Transcript: Save the Children CEO Janti Soeripto on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," June 8, 2025

CBS News

7 hours ago

The following is the transcript of an interview with Save the Children CEO Janti Soeripto that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on June 8, 2025.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to the international efforts to alleviate the extraordinary humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and we're joined by the CEO of Save the Children, Janti Soeripto. Welcome back to Face the Nation.
SAVE THE CHILDREN U.S. PRESIDENT AND CEO JANTI SOERIPTO: Thank you, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So there are a million children in Gaza in desperate need. The U.N. says the 11-week Israeli blockade has caused the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition to triple. What are you able to get in to help?
SOERIPTO: So since March 2, Save the Children has been able to get nothing in whatsoever.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Even though the blockade is over, officially?
SOERIPTO: Even though the blockade is formally over, we haven't been able to get any of our- the 50 trucks that we have around Gaza on the border ready to go in, we haven't been able to get anything in.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Why?
SOERIPTO: So our staff are operating currently- still with what we have. We have dwindling stocks, medical supplies, therapeutic malnutrition treatment for children, very young children. We're still working where we can and delivering goods while we can, but these stocks are dwindling fast.
MARGARET BRENNAN: What's the chokepoint? Why can't your trucks get in?
SOERIPTO: We haven't gotten any authorization to get them in.
MARGARET BRENNAN: From the Israeli authorities?
SOERIPTO: Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Is the U.S. government helping at all?
SOERIPTO: I think there is- there's an effort. I think there's a recognition that the humanitarian situation as it is is completely untenable, that we're looking at mass starvation of innocent civilians and above all, very young children, as you said, so there's attempts being made. We think that those attempts currently are completely ineffective and inadequate.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza told CBS this morning that only a few hours remain before the generators in the hospital shut down because they don't have enough fuel to keep them going. What are your medical workers seeing on the ground? What happens if a hospital like that can't function?
SOERIPTO: Yeah, it's- I'm not surprised by that. It's completely abhorrent. We're hearing stories from colleagues in Gaza that are talking about children who have to undergo surgery and then they wake up during the surgery because there's not enough anesthetics. So that is what's happening. That is what it looks like.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That is horrific.
SOERIPTO: It is.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The U.N. office that oversees these efforts have warned as well that kids are leading households because their parents are gone.
SOERIPTO: That's right, there's thousands and thousands of children who have lost one or more parents, lost their immediate family. So yes, we'll have kids, young kids, taking care of their younger siblings, trying to survive.
MARGARET BRENNAN: What does that do to a society?
SOERIPTO: It's unbelievable what's happening to this generation of 2 million people in Gaza.You know, the trauma is hard to overestimate. We're hearing mothers tell us that now their children are essentially waiting their turn to die.
MARGARET BRENNAN: How does your staff continue to function when they're told things like that?
SOERIPTO: It's horrific, as you can imagine. So we have almost 200 staff there, almost all of them Palestinians and can you imagine? They still go out every day. They have their own children to care of. They can't feed their own kids adequately. They still go out every day, trying to deliver, give medical assistance to- to kids and mothers, where they can, hand out food whilst we still have it, trying to give people trauma counseling whilst we can- if we can reach them, but it is incredibly difficult. They're just trying to survive. Almost, I think, pushing away thinking about the trauma too much, because otherwise it's very difficult, I think, to- to get up and go to work.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So your organization does help like this, emergency help like this around the world. The Trump administration has called on the U.N. to work with this new organization called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. It's got the Israeli government support to deliver aid. We've seen a number of deadly shootings documented in proximity to their posts. A lot of criticism. They told the public yesterday that they'd received threats from Hamas, but then they didn't share details of that with CBS when we asked. Do you know what's happening? Because this is a U.S.-backed organization.
SOERIPTO: It seems so. We have given a lot of input and- and- and shared our concerns. We and all the other operational agencies in- operational in Gaza have shared our concerns with this new mechanism. We thought the existing mechanism worked just fine when we had the pause in fighting from January till March, as you recall, we got trucks and trucks of supplies in at scale. We were able to deliver. We treated children with malnutrition. We did vaccinations. We did medical care. Hospitals were operating. There was fuel to operate that generator in Al-Shifa hospital and that worked. So this current new mechanism doesn't seem to work. The failings seem to play out exactly in the way that we warned against. It is also a militarization of aid. If you put men with guns near to a distribution point and then you ask a desperate- desperate, starving population to come and walk for miles to get boxes of food, you're going to create crowd control issues and- and increased risk of harm to an already incredibly desperate population.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And boxes are food are not what you can give to a child who's in the midst of starvation.
SOERIPTO: Exactly right. It is completely inadequate support as well.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Janti Soeripto from Save the Children, thank you.
SOERIPTO: Thank you for having me.