UN relief czar says long COVID is forcing him to step down

Martin Griffiths, the United Nations chief emergency relief coordinator, announced plans Monday to step down by the end of June, citing the lingering impact of the COVID-19 virus on his ability to fulfill the taxing job, according to an internal email Griffiths sent to his staff Monday. The announcement comes at a time when the U.N. is facing enormous humanitarian challenges from Gaza and Sudan, which are both facing the prospect of famine, to Afghanistan and Haiti, which has been overtaken by a coalition of armed gangs. “The truth is that my health has been affected by long Covid and this has limited my strength to undertake the breadth of travel essential to my position,” Griffiths, the under-secretary-general in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, wrote in a parting note to his agency’s staff, which was obtained by Devex. “Because I cannot be sure to regain that strength fully, I need to step aside for someone to be selected and to take over.” Griffiths — who confirmed his decision on X, formerly Twitter, — did not say when he contracted COVID-19 nor did he describe the severity of the symptoms of the virus. But he posted a tweet in April 2022 confirming that he had contracted the virus. Griffiths, a former British diplomat and humanitarian, has served for years as a leading U.N. troubleshooter, heading U.N. peace efforts in Yemen and serving in U.N. humanitarian posts for UNICEF, Save the Children, and ActionAid. He was appointed to the U.N.’s top humanitarian relief job in May 2021 and took up the new task in July of that year. “Within 10 days I was in Tigray, Ethiopia, at the time the global epicenter of crises,” Griffiths recalled in his note, paying homage to the corps of humanitarian relief workers he has led for the past three years. “The span of our family is unique to my experience,” he wrote, recounting the “relentless demands” placed on the U.N. aid community responding to political, military, and natural crises in Afghanistan, Gaza, Haiti, Turkey, Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine. None of which, he added, has been resolved. “Across the world, in crises that don't make the news, you continue daily to the fundamental values of OCHA: Service, humility and courage,” he wrote. “I am, in an undervalued word, deeply in your debt. As is the world. Yes, we struggle to keep faith with our mission. We try hard to raise money and not just for our own operations. This is where we are different from others. We are all about serving others.” Griffiths took a jab at contemporary world leaders who have plunged their countries into conflicts, inflicting unfathomable suffering on those least able to protect themselves. “I feel passionately that we are, these days, too easily let down by our political leaders who seem to casually choose war and violence as the preferred instrument to resolve differences,” he wrote. “We know that our communities, north, south, east, and west, are better than that.” Griffiths wrote that he met with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres last Thursday “to seek permission for this move, which he was kind enough to agree.” “I can say with great confidence that it has been the greatest privilege of my long and varied professional lifetime,” he said. Griffiths concluded an otherwise gloomy assessment of world events with a parting dose of optimism. “Humanity exists as strongly across the world now as ever,” he wrote. ”And our privilege is that we have the chance to allow it to drive decisions and bring sanity back to a world gone mad.” Guterres extended “his deep gratitude and appreciation to Mr. Griffiths for his tremendous leadership and service to the United Nations and the humanitarian community in advocating for people affected by crises and mobilizing resources to address their needs,” according to a statement by Farhan Haq, the U.N.’s deputy spokesperson. “A skilled diplomat and mediator, he has played a key role in leading the humanitarian response of [the] United Nations and partners and negotiating solutions to some of the most intractable crises.”