To respond to people's needs, humanitarian action has evolved from a temporary fix to a long-term safety net.
— Peter Maurer
Conflicts are increasingly causing devastation in densely populated urban centres rather than open battlefields, creating a host of new problems through the cumulative impact from the destruction of vital services like water and electricity.
The creative capacity of the private sector should be harnessed to develop new and more effective ways to deliver humanitarian solutions.
Businesses operating in fragile or conflict-affected environments bear a responsibility to, at the very minimum, do no harm and avoid fuelling conflict or reinforcing fragility.
While the nature of warfare is changing and wars are moving into cities, they are also becoming longer and their consequences more impactful.
As conflicts last longer, as the scale of needs increase, we are having to adapt. There is an increasing blurring between immediate humanitarian assistance and long-term development needs.
Until the last nuclear weapon is eliminated, more must also be done to reduce the risk of a detonation. Nuclear-armed states should reduce the number of warheads on high alert and be clearer about the actions they are taking to prevent accidents.
Since 1989, public alarm at the prospect of atomic Armageddon has quietened, but the number of nuclear-armed states has increased, arsenals are being modernized, and powerful states remain convinced that a nuclear security umbrella is vital to national defense, domestic prestige, and geopolitical clout.
Trust into leadership evaporates with communities when they see that their problems are not adequately addressed, neither at the national level nor at the international arena.
Where you are born, your parent's beliefs, or your ethnic background should not make you a target.
The International Committee of the Red Cross visits roughly half a million detainees in nearly 100 countries each year. It's our job to try to prevent and put an end to torture and ill-treatment.
People living through armed conflicts need infrastructure and services which will last, and the last thing on their mind is which budget line applies.
Fragility, violence, and conflict are complex. Fragility is influenced by a wide set of factors, many of which are deeply entrenched, such as high social and income inequality. The lines between criminal, inter-communal, and politically motivated violence are often blurred.
There is a clear business case for building the resilience and capacity of local communities, businesses, and institutions because a peaceful, educated, and productive population will stimulate economic growth in the long term.
The fragility created by protracted conflicts, resulting in destroyed cities and dramatically insufficient services, is not something that humanitarian organizations can address comprehensively. Only political solutions can end armed conflicts.
Cities tend to be representations of societies: diversity and inequality find their extremes in urban settings. Yet, when war is added onto pre-existing inequalities, high levels of poverty, or even disaster, urban fragility increases exponentially, making it harder to absorb the shocks of warfare.
They say that truth is the first casualty of war. But there is another casualty as well: trust. As conflict escalates, trust between people and political leaders crumbles away as surely as night follows day.
Concrete steps are needed to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in military plans, doctrines, and policies.
Humanitarian action cannot be held hostage to political ends.
I have known Sepp Blatter, FIFA and football for a long time, and there are some fundamental values which FIFA and the ICRC share.
Torture can destroy the social fabric of communities, degrade a society's institutions, and undermine the integrity of its political systems.
Experience shows that the reliance on illegal, immoral, and inhumane interrogation techniques is universally a very poor choice.
We must understand the factors that cause fragility, violence, and conflict in order to develop solutions that will meaningfully reduce instability at its roots rather than merely addressing the symptoms.
Local businesses and communities must be included from the very start in developing solutions to fragility, violence, and conflict.
The humanitarian ecosystem is diverse - not only is there a variety of traditional humanitarian actors, but the system should also embrace an increasing diversity of private sector actors.
Humanitarian assistance, once conceived as a short-term relief effort, is increasingly the only substitute for long-term development work in protracted armed conflicts.
Short-termism is no longer an option. We have to envisage humanitarian action with a medium- and long-term perspective.
Suffering does not change its face.
It has always been clear that any use of nuclear weapons would have catastrophic humanitarian consequences.
Even in war, everyone deserves to be treated humanely.
The young, the old, women, the disabled, the sick and the wounded are entitled to protection under international law. Too often, the ICRC's calls for those laws to be respected are ignored.
Torture and other forms of cruel or humiliating treatment are an affront to humanity, and the physical and psychological scars can last a lifetime.
