Zitat des Tages von Peter Maurer:
Conflicts are not temporary interruptions: they are structural, socio-economic catastrophes, and funding must be allocated accordingly.
Local businesses and communities must be included from the very start in developing solutions to fragility, violence, and conflict.
The creative capacity of the private sector should be harnessed to develop new and more effective ways to deliver humanitarian solutions.
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.
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.
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.
Self-reliance is not always possible; we have to acknowledge that there are situations of dramatic crisis which will force us to substitute non-existing public delivery systems.
Humanitarian assistance, once conceived as a short-term relief effort, is increasingly the only substitute for long-term development work in protracted armed conflicts.
Cities are drivers of growth and wealth, and at the same time, cities are becoming increasingly violent.
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.
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.
We need to continue to modernise current humanitarian work while at the same time drive a more systemic shift in how we envision the operation and financing of humanitarian solutions.
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.
It has always been clear that any use of nuclear weapons would have catastrophic humanitarian consequences.
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.
The whole essence of humanitarian work and the Geneva Convention is that neutral, impartial organisations can operate during war.
The young, the old, women, the disabled, the sick and the wounded are entitled to protection under international law. Too often, the ICRC's calls for those laws to be respected are ignored.
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.
Each day that passes without kids being able to go to school is an enormous burden on the future.
Not only does disability impact individual health and well-being, it also leads to social and economic exclusion.
As responsible politicians, you have to manage migration.
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.
People living through armed conflicts need infrastructure and services which will last, and the last thing on their mind is which budget line applies.
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.
If private-sector capital can be harnessed for social good, the potential to scale humanitarian solutions is vast.
Torture can destroy the social fabric of communities, degrade a society's institutions, and undermine the integrity of its political systems.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution does not just entail risks: it also brings solutions to humanitarian problems.
Humanitarian action cannot be held hostage to political ends.
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.
Where you are born, your parent's beliefs, or your ethnic background should not make you a target.
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.
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.
As conflicts last longer, as the scale of needs increase, we are having to adapt. There is an increasing blurring between immediate humanitarian assistance and long-term development needs.
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 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.
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.
