{"id":27729,"date":"2026-07-05T16:00:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T14:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/?p=27729"},"modified":"2026-07-03T10:54:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T08:54:00","slug":"we-highlight-the-voices-of-people-who-are-often-overlooked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/we-highlight-the-voices-of-people-who-are-often-overlooked","title":{"rendered":"“We highlight the voices of people who are often overlooked”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Hadja Lahbib,<\/strong> European Union Commissioner<\/strong> for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management, exposes the challenges of information and communication European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) is faced with as a major aid donor worldwide*.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What are the main challenges the European Union (EU) is facing today in its humanitarian aid?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hadja Lahbib: <\/strong>Since early 2025, we have seen major cuts in aid budgets, mainly from the US. This is devastating, as needs are going up and resources are decreasing. In the meantime, international humanitarian law is routinely violated, blocking aid access and putting humanitarian workers in danger. Last, disinformation is often used as a weapon in situations of conflict. This undermines humanitarian efforts and misleads the people they serve.
One of our priorities is to counter these harmful narratives. We do it by sharing accurate and reliable information about our work in every area. Promoting our partners activities through EU-funded projects increases their visibility and helps to counter false narratives. One example: with United Nations High Committee for Refugees (UNHCR), we created a toolkit to protect information on digital platforms. This toolkit helps humanitarian workers spot and stop misinformation, especially about displaced and stateless people. It is used worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this work of information and communication, how do you check the dignity and agency of people receiving humanitarian action is respected?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything we do is based on deep respect for the people we assist. As donors, we have a responsibility to not only fund humanitarian action, but to shift how that action is communicated. We must remain credible, factual, principled, and consistent. People affected by crises must not be considered just as subjects of our stories nor enabled victims, but rather as storytellers. In our communication, we always try to show real and personal stories. These stories reveal not only the hardships people face, but also their strength and how they move forward with EU support. We show people as human beings with dignity and resilience, because this is who they are.
That means actively creating space for local voices, perspectives, and media. This is even more essential in crises zones, where narratives are often dominated by external actors. Our approach is to step back, listen, and ensure that those living through crises are able to share their experiences in their own words. With consent, we highlight the voices of people who are often overlooked. Supporting local media must also be part of the solution. That means building long-term partnerships that go beyond visibility and amplify local voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Supporting local media
must also be
part of the solution<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

What does the EU gain in giving voice to people in need for help?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By sharing compelling human-interest stories from the field, we help make our humanitarian action more understandable to the public. These challenges are also an opportunity for the EU to step up as a trusted humanitarian actor.
When we talk about crises, we are flooded with numbers. Take Sudan: 13 million people forced to flee their homes. But what does 13 million actually mean? It is too vast to grasp, too distant to feel. We forget that each one is a face, a name, a human being. Because in the end, we don\u2019t connect to numbers, we connect to people and their unique personal stories.
These stories also show something else: that in a world of growing crises and retreating commitments, the EU is still there, showing up, delivering. Our partners in the field know it. The people we support know it. And European citizens deserve to know it too because this work is done in their name. It reflects their values.
The EU is a reliable humanitarian actor. We will always defend international humanitarian law. That is our responsibility, and it is a promise worth keeping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Excerpts of an interview first published in <\/em>Voice of Loud#39 (VOICE, Brussels, September 2025)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This piece is taken from the 17th issue of Mediation, \u2018Information: a humanitarian defence against hybrid warfare\u2019, which you\u2019ll find attached at the top of this article<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hadja Lahbib, European Union Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management, exposes the challenges of information and communication European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) is faced with as a major aid donor worldwide*. What are the main challenges the European Union (EU) is facing today in its humanitarian aid? Hadja Lahbib: Since early […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":27767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,152,196],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-classifiee","category-news","category-our-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-13 05:17:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27729"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27875,"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27729\/revisions\/27875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}