By Amy Wong

For 16 days, Stephen O’Brien, the United Nation’s undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, traveled from one afflicted country to another, talking to people who were traumatized. Starving. Desperate for peace.

“America’s retreat and unilateralism, or even the perception of it by other players, would create the risk of coming back to the old spheres of influence policy, and history teaches us that it has only led to more instability.” French UN Ambassador Francois Delattre

Many had been displaced, the victims of airstrikes and constant fighting, of drought and imminent famine.

By the time O’Brien returned to the United Nations, the humanitarian chief had committed several statistics to heart, each one illustrating a deep gash the agency needed to address in its efforts around the world.

Image: Stephen O’Brien (centre), Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, speaks to a woman at a camp for Internally Displaced Persons in Baidoa, Somalia.