United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and International Federation President Juan Manuel Suárez del Toro shared common humanitarian concerns during their first-ever meeting, in Madrid, on 6 June. The UN Secretary General stopped in the Spanish capital, on his way to the G-8 meeting in Germany.
The leaders exchanged views on three major issues: the challenges facing the African continent, the effects of climate change and the consequences of world migration flows.
President Suárez del Toro explained the Federation’s commitment to fighting the spread of killer diseases such as AIDS, malaria, and measles in Africa as well as the scaling up of programmes to reduce poverty and significantly strengthen the capacities of African Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. He pointed out that the Federation’s Global Agenda, based on Red Cross Red Crescent core areas of activity, is also aligned with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, in order to contribute to their achievement. Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies across the world are working towards reducing the number of deaths and injuries from disasters, illnesses and their impact on vulnerable people and promoting respect for diversity and human dignity.
They also broached a subject that is a “personal priority” for the UN Secretary General - climate change, and its impact. The Federation President added that the Federation is strongly committed to helping communities around the world meet this new challenge and is “fine tuning” its disaster management systems – which include risk reduction, disaster preparedness and response – to help people be better prepared to face the impact of disaster and become more resilient.
Both leaders agreed that the challenge is global, and that better and closer cooperation between the two organizations is vital to meet it.
The third item on the agenda was migration, one of the Federation’s priorities, underlined Juan Manuel Suárez del Toro. Today, many Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies provide migrants - in both regular and irregular situations – with food, shelter, health care, and protection during detention or repatriation.
A major theme of the just-ended European regional conference of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the need to protect, support and assist migrants, whatever their legal status, and to promote respect for their rights, is included in the conference’s final document, the Istanbul Commitments. Migration will also be a major theme of the upcoming International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva in November, to which the world’s governments are invited.
For his part, Ban Ki-moon noted that the first UN debate, held in the General Assembly in September 2006 was only the beginning of a real initiative to tackle the issue. He and his team are aiming, he said, at organizing a global forum on migration, involving all policy makers and major actors in order to find solutions to what he termed “a very serious problem”.
“This meeting was the leaders’ first personal step on the way for both institutions to find the most efficient and effective way to cooperate and coordinate their humanitarian efforts while respecting their specific roles,” commented Encho Gospodinov, Head of the Federation’s New York delegation, present at the meeting.
“The challenges we all face today are so considerable that we need to work together to meet them. The most vulnerable communities and major donors alike are closely watching us to see how fast and how well we can deliver the services they expect from us.”
The meeting was also an occasion for both men to exchange personal memories of their beginnings with the Red Cross. Ban Ki-moon recalled that: “My involvement with the Republic of Korea Red Cross, when I was 17, changed my life forever.”
In 1962, as a Red Cross youth volunteer leader, he was selected, with a group of other young people from some 40 countries, to attend an International Red Cross youth programme in the United States. Hosted by the American Red Cross, it included visits to local Red Cross chapters, where he was impressed by the work of volunteers and staff at the community level.
The programme also included meeting the then United States President, John F. Kennedy, who asked him what he wanted to do in life. When Ban Ki-moon replied that he wanted to become a diplomat, John Kennedy remarked that if he wanted it badly enough, then he would become a diplomat. This convinced the young man that he would be able to achieve his dream.
For his part, the Federation President alluded to his beginnings with the Red Cross, as a young volunteer, some 30 years ago, and shared some of his early memories with his guest.
Juan Manuel Suárez del Toro also briefed Ban Ki-moon on the Federation’s work in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and on the exchanges between the two Red Cross Societies, especially with regard to family reunifications, for which the UN Secretary General expressed his appreciation.
Before accepting the Federation President’s invitation to visit the Federation Secretariat in Geneva, Ban Ki-moon said he valued the Federation’s strong contribution to United Nations debates on humanitarian matters as well as its commitment to humanitarian principles – and to neutrality in particular - and its support of international humanitarian law. In a meeting last month, in New York, Ban Ki-moon had been briefed by Federation Secretary General Markku Niskala on the Federation’s International Disaster Response Laws, Rules and Principles (IDRL) programme.
In Madrid, both leaders noted that their respective organizations were changing and adapting to the new realities of the world. This was their first face-to-face encounter, but, they said, only the first of what would be a long history of meetings and a signal of lasting cooperation between the two institutions.