Ensuring the relevance and effectiveness of ICRC action on behalf of the victims requires a variety of professional skills.

Certain skills are requisite from day one for all staff. Others are acquired gradually, over time and with experience. Some are required only of specialists in specific fields.

Professional ethics

ICRC staff must not jar with the environment in which they work or with the organization's values. This requires respect for other people, sensitivity to the working environment, motivation and personal commitment.

Basic skills

All ICRC staff master, to varying degrees, a number of basic skills required to perform their mission: the ability to work as part of a team, to adapt and to learn; a sense of responsibility and independence; the ability to represent the organization; an aptitude for analysis and synthesis.

These skills have been identified on the basis of years of experience. The ICRC endeavours to hone them among all staff members, to varying degrees of sharpness, depending on the specific requirements of their posts.

Technical skills

Certain components of humanitarian action require specific expertise. ICRC specialized staff have technical skills acquired outside the organization, in financial management, war surgery, logistics, languages, etc.

Institutional competencies

Several competencies are specific to the ICRC's mandate, its activities and its programmes. They are therefore acquired only within the organization (law and principles, protection, assistance, the promotion and dissemination of humanitarian principles, cooperation with partners from the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement). It naturally falls to the ICRC to give its staff the means of acquiring these institutional competencies, which are developed through an ongoing training programme in the course of each staff member's career with the organization.

Managerial skills

Personnel responsible for overseeing the work of others develop managerial skills: heading a multinational and multicultural team; planning; organizing and evaluating activities; communication and the capacity to network; negotiation; the management of security. These skills are usually exercised in difficult contexts and must therefore be perfectly mastered.