Today's work for humanitarian assistance is based on the ancient
willingness of humans to help each other, and that the strong
and the rich have an obligation to help the weaker and the people
in need. This idea is also rooted in all religions and has been
an element in what civilisation has stood for since the beginning
of time.
The basis of the aid work conducted by the humanitarian aid
organisations is the humanitarian imperative that has been built
from that ancient willingness. It has, however, been refined
and developed so that it is now commonly accepted that the obligation
is one which must be discharged without conditions, of any kind.
This is the basis of the modern Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
with its various components.
The context
The first is the International Committee of the Red Cross, broadly
responsible for international humanitarian law and issues arising
from conflict situations.
The second set of components in the history of our Movement
was the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, known in the Movement
as the National Societies.
Their first responsibility was associated with the work of the
ICRC in conflict situations, but by the end of the First World
War it had become apparent to world leaders that the National
Societies had a broader role, especially in the protection of
public health, the management of natural disasters and in work
for fairness and humanity.
This realisation prompted US President Woodrow Wilson to call
for the creation of a League of Red Cross Societies which would
be the membership organisation of the National Societies and
work for humanitarian causes not connected to conflict.
President Wilson's call led soon after the War to the creation
of that League with those purposes. With its wider membership
it is now the organisation of which I have the honour to be
Secretary-General, the International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies.
We now have 181 members, and are working hard to obtain true
universality so that all the people, everywhere, are able to
exercise the right to have their vulnerability protected by
a Society which is a member of our Movement and the International
Federation.
Our growth has matched dramatic changes in the world. Our National
Societies work towards common fundamental principles, including
of course neutrality and impartiality. Their place in their
countries as the auxiliaries to the public authorities in the
humanitarian field has also grown to match the entire humanitarian
agenda of their countries, and is no longer seen anywhere as
restricted to those humanitarian issues associated with conflicts.
This is why the International Federation has seen it as important
to provide inspiration for National Societies as they work to
set their responsibilities alongside those of the large number
of other organisations working outside government with humanitarian
ideals as their motive.
The United Nations General Assembly clearly established the
role of National Societies as the auxiliaries to the public
authorities of their countries in the humanitarian field in
its 1994 resolution 49/2. This resolution accorded to the International
Federation its place as an Observer in the General Assembly
and therefore to meetings organised by any part of the United
Nations.
Since then, the International Federation has grown significantly
in stature as a member of the international community, and now
takes part as a standing invitee in meetings of the Inter-Agency
Standing Committee of the United Nations system. So does the
ICRC, but the way the humanitarian issues arrive with us for
consideration is different, because the ICRC has a precise role
is the guardian of international humanitarian law.
We in the International Federation, on the other hand, are the
international representatives of the National Societies, and
we speak for them both as individual Societies committed to
the Fundamental Principles of the Movement and as bodies comprising
a branch and volunteer structure which reaches to tens of millions
of people with the instincts and feelings of the communities
in which they live.
This is why the International Federation is seen at the UN as
the world's greatest community-based organisation.
But it is also why it is so important for us to seek a clear
definition of the humanitarian space in which we operate. Without
it, we could very easily find ourselves either as just another
arm of the UN and its member governments, or we could be seen
as just another NGO with the same priorities as, say, Oxfam
or CARE.
We tread this fine line with care. It is increasingly important,
however, that we recognise that much of our advocacy over the
years is now bearing fruit.
Governments, and from them intergovernmental organisations in
the UN system now realise that sustainable development and work
against poverty is part of the supreme international agenda.
HIV/AIDS, one of our greatest preoccupations, is now recognised
by the UN Security Council as a threat to international peace
and security.
Human Rights is recognised by proposals now current for the
reform of the UN system as being much more than it was even
when the historic Universal Declaration of Human Rights was
adopted in 1948.
This process of reform of the UN is quite well known. What is
less easy to see is the place of that reform alongside many
other reform activities now taking place at national as well
as international levels.
Some of this is due to the natural human decision to use the
advent of the new millennium to review and reform, to adopt
a new vision and to motivate change for the better.
Some is coincidental. In our case, the International Federation
conducted a review of the 1990s itself, looking at the very
different humanitarian needs in the world since the end of the
Cold War and the changes this had brought to our operating environment.
It was this that led to the adoption in 1999 of what we call
Strategy 2010. Despite its name, it was not specifically set
with objectives for the year 2010 in mind, rather a set of priorities
within four core areas. It has served us well, partly because
it was followed a year later by the adoption in New York of
the United Nations Millennium Declaration and subsequently the
UN Millennium Development Goals, the MDGs.
We are not so arrogant as to say that we inspired the MDGs,
but it is important when considering how and why the International
Federation operates to understand that the philosophical environment
of the time was the one that gave birth to them and to our Strategy
2010. This is why it is no surprise that the Millennium Declaration
sets out, for the first time in the UN, the underpinning requirement
for community involvement in the design, implementation and
monitoring of programs for social and economic development.
In every country. The Millennium Declaration represents another
turning point in that it has brought home to all governments
the responsibility that each has to the needs of its own people
as well as to people in vulnerability and need elsewhere in
the world.
Also, for the first time, public health issues were elevated
to the very top of the international agenda. Three of the eight
MDGs concern health issues, and they are threaded into each
of the others.
Our core areas include disaster preparedness and disaster response,
as well as the promotion of humanitarian principles and values.
Each of these is also threaded through the Millennium Development
Goals, and in each case the issue of community involvement has
come forward in a way which involves the essence of the role
of our National Society members as auxiliaries to their public
authorities.
The new climate of partnership
I have prefaced my key points with this quite long explanation
because it is difficult to see why our role is as it now is
without understanding that context. This explanation also shows
that even though governments are responsible for the security
and well being of all the persons living in their national territory,
they have obligated themselves to discharge that responsibility
in a new climate of partnership.
The nature of the Red Cross and Red Crescent makes this climate
of partnership a complicated question in its own right. Neutrality
and Impartiality and Independence have stood in public imagination
for many years as signals of work which will be done for the
purest of humanitarian motives, absolutely uncontaminated by
the political or other agendas of others.
But the auxiliary status of the National Societies presupposes
a partnership of a kind, and with governments. There are clear
rules about the way this role is discharged in a conflict situation,
but it is much less easy to be precise when dealing with causes
and effects of poverty.
It is even more difficult when, as often happens nowadays, governments
utilise military resources for humanitarian goals. We have all
seen, for example, the direct involvement of the United States
military in addressing the extraordinary needs of the people
of New Orleans and nearby areas following Hurricane Katrina
this year.
We have also seen that the Asian earthquakes and tsunamis of
December 2004 struck in areas where there was conflict. There
too there was involvement by the military from the countries
themselves as well as in logistics and other humanitarian ways
from some other countries.
In each case, however, the Red Cross and Red Crescent were present.
We were there, with our local branches and their volunteers,
saving lives and livelihoods days before the military arrived.
As Jan Egeland said, following the tsunamis, the Red Cross and
Red Crescent National Societies are the front line in every
disaster situation.
This is the environment in which we now have to consider the
ways in which civil and military can take place in an atmosphere
which protects the humanitarian space for the Red Cross and
Red Crescent Movement.
It is an essential space, for without it there can be no assurance
of the trust which the poorest and the most vulnerable require.
The picture of independent humanitarian work is further blurred
by the way governments and certain non-state actors have engaged
in what is often described as the war against terror. This is
a theatrical description, and one which we do not use in the
Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, for its use endangers the profound
commitment we have in the Movement to work for the most vulnerable,
the dispossessed, the people living in the shadows.
The so-called war against terror is taking place within a set
of conflicts in different parts of the world, but it is not
itself a conflict in which there are identifiable belligerents.
It takes place without a clear place for the neutrality and
independence of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, but with a clear
need for the role of National Societies to work for all their
people to protect the most vulnerable.
In short, it has become a very different world, and quite suddenly.
Some questions
One of the main factors in any assessment of this difference
is the dramatic change which has taken place because of the
availability of information to the people of the world. Things
which were beyond the reach of our own parents are now freely
available through the media and, more and more importantly the
internet.
This means that the poor and the vulnerable now have the chance
to examine their poverty and measure it against the promises
of their governments. This presents its own challenge to the
Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, for it builds a real civil
society wish to move into the humanitarian space we have occupied
without many partners for over a century.
So, when we look at the developments during the last 20 years
from the point of view of the most vulnerable people and aid
beneficiaries, some very serious questions emerge:
- The increase in the number of people living below the poverty
line and the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor
countries are great threats to sustainable development. But
are governments meeting their targets?
- The challenges facing governments and communities because
of refugee flows and population movement have grown to the point
that population movement in its various forms is now identified
as one of the top issues on the international agenda. But what
is being done?
- Almost 60 years after the adoption of the Genocide Convention
and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, what is being
done - in the wake of Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur - to give us
all confidence that it will not happen again?
- Despite the Millennium Development Goals and a great deal
of talk about communicable diseases in Africa, some forecasts
project that by 2020 over 50 per cent of the population south
of the Sahara will be living with AIDS. Infection is also accelerating
at an alarming rate in parts of eastern Europe and Asia. Why
are programs that can really make a difference so politicised?
- The African Union and other regional bodies recognise that
there is a part they must play in resolving crises. How should
their work be integrated into the global work of the UN and
the national work of bodies like the International Federation?
There are many more questions. I have posed these so they can
be set alongside some other points. We need to remind ourselves
that answers are available, and that in many cases answers are
indirect, because of the resilience of communities and their
ability to help themselves into sustainability.
- The Cyclone Preparedness Program in Bangladesh has led to
the building of strong community spirit in an atmosphere of
tolerance. The result has been that the impact of the annual
cyclone season is a mere fraction of what it was 20 years ago,
and livelihood improvement has generated sustainable development
of a type which could not have been imagined. This program is
a success for the government because of its readiness to involve
its Red Crescent Society auxiliary and other partners in a two-way
exchange on policy and implementation which meets the real needs
of the people themselves.
- The success of early warning systems in Bangladesh is a good
example of how Red Cross Red Crescent involvement can bring
the technology available to governments through intergovernmental
action to volunteers at the local level and ensure that lives
are saved and economic and social livelihoods protected. This
kind of action does more to protect communities than all the
military and external assistance in the world.
- The challenge posed by population movement has been built
into a large issue in some countries. The facts are, however,
that very few countries have understood the need for coherent
migration policies designed to meet the economic and social
realities their countries will face in the quite near future.
Most of Europe, for example, is witnessing population decline,
only offset by migration.
My concern for the world of the future comes from the macro
points in the challenges listed first, and then the inability
of more than a few governments - and then in limited sectors
- to address those points in either their own or international
contexts.
This is also relevant to the conditionality of far too much
humanitarian assistance. It is why it is so vital that the International
Federation and its National Society members occupy the humanitarian
space and advocate relentlessly for the vulnerable and the poor.
It is why our programs for building the capacity of National
Societies everywhere in the world are so important, because
that advocacy must be undertaken simultaneously at local, national,
regional and global levels.
This shows one aspect of the true nature of the challenge faced
in the programming and delivery of humanitarian assistance today.
The short message is that assistance is needed more now than
ever before, and it must be offered without conditions.
The assistance must be directed to the communities where it
is needed most, and it must also contribute to the sustainable
development of those communities and integrated into programs
designed to build their capacity to live in dignity.
It is vital to this work that the International Federation brings
the voice of the communities and their National Societies to
the international community. In more and more cases, especially
where disasters strike on a massive scale, this will sometimes
require the Federation and National Societies to work alongside
the whole of government to get the job done.
Our task is to ensure that this does not impinge on neutrality,
impartiality and independence. This is eminently achievable
in circumstances where the assistance is designed for the vulnerable
and with their involvement.
That is the true nature of the challenge for humanitarian actors
today. That is the base condition for the preservation of the
independence of their action and the delivery of assistance
in a truly neutral and impartial manner.
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