August 4, 2025 – Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s John Acree held a live briefing to share what collaboration could look like if the United Nations accepted our offer of partnership.
GHF Letters to the UN:
Read the transcript:
“CHAPIN FAY
Thanks for being here. I’m Chapin Fay, spokesperson for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. You’re going to hear a briefing today from John Acree, our executive director and lifelong humanitarian. I’ll turn over to you, John.
JOHN ACREE
Thank you, Chapin, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for being here. I am John Acree, Interim Executive Director of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. I understand that for many of you, this may be our first conversation. So allow me the liberty to briefly share who I am and why this work matters so much for me and to me. I’m an American and a lifelong humanitarian leader, starting with the Peace Corps in the early 80s and continuing throughout my career. I’ve served the United States in Some of the world’s most disadvantaged countries and complex crisis zones leading response efforts in active war zones such as in Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of devastating natural disasters in Latin America and the Caribbean and amid collapsing political systems in Pakistan and Tajikistan.
Much of that time was with USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. You might recall OFTA. I was deployed numerous times as part of OFTA’s Disaster Assistance Response Teams to some of the most complex emergencies of our time. I’ve coordinated Refugee Relief in conflict zones, rebuilt supply chains from scratch after hurricanes and conflict, and worked hand in hand with both military and civilian leaders to get help to people when and where they need it the most.
I can truly say, then that without hesitation, nothing compares to the scale the urgency and high stakes of the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza today. At GHF, I’m proud to lead a team that shows up every single day, with one mission: to feed people. Not to take sides, not to take credit, just to save lives. Since launching food delivery operations, we’ve delivered more than 105 million meals safely and directly to Palestinian civilians in need. We built a secure and effective distribution model that works, and we’re scaling it to reach even more people faster.
This is hard work, it’s dangerous work, but it’s the right work, and I’m proud to do it alongside our Palestinian partners, our US colleagues and the international allies committed to keeping food from becoming another victim of politics. We all share the same passion to help the hungry Palestinians. In recent weeks, we’ve witnessed scenes that no humanitarian should ever have to witness. The United Nations aid convoys looted in broad daylight, aid workers endangered on unprotected trucks, and above all, a breakdown in access to life saving assistance for the people of Gaza, this chaos is not just tragic. It’s unacceptable. Since the United Nations resumed its vital mission to deliver aid in Gaza in May, the effort has been consistently undermined by a harsh and dangerous reality on the ground, lawlessness, the presence of armed gangs and the absence of a functioning civil order. As a result, too many people in desperate need, the children, the families, the elderly, are going without aid at precisely the moment their need is greatest.
But I’m here today to say there is a better way, one that helps the UN fulfill its humanitarian mandate while also adapting to the evolving conditions on the ground. That way is collaboration, specifically a partnership, between the United Nations and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, this partnership could take several practical forms.
First: Operational Support and Escorting.
GHF can provide logistical support to UN convoys to help ensure aid reaches its destination safely, and we can advise on timing and potential routes.
Second: Distribution of Existing Aid.
Much of the UN’s aid stock is already inside Gaza, but it’s sitting idle. We can move it to our SDS sites today and tomorrow. Using our secure, proven distribution networks, and with the access to their aid, we can expand our access points across Gaza, including, hopefully the North.
Finally: Community Based Expansion
Together, we can re-establish neighborhood-level trust and access expanding food delivery to areas that are currently out of reach or too dangerous for centralized distribution.
There are likely other ways we could support the United Nations that would come to light if they came to the table and engaged with us, but so far, they have not. I would like to take just a moment then and describe the extent of our efforts to help the UN deliver on its mandate in Gaza.
On June 4, we met in person with senior leaders from the United Nations World Food Program, Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau and Country Director Antoine Gérard, to present practical proposals for how GHF could help deliver their food to civilians in Gaza. Unfortunately, the meeting was cut short by the WFP. Before our ideas could be discussed on June 24, we sent a letter to Secretary General Antonio Guterres, urging direct collaboration and stating what remains true today.
The UN has the means, GHF has the mechanism. What remains is simply the will.
We followed up again on July 22 writing to Under Secretary General Tom Fletcher to reiterate our commitment to partnership. On July 23, GHF made the offer to deliver all of United Nations aid sitting in Gaza for free, given the situation on the ground, and most recently, we were planning a meeting with the UN originally scheduled for today. Unfortunately, that meeting was obstructed by some within the UN system and is no longer taking place.
Despite this repeated outreach, the United Nation continues to struggle to get aid to those in need. Their trucks are looted by their own figures. At a rate of 95% that’s their own figures. Hundreds of truckloads sit inside Gaza, cleared, stocked, but untouched. GHF has offered to deliver that aid for free. As I mentioned, we’ve asked the UN to join us on the ground, side by side, so far, they’ve declined.
The solution to the desperation we’re all witnessing is more aid, more food, more trucks crossing borders, more distribution points, closer to where people live fewer dangerous tracks for families seeking food when we increase the frequency, reliability and geographic reach of food aid that desperation lowers. People can breathe. Parents can focus on caring for their kids, we start to create pockets of stability in an unstable place. With collaboration from the United Nations, we can scale our secure distribution across Gaza, extend reach to areas currently cut off, stem the tide of suffering. GHF has shown that safe, effective humanitarian delivery is possible even under the most daunting conditions. To date, we have delivered, as I said, more than 105 million meals without compromising the safety of our teams or the civilians that we serve.
If ever there was a time to adapt, to innovate and above all, to partner. It is now we urge the UN to join us in forging a new way forward together we can break through the chaos and deliver hope where it is needed most. Thank you.”
Please follow @GHFUpdates for regular updates.
EMAIL US AT [email protected] IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR TO CONFIRM INFORMATION RELATED TO GHF’S HUMANITARIAN OPERATIONS IN GAZA.
###