Sustainable development: Reinforcing local structures and empowering communities
Statement delivered by Didier Cherpital, Secretary General, International Federation, at the Nobel Peace Prize Centennial Symposium, Oslo
06 December 2001



Economic exploitation and inequalities create and deepen poverty and vulnerability. These factors relate to war and conflict. I will depart from there, and look closer at the consequences of exploitation and inequalities. They are on the agenda of the Red Cross Red Crescent.

Our organisation assembles close to 100 million Red Cross and Red Crescent members and volunteers in 178 countries. They are parts of innumerable local communities all over the world. They know how vulnerability is created. Often, they find themselves among those affected - by the consequences of global economic change, by natural disasters, environmental degradation, or by epidemics. They know the local needs, and identify the solutions that will work locally. We work from within communities. Our aim is to reinforce local structures for coping, to empower people to help themselves and other members of their communities.

Our members and volunteers are always present, and they will always stay. That is the strength of our organisation. That is how we fulfil our wide mandate: to assist those who are in greatest need of help, no matter who or where they are, or what is the source for their suffering. New patterns of vulnerability change the needs, and our response must change accordingly.

Many factors and developments affect our work. Some of them are critical, even decisive, for our future, and need to be addressed more consistently now.

The continued spread of HIV/AIDS blocks development. In the hardest stricken countries, the health sector is overburdened, and production is seriously affected. The people who should be agents of progress in developing countries; the teachers, the health workers, the entrepreneurs; are dramatically reduced in numbers. There are more orphans - around 8 million in Southern Africa alone. The cost of indispensable medical treatment deepens poverty. Development strategies must address HIV/AIDS. They must include measures that prevent further spread of the virus. This is a top priority for the International Federation. Until now, we have focussed most efforts on Africa. We are now also scaling up in other regions.

In our work, we rely on the many volunteers, who are parts of the communities where prevention must take root. They are the neighbours and the friends who can change mindsets and attitudes, and convert the prevention message into locally recognised common sense.

Our response alone does not provide a solution. It demonstrates how locally based organisations can fight the stigma that is often associated with HIV/AIDS, and make care and treatment not only affordable, but also accessible. In more than 30 African countries, Red Cross or Red Crescent volunteers provide home-based care. They reinforce the social fabric around those affected. This helps families and communities take care of their own members, and keep children who are orphaned by the pandemic in their normal surroundings.

Seven thousand people die from AIDS every day. Life saving drugs and treatments must be affordable and accessible. Humanitarian needs should prevail over commercial concerns. It is our responsibility to advocate clearly and strongly in favour of reasonably priced treatments for developing countries. This applies not only to HIV/AIDS but also to other major public health problems - polio, tuberculosis and malaria control to name just a few.

We must address these challenges together. To create the most impact from our efforts and ensure coordination, we are forging strong partnerships with other agencies and civil society actors, both globally and regionally.

Famine is never a surprise. It is a slow onset and predictable disaster, that can be prevented through enhanced food security.

The Ethiopia famine in the mid-1980s left one million dead. When addressing this disaster, the Ethiopian Red Cross Society made extensive use of its volunteer network. First, to reach communities with food aid, to gain control over the famine and stop displacement. Then to stimulate food production by distributing tools, and convincing people to use drought-resistant seeds. Then to help organise and empower people, to collaborate in building safer wells, and to regenerate vegetation. And then to introduce a new dietary element, fish, that would make people less vulnerable to failed crops. That is an example of the valuable lessons we build our work on.

Our approach is constantly under development. There are no patent solutions, models are different in different places, but some features are recurrent: We recognise the overall need to work within broader models, with long perspectives.

African National Societies and the International Federation have made food security a strategic priority for this decade. To provide this shift, food aid is addressed within a more comprehensive framework, together with elements like community health, water and sanitation, and income generation. Families stricken by HIV/AIDS are particularly targeted.

We cannot do this work alone. These efforts take place in close cooperation with each government, within the existing national food security policies. The World Food Program is a vital partner in this new approach. We are reaching out to other partners who are concerned with root causes for famine.

Drought, and other factors, cause recurrent food insecurity in Tadjikistan. Last year's drought prompted a more sustainable response from the International Federation and the Red Crescent Society of Tadjikistan. In addition to food aid to avert famine, efforts for rehabilitation of water supplies were undertaken in cooperation with local communities. With intermediate technology and modest investments, safer supply of water was provided for numerous isolated villages. Our programme alone does not change the reality in Tadjikistan, but it demonstrates one approach that does work.

Disasters wipe out the hard-won results of decades of development in a very short time. Natural disasters are on the increase - floods, storms and droughts have doubled in number since 1996. Many are recurrent, or predictable. Last year, 256 million people were affected by disasters. Affected - that means that they have lost homes, livelihoods, providers - that they have become more vulnerable. The root causes are known: Environmental degradation. Global warming. Marginalization. Poverty. Poorer countries are more prone to disasters. 98% of last year's disaster victims live in countries of low or medium human development. True disaster recovery takes a long time. The interval between disasters is often too short to build resilience and to reinforce coping mechanisms.

To break the cycle of disasters, we must strengthen disaster preparedness, and build societies that are more disaster resilient. Disaster response and disaster preparedness must be approached at the same time, and within a development framework. Development plans must include measures for improving the preparedness of disaster-prone areas.

National Societies and the International Federation are working together with governments and local communities to strengthen disaster preparedness. In Viet Nam, after seeing eleven thousand homes destroyed by floods in 1998, the International Federation and the Vietnamese Red Cross cooperated with local communities to construct flood-resistant houses for the most vulnerable. In Orissa, India, communities participated in constructing Red Cross cyclone shelters after the 1999 cyclone. They may have saved as many as forty thousand lives in last year's cyclone. These programmes alone do not provide a solution. They represent an approach to better preparedness that was worked out and implemented between the community and the Red Cross Red Crescent. These are positive lessons learnt that can be replicated.

Our challenge is to question the value of our relief interventions, and to recognise that we must meet disasters with action that means real recovery and lessening of risk for people: to build earthquake resistant housing, to resettle people away from the landslides, to reforest, to change agricultural practice.

How willing are we to make the necessary investments? After the India earthquake, in January this year, a Red Cross relief programme was launched, and generously financed with 148% response to the appeal. It was followed up by a consistent programme for rehabilitation, and strengthening of local preparedness and response capacity. To date, the appeal launched for the rehabilitation programme, has achieved a coverage of only 12%.

We must dare to invest early in post-conflict rehabilitation. Instead of waiting for the enabling environment to materialise, we must create it. Early provision of basic services will help recovery to take root.

Over the last decade, Somalia's Red Crescent Society has taken an increasing responsibility for health services. They have been supported in this effort by ICRC, the International Federation and UNICEF. To improve this service and make it more sustainable, the International Federation and the Somali Red Crescent are converting this relief health network into a sustainable service that meets the needs of communities that are recovering from conflict. Now, local communities and health authorities contribute to the running costs of the health clinics, and the Somali Red Crescent cooperates with UNICEF and WHO to improve the services. I am happy to note that the World Bank recognises the rehabilitation value of this programme, and contributes financially to it.

This experience has demonstrated to us how sustainable recovery is dependent on increasing people's confidence in their future. Investing in community-based rehabilitation can be a means of investing in peace. These lessons are valuable for our work in other places. We now have an opportunity to put them to good use in Afghanistan, where the Afghan Red Crescent runs a network of primary health clinics. We will build on that, and focus strongly on health in our efforts in the post-conflict period.

I have set out some of the challenges we must measure up to together in the future. At the same time, I have endeavoured to convey how local civil society can address these great challenges, as daunting as they may be. As you have heard in the examples I referred to - local people are willing to invest. When we strengthen and support local civil society, we release the power that can fight HIV/AIDS, provide food security and ensure true rehabilitation.

That is our work - to empower people, to strengthen the structures around them, so that they can participate, contribute and invest in their own development. We do that by promoting voluntariness, by providing frameworks and knowledge that allow people to help themselves and others. Local civil society has a decisive role to play in building the conditions that favour peace.

The Red Cross and Red Crescent strengthen local communities in all places. We can act inservice of humanity because we stand united across boundaries that are so often divisive. We are one of the very few global movements that advocate a common humanitarian message across religions, culture and ethnicity. Today, we need our unity and universality. We need our well-respected volunteers and our high standing in local communities to counter the new intolerance - the kind of discrimination and violence that is on the upsurge after 11 September. Firmly based on our principle of humanity, we protect dignity, and fight all stigmatisation and discrimination.

It is local people in all places who give life to those words. That is why we must reach out more, to meet the challenges the future will bring. Alone, the Red Cross and Red Crescent can do only that much. It is when teaming up with local communities, with governments and partners that we can make a real difference.