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.