How has today’s world come to have 2.6 billion vulnerable people, a figure amounting to almost half the world population?
This is a question that nags us every day, one that sometimes haunts us, the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies that form the world’s largest humanitarian network and make up the International Federation, which will be celebrating its 90th anniversary on 5 May.
Our history is a reflection of the way the world has evolved. We started with just five National Societies and now have 186 – one in almost every country in the world – bringing together over 100 million volunteers around the globe.
An indisputable cause for pride. A cause for recognition and gratitude, too, for the anonymous multitude of women and men who have given unselfishly and who have saved and comforted others, those who have fought selflessly and illustrated, through their actions, this spirit of humanity that General De Gaulle termed “the only battle worth fighting”.
A cause for admiration too. Though the ages, these women and men, along with others, have been the living memory of the victims of typhus and the Spanish flu in the Europe of 1919. The memory of the children of the great famines in Russia in 1921 and in Ethiopia in the eighties. The memory of those buried in the earthquakes in Yokohama (1923), Armenia (1988), Iran (2003), Pakistan (2005) and now in Italy… The memory of Chernobyl. The memory of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The memory of AIDS orphans and those who have died of malaria, a preventable disease. The overwhelming memory of the tsunami, whose waves still crash into the survivors’ dreams. The memory of the crisis of 1929 and the harrowing reality of the current crisis…
For many, these events are just dates, bare facts. For us, they represent the spirit of our times, the barometer of the price placed on life and people.
On this, the echo of current crises and the testimonies of our volunteers and those who work with us agree: the battle is far from over. More to the point, everything seems to indicate that it is heating up on an unprecedented scale.
The figures that shape our future are staggering, to the extent that they strip the word “million” of all meaning: 1,000 million people do not have reliable access to clean water, and by 2080 this figure could have risen to 1,800 million, if nothing is done (UNDP, 2008). The predicted 3-4% rise in temperatures could lead to the displacement of 330 million people as a result of permanent flooding. For the same reason, the 500 million people currently at risk from malaria – a disease that claims one million lives every year – could be joined tomorrow by an additional 220 to 400 million people. And what about the chances of a better life for the one thousand million people who today live in shanty towns? Or those who leave their homes in their tens of millions, and whose number continues to rise, on an uncertain journey into exile?
From a concrete and objective point of view, the world is in upheaval. The victims of the crisis – or rather the crises – are not abstractions. Nor are the people eking out a meagre living on land made sterile by a capricious climate. And nor are the millions of families plunged into the age-old battle against hunger in recent months.
It is time to face the change in progress head on, starting with the humanitarian field, where the warning tremors run through the fringes of humanity, as they always have.
Here, our diagnosis is clear. Simply responding to disasters is not enough, and not just because disasters are increasing in intensity and frequency, but also because we must do more than just treat the symptoms.
However, over 90% of international aid is swallowed up by emergency response; more is spent on dealing with the unforeseeable than on promoting people. A shift in focus is required, a shift towards prevention and early warning mechanisms, for example, but also towards support for people, villages and communities, with a view to providing them with their own means of protection and development. We must work with them to build their capacities in order to make them more self-sufficient and resilient in the face of future hazards. In a nutshell, efforts should focus on ensuring that extreme events occurring in the future do not become a disaster foretold for tens of millions of people, or maybe more.
Is this a question of common sense? It goes further than that; it makes economic sense too. It is estimated that one euro invested today in disaster preparedness can save seven in emergency response! Many humanitarian actors and UN agencies have now awakened to this fact, particularly in the wake of the action plan adopted in Kobe (Japan) by the international community in 2005. It takes time, however, for action to be taken and behaviour to be changed.
Our Red Cross and Red Crescent teams do not wait around. For decades, they have been looking beyond disaster response to focus on strengthening the capacities of the most vulnerable and increasing their self-sufficiency. They see linking humanitarian action and development as the most effective way of providing lasting solutions for those most in need.
This will be their message, our message, on the occasion of our 90th anniversary. Let us invest less in the ephemeral, when irreparable damage is done. Let us choose to act proactively, preventively, at all levels – individual, local, national and global – simply to ensure that the most vulnerable can look forward to the life they have ahead of them, like everyone else.
For every one of us, breathing new life into the principle of humanity is a matter of urgency.