Croix, thank you so much for joining us on Euronews.
11:37My pleasure.
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