If you back out of a convention... you can't dodge your obligation. Torture is still not acceptable.
— Peter Maurer
Although the ICRC and the World Economic Forum have separate missions, they both are centred on collaboration across sectors and between various actors in order to improve the state of the world.
We demonize our enemies at our own peril.
Cities are drivers of growth and wealth, and at the same time, cities are becoming increasingly violent.
Attacks on health facilities, health workers, ambulances, is now a reality that we observe on the ground - not on a monthly but on a daily or weekly scale in most of the conflicts in which we are engaged.
We need to understand that the Geneva Conventions are not just some historical documents born of another time, created for another purpose.
The principal cause of suffering during humanitarian crises is insufficient respect of applicable rules of international humanitarian law.
You don't torture people. You don't indiscriminately attack civilians. You protect as good as you can the impact of your warfare on women and children.
Each day that passes without kids being able to go to school is an enormous burden on the future.
There is great potential for investments that are built around improving social, environmental, and economic conditions.
It is very clear from the text of the Geneva Conventions that families have the right to know about the whereabouts of their missing and that belligerents have a duty to inform families if they have indication and if they are detaining people.
We cannot guarantee that a humanitarian catastrophe of the extent of the Holocaust will not happen again. On the contrary, we witness a catalogue of atrocities every day in wars across the globe.
When millions of kids are missing out on school, delivering educational services becomes an issue that concerns the humanitarian system.
The issue of corruption in the humanitarian system is not an issue which is fundamentally different from dangers of corruption in other areas. One of the best ways to strengthen accountability is to engage in principled and law-based humanitarian action.
Wars are getting longer, they are more complex, and the humanitarian need is great.
New technologies are rapidly giving rise to unprecedented methods of warfare. Innovations that yesterday were science fiction could cause catastrophe tomorrow, including nanotechnologies, combat robots, and laser weapons.
Every year, we ask our donors to dig deeper. And every year, they gladly, generously comply. It is now up to us to find ways and means to forestall the day when they cannot - or will not. Or the consequences for people in war zones could be disastrous.
Can you really send back people to where they are fleeing from?
You can't expect humanitarian and development agencies to rebuild Syria. There is not enough money. There is not enough capacity. There are not enough skills.
Very often, development agencies or even some of the humanitarian actors choose the... more comfortable type of work, where it is safe, while the more important work has to be done where it is profoundly unsafe.
We see a transformation of warfare from the big armies and battlefields in open spaces to a fragmentation of armed groups and smaller armies, which move into city centres, which increasingly become the theatre of warfare.
The abuse of civilians and combatants has existed since the dawn of time.
In our fibre-optic world of tweets and tablets, we are more conscious of the world around us. The technicolour violence and humanitarian abuses of today are just a flick of a switch away. In our homes, on the train, in our coffee shops, we see it, we feel it, we know about it. All of us. All of the time. Human suffering is visible, constantly.
It's one thing if a politician in a small country says a little bit of torturing is good to do. There is a qualitative difference... when it's a candidate to run a superpower.
What the hell is happening to the world when those who were at the origin of... international humanitarian law start questioning in public debates whether it has any relevance or should be respected?
I think we are challenged in how we define humanitarian action today and how we relate to long-term needs. We are also confronted with legitimate expectations from the people who want us to respond far more thoroughly to their basic pleas than we would have done in a much more contained form of conflict.
The discourse of sovereignty is a relative one when a crisis has become a global crisis.
We believe that settlement expansion policies pursued in recent decades by successive Israeli governments have facilitated the process of de-facto annexation. It has complicated the dialogue between the different communities.
The ICRC did not see Nazi Germany for what it was. Instead, the organization maintained the illusion that the Third Reich was a 'regular partner,' a state that occasionally violates laws, not unlike any army during World War II, occasionally using illegal means and methods of warfare.
Self-reliance is not always possible; we have to acknowledge that there are situations of dramatic crisis which will force us to substitute non-existing public delivery systems.
If private-sector capital can be harnessed for social good, the potential to scale humanitarian solutions is vast.
Not only does disability impact individual health and well-being, it also leads to social and economic exclusion.
Conflicts are not temporary interruptions: they are structural, socio-economic catastrophes, and funding must be allocated accordingly.
The relatively unpredictable flow of funds to humanitarian organizations, and the bureaucratic strings often attached to them, can have a highly negative impact on an organization's ability to plan and execute programmes effectively. We need to be able to rely on predictable income flows to plan sustainable programmes.
As responsible politicians, you have to manage migration.
The disconnect between what people think and what the political leaders are actually doing is something that we really need to start raising.
Urbanisation, poverty, youth unemployment are leading to violence-prone cities.
Every day, we hear of civilians being killed and wounded in violation of the basic rules of international humanitarian law and with total impunity. Instability is spreading. Suffering is growing. No country can remain untouched.
The sad fact is that horrendous human conflict is nothing new.
Not enough countries, not enough armies, not enough armed groups are abiding by the fundamental human values enshrined in the Geneva Conventions.
You treat detainees humanely because you know the other side will also treat detainees humanely.
While conflicts have expanded and deepened and transformed, actors have transformed, and humanitarian assistance is transforming. Protection work is transforming and taking on another character.
We still have a strong commitment to our original mission, which is to protect and assist people who are suffering from the impact of violence, but the violence has changed its character, format, and pattern so that we are now responding year after year.
We live in an environment in which connectivity and cyberspace are transforming all workplaces, including the humanitarian workplace.
The mess in the world is a strong driver because, at the end of the day, it's the increasing unacceptability of the divergences and rifts in the world economically, socially, politically, and culturally which lead everybody to say, 'We have to do something.'
The whole essence of humanitarian work and the Geneva Convention is that neutral, impartial organisations can operate during war.
Ensuring the respect of international humanitarian law and principles is one of the key areas necessary to establish accountability chains.
We need to continue to modernise current humanitarian work while at the same time drive a more systemic shift in how we envision the operation and financing of humanitarian solutions.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution does not just entail risks: it also brings solutions to humanitarian problems.
Economic activity can help repair war-torn societies, but if it's not conducted responsibly, it can also create or prolong violence. Companies and international organisations must help strengthen communities and overcome the trauma of violence.
