Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The International Committee of the Red Cross visits roughly half a million detainees in nearly 100 countries each year. It's our job to try to prevent and put an end to torture and ill-treatment.
Although the ICRC and the World Economic Forum have separate missions, they both are centred on collaboration across sectors and between various actors in order to improve the state of the world.
What the hell is happening to the world when those who were at the origin of... international humanitarian law start questioning in public debates whether it has any relevance or should be respected?
We must understand the factors that cause fragility, violence, and conflict in order to develop solutions that will meaningfully reduce instability at its roots rather than merely addressing the symptoms.
Attacks on health facilities, health workers, ambulances, is now a reality that we observe on the ground - not on a monthly but on a daily or weekly scale in most of the conflicts in which we are engaged.
They say that truth is the first casualty of war. But there is another casualty as well: trust. As conflict escalates, trust between people and political leaders crumbles away as surely as night follows day.
Very often, development agencies or even some of the humanitarian actors choose the... more comfortable type of work, where it is safe, while the more important work has to be done where it is profoundly unsafe.
We see a transformation of warfare from the big armies and battlefields in open spaces to a fragmentation of armed groups and smaller armies, which move into city centres, which increasingly become the theatre of warfare.
New technologies are rapidly giving rise to unprecedented methods of warfare. Innovations that yesterday were science fiction could cause catastrophe tomorrow, including nanotechnologies, combat robots, and laser weapons.
We believe that settlement expansion policies pursued in recent decades by successive Israeli governments have facilitated the process of de-facto annexation. It has complicated the dialogue between the different communities.
There is a clear business case for building the resilience and capacity of local communities, businesses, and institutions because a peaceful, educated, and productive population will stimulate economic growth in the long term.
Every day, we hear of civilians being killed and wounded in violation of the basic rules of international humanitarian law and with total impunity. Instability is spreading. Suffering is growing. No country can remain untouched.
Conflicts are increasingly causing devastation in densely populated urban centres rather than open battlefields, creating a host of new problems through the cumulative impact from the destruction of vital services like water and electricity.
It is very clear from the text of the Geneva Conventions that families have the right to know about the whereabouts of their missing and that belligerents have a duty to inform families if they have indication and if they are detaining people.
The fragility created by protracted conflicts, resulting in destroyed cities and dramatically insufficient services, is not something that humanitarian organizations can address comprehensively. Only political solutions can end armed conflicts.
Economic activity can help repair war-torn societies, but if it's not conducted responsibly, it can also create or prolong violence. Companies and international organisations must help strengthen communities and overcome the trauma of violence.
Until the last nuclear weapon is eliminated, more must also be done to reduce the risk of a detonation. Nuclear-armed states should reduce the number of warheads on high alert and be clearer about the actions they are taking to prevent accidents.
Every year, we ask our donors to dig deeper. And every year, they gladly, generously comply. It is now up to us to find ways and means to forestall the day when they cannot - or will not. Or the consequences for people in war zones could be disastrous.
The issue of corruption in the humanitarian system is not an issue which is fundamentally different from dangers of corruption in other areas. One of the best ways to strengthen accountability is to engage in principled and law-based humanitarian action.
We still have a strong commitment to our original mission, which is to protect and assist people who are suffering from the impact of violence, but the violence has changed its character, format, and pattern so that we are now responding year after year.
The mess in the world is a strong driver because, at the end of the day, it's the increasing unacceptability of the divergences and rifts in the world economically, socially, politically, and culturally which lead everybody to say, 'We have to do something.'
Fragility, violence, and conflict are complex. Fragility is influenced by a wide set of factors, many of which are deeply entrenched, such as high social and income inequality. The lines between criminal, inter-communal, and politically motivated violence are often blurred.
The ICRC did not see Nazi Germany for what it was. Instead, the organization maintained the illusion that the Third Reich was a 'regular partner,' a state that occasionally violates laws, not unlike any army during World War II, occasionally using illegal means and methods of warfare.
Cities tend to be representations of societies: diversity and inequality find their extremes in urban settings. Yet, when war is added onto pre-existing inequalities, high levels of poverty, or even disaster, urban fragility increases exponentially, making it harder to absorb the shocks of warfare.
Since 1989, public alarm at the prospect of atomic Armageddon has quietened, but the number of nuclear-armed states has increased, arsenals are being modernized, and powerful states remain convinced that a nuclear security umbrella is vital to national defense, domestic prestige, and geopolitical clout.
I think we are challenged in how we define humanitarian action today and how we relate to long-term needs. We are also confronted with legitimate expectations from the people who want us to respond far more thoroughly to their basic pleas than we would have done in a much more contained form of conflict.
The relatively unpredictable flow of funds to humanitarian organizations, and the bureaucratic strings often attached to them, can have a highly negative impact on an organization's ability to plan and execute programmes effectively. We need to be able to rely on predictable income flows to plan sustainable programmes.
In our fibre-optic world of tweets and tablets, we are more conscious of the world around us. The technicolour violence and humanitarian abuses of today are just a flick of a switch away. In our homes, on the train, in our coffee shops, we see it, we feel it, we know about it. All of us. All of the time. Human suffering is visible, constantly.