Mark Lowcock is Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator and Head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Everybody Wins When We Help Fragile Countries Fight COVID-19

Rauf Salem, a volunteer, instructs children on the right way to wash their hands, in Sana'a, Yemen.  Photo: UNICEF/UNI341697
Mark Lowcock, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, chairs a virtual briefing on the Humanitarian Situation in Lebanon. 10 August 2020. United Nations, New York. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

The economic cost of inaction is huge: countless millions more people being pushed into extreme poverty, decades of development progress lost, and the shadow of a generation’s worth of tragic and exportable problems looming.