Speech by ICRC president: Conflict and migration from a humanitarian perspective

Speech given by Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, at a Novartis lecture in Basel, Switzerland.

A World in disarray: Conflict and migration from a humanitarian perspective

Dear Mr Reinhardt,

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you tonight.

The Novartis Lectures are an excellent example of how beneficial it can be to look beyond our own backyards, and how hearing other viewpoints can influence our way of thinking and boost our potential for innovation.

Humanitarian and pharmacological work have this in common: we both often face practical dilemmas that can only be overcome with new solutions. For instance, how do we reconcile short-term needs with long-term strategic policy? How do we find pragmatic solutions in a highly regulated field of action, especially when existential issues such as protecting human life are involved? How do we cope with risk and uncertainty? How do we manage repeatedly to lay the foundations on which to build our knowledge and traditions, while at the same time being innovative?

I hope that the insights I will share with you today into the ICRC's perspective of a "world in disarray" and its humanitarian impact will not only prove intellectually stimulating, but that they will also encourage us to jointly seek solutions. I am furthermore looking forward to answering your questions afterwards, so we can gain a deeper understanding of each other's realities through dialogue.

As many of you know, the International Committee of the Red Cross was founded over 150 years ago to protect the lives and dignity of war victims. Today, we have 15,000 staff working in over 80 countries and a budget of around 1.8 billion Swiss francs. This budget has almost doubled in the past five years. While that will hardly impress anyone who works for a major corporation, the ICRC nonetheless remains a very special humanitarian player – a sui generis entity, to use European terminology – thanks to its legal mandate from States (through the Geneva Conventions), its operational activities, and its role as the founder of one of the largest organized social movements worldwide, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The ICRC differs from UN organizations in that it implements its own programmes, amidst military conflicts and affected populations. We also stand out from internationally active NGOs through our proximity to States, which have given us our mandate as a neutral, independent and impartial organization.

In addition to the application of international humanitarian law (IHL), our operational activities cover the full span of human needs in time of war: food and shelter, water and related infrastructure, health care and war surgery, psychosocial programmes for victims of sexual violence, the search for missing family members, monitoring of detention conditions and prison infrastructure, and contacts with all weapon bearers in order to promote respect for international law, to give but a few examples.

As a neutral, independent and impartial humanitarian organization, we work at the heart of conflict zones, alongside victims of war and armed groups, irrespective of their motivations and ideology. We work there not only to relieve distress but also to enforce IHL, which is, as you know, a sort of minimum standard of decent behaviour in conflict and war. It is this proximity, from the Syrian front lines to the Iraqi desert, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the furthest corners of the Congo, which gives us a unique insight into when and why wars start, intensify and – sometimes – end.

We seek to go beyond monitoring and analysis to find a way of promoting wholesale stabilization through humanitarian assistance and protection. While we steer clear of political efforts to achieve this stability, we are convinced that humanitarian work is of truly fundamental importance in enabling torn societies to find themselves again, to follow the rules of coexistence and, at the very least, to live more peacefully and with less violence.

The insights we gain are essential for us, but they are also relevant for businesses, as fragile regions – where violence, underdevelopment, injustice and massive governance problems, including corruption, thrive – are steadily growing and becoming the new norm in many parts of the world. Conflict and violence have long since also become an integral part of economies that are on the whole prospering. The front lines of fragility have spread from the classical poverty zones to the cities of highly developed countries. Violence is becoming the dominant social phenomenon in countries and entire regions, and as such is no longer just the consequence of poverty and underdevelopment, but also the primary cause of the destruction of social and economic progress.

Yet wars are on the wane. This should be good news. In reality, though, only the number of international conflicts is falling, while internal armed conflicts and long-lasting violent situations are on the rise.

New types of conflict are emerging, whose dynamics create new challenges for humanitarian workers. These include:

• Protracted conflicts, with deep repercussions on basic social services – as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and in minority regions of the Philippines and Myanmar;
• Regionalized conflicts that spill over into neighbouring countries – like the violence in northern Nigeria, which affects Niger, Chad, Cameroon and other countries; the Syrian conflict, which has destabilized the entire Middle East; the Libyan implosion, which undermines security from the Sahel to the Mediterranean; and the crisis in Ukraine, which has damaged EU-Russian economic relations as a whole;
• Volatile conflicts that use terror tactics and are being waged in parallel on the ideological battlefield of social media and the front lines of extremism – from Iraq to Africa, from Kabul to Istanbul all the way to Paris, Brussels and Lahore;
• Increasingly politicized and highly polarized conflicts, which divide the entire international community and offer few prospects for political solutions. Recent examples include Ukraine, Syria and Yemen.
• The battlefields of these new conflicts are, moreover, increasingly found within cities and civilian communities, with bombing raids in densely populated areas. Aleppo, Homs, Lugansk and Benghazi have became symbols of urban destruction.
• Today's perpetrators of violence interweave political, criminal and economic interests in amorphous structures. Central America and urban areas are particularly affected.
• Even where there are positive developments, constant volatility and a high degree of residual violence remain, as in some regions of Myanmar and Colombia.

These changes are not taking place in a global power vacuum, but in an environment that is increasingly determined by power shifts and regional and global power struggles. This is particularly evident in the Middle East, where – in addition to the conflicting political interests of regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Israel – religious, ethnic, cultural and social divisions shape politics. This is a world where war is once more the continuation of politics and diplomacy and an accepted way of protecting national interests.

After two decades of unfulfilled expectations and broken promises that more development would lead to greater prosperity, peace and justice, the emperor is still naked and his new clothes are still invisible to most people. It thus seems pointless for the same international community that adopted the Millennium Development Goals now to set new and more challenging sustainability targets. Around the world, there has been a loss of faith that political guidelines can have a real impact on people's lives.

The fundamental inequalities that have been passed down from generation to generation are no longer acceptable, in part thanks to faster communications and increasing awareness within countries and societies. You know this as well as I do, as public sentiment regarding business managers' salaries is just one manifestation of a more global feeling of injustice and frustration. Disappointment and dissatisfaction with national and international political structures have in many places converted this frustration into violence. Interestingly – and counter-intuitively – it is not the poorest countries with the poorest communities where the anger at social exclusion is worst. In fact, tensions between and within States are often greatest in the more affluent societies. This gives rise to the paradoxical phenomenon that we are living in an age where an unprecedented number of people are healthy, educated and connected, and yet levels of violence and readiness to resort to violence run high. And, as usual with paradoxes, it is not easy to explain when and why angry citizens turn into violent extremists, and when good citizenship prevails. The link with the relative openness or restrictiveness of societies and political systems seems obvious. If I extrapolate from our contacts with extremists, perhaps the most decisive question is whether politics and society have a future-looking project that inspires hope, or whether they are embroiled in cynical wrangling for power and control.

Let's be honest: mass displacement, economic disruption and harmful political rivalry – all interlinked phenomena – will not disappear overnight, and so I see no real prospect of a quick change of direction, either in terms of the problems or their solutions.

The ICRC is directly affected by these tensions as we work on and behind front lines, dialoguing with all weapon bearers who are willing to talk to us. The operational range of our activities and the personal safety of our delegates depend on how well we read these developments. It is absolutely vital for us to know and understand our environment, because this can spell the difference between life and death, abduction and safe return.

As violence and conflict become more complex, so, logically, do the humanitarian consequences. These include a huge surge in internally displaced persons and refugees, enormous regional pressure on social services, tensions between displaced and host societies and, in some cases, the total collapse of basic systems.

Each year, 1.3 million people die as a result of wartime violence, crime and self-inflicted injury. These constitute a preventable 2% of global mortality.

The growing humanitarian consequences for people naturally also lead to higher costs: a total of over 25 billion US dollars is now spent on humanitarian aid each year, for some 125 million people in need. The cost of global conflicts is estimated at about 10 to 15 trillion US dollars, that is around 10% of global GDP.

These developments have changed our way of working fundamentally: short-term emergency responses for individual victims in clearly defined conflict areas are no longer our standard operating model. Humanitarian aid 2.0 is based on a medium to long-term presence in fragile contexts, in which further contagion and disintegration must be stemmed primarily by stabilizing development progress.

If I had to pick a place where the risk factors represent the most explosive mix, I would not name a region or a country but an environment: cities.

Two-thirds of global GDP is generated in 600 cities worldwide. Three and a half billion people, that is half the world's population, live in cities, and with current population growth that number is expected almost to double by 2050. 96% of urban growth will occur in developing countries, where fragility risk factors are already very high.

Mass accommodation, overcrowded transport systems, highly concentrated or cartelized food suppliers, water and electricity providers, health and education infrastructure: these are all interdependent systems, which are in danger of complete collapse under the cumulative impact of violence or war.

Fragility and violence are more common in cities than in rural areas, and their impact there is greater.

Population density alone can not explain this fragility: most of the world's largest urban areas are in Asia. But not one of the 50 deadliest cities is in Asia. Only one is in the Middle East, one is in Africa (Cape Town), and two are in the USA (Baltimore, St. Louis). All the others are in Latin America and the Caribbean.

And there it is not open war that kills but mundane violence, which can quickly plunge cities into a vicious circle of fragility, violence, and even conflict. In the holiday destination Brazil, as many people were killed in 2014 as in Syria, a country at war.

The effects of war are disproportionately greater in cities. In recent months, I have visited ICRC operations in Mogadishu, Sanaa, Aden, Homs, Baghdad, Maiduguri and Kabul. The people there depend on bombed-out urban infrastructure: hospitals, water-treatment plants, power stations.

The humanitarian imperative to protect people means we must pay special attention to the dynamics of fragility in urban areas. The commercial goal of gaining access to markets with a large number of customers leads to the same conclusion.

We may have different starting points, but we pursue the same end: the level of violence must drop, conflicts must be curbed, fragility must be reduced.

If essential infrastructure and services keep functioning during war and violence, this helps reduce suffering, stabilizes lives and livelihoods, and forms the basis for post-conflict reconstruction and the recovery of markets. It also respects the rights and needs of the people and creates the preconditions for a rules-based community.

We are well aware at the ICRC that we are not working in a political or economic vacuum. Everything we do has an impact on people, and therefore on the markets around us. Here, too, we are in the midst of a transformation: whereas just a few years ago humanitarian aid consisted mainly of handouts, today we want to help people build new capacities. Of course, complete substitution may be temporarily necessary in extreme crises. But providing support for beneficiaries' own initiatives and gradually developing their skills are now the overriding goals.

In addition to the direct benefits of humanitarian assistance and protection for people, the indirect value – the stabilizing effect on societies – is particularly significant.

Emergency shelters in a bombed city can prevent displacement, food rations or loans for small businesses and farms can avert starvation, repairs to water infrastructure can give entire cities access to clean water while increasing the knowledge of local water engineers, which can prevent transmissible diseases. Where such projects also benefit the local population and not just the displaced, this can help forestall new tensions and conflicts.

If the implosion of development achievements that so often occurs in wartime can be stopped, this also gives a chance to other players, such as international development agencies and businesses. Humanitarian aid today is often instrumental in halting the downward spiral of violence and underdevelopment, and thereby creating conditions for a resumption of economic activities.

Where large companies are absent, as in besieged cities for instance, war economies develop, with serious consequences for people and markets. When I was in a besieged city in Syria recently, the shelves in small shops were suddenly full, but almost no one could afford to buy the expensive smuggled goods. So people continue to live in misery, and those who profit from their misery see no reason to improve living conditions.

It is thus increasingly difficult in such situations to distinguish between political violence, corruption and crime. We know that if we bring free food rations into besieged areas, prices at once plummet. We must constantly bear this in mind and take care to do no harm, but instead strengthen the fabric of local economies and markets, while preventing mafia structures from flourishing in the slipstream of humanitarian work.

As a humanitarian organization, we must also step up our operations, mobilize more donor funding and expand our so-called "protection work", by urging all involved: to respect the laws and principles recognized in conflicts, in order to prevent the worst; to stop indiscriminate attacks on civilians, women, children, hospitals and essential civilian infrastructure; to halt the use of illegal weapons and the illegal use of weapons; and to guarantee the humane treatment of prisoners, in which humanity rather than national or group interests prevails.

We must stop the current spiral whereby people are worse off each month, despite increasing amounts of humanitarian aid.

We know, of course, that conflicts and crises require political solutions – but do we want to wait for them? I think we cannot afford to. In the absence of these solutions, we need action, in particular:

• stabilization through humanitarian work
• strong public-private partnerships, and
• greater willingness to risk investing in fragile contexts.

It is irrational to believe that the same 30 international donors can keep on financing the growing needs. More and new countries must be convinced that a neutral, independent and impartial organization does valuable humanitarian work, directly and indirectly, through targeted action to change behaviour and increase respect for the law.

However, the scale of the needs we are facing can not be met solely by traditional humanitarian aid, although I am convinced that this will remain indispensable in the future.
We also need to ensure that the private sector contributes more to stabilizing highly fragile regions, through sustainable investment, and without causing any harm.

Two weeks ago, in Rwanda, I presented a report by the working group on conflict, violence and fragility, which I chair at the World Economic Forum. Based on many examples, the report shows that investing in fragile regions has a triple benefit: profit for companies, advantages for communities, and stabilization for authorities and governments.

Innovative partnerships with the private sector – and I mean real cooperation, not just donations – must be strengthened, so that we can provide better support to suffering people. The ICRC started on this path a few years ago, and has recently ramped up its efforts.

Itself founded by businessmen, the ICRC has a long tradition of cooperating with leading companies, as Henri Dunant and his colleagues already knew that businesses can only flourish if the societies they serve can live, survive and develop, even in the most difficult circumstances.

Philanthropy and the work of foundations are a hugely important part of our financial structure. And, just as we modulate our activities in war zones according to the specific conditions – from the wholesale substitution of public services to targeted, expert action such as providing prostheses for landmine victims – so, also, we modulate our cooperation with individual companies. Tailor-made solutions for radically different environments are, after all, daily business for us.

We are not just seeking more and new donors, but rather to use the skills, knowledge, experience and expertise of the private sector to create customized solutions for war victims.

In many cases, this is already happening:

• We are analysing mini-grid energy solutions together with ABB
• We are working with Philips on an improved maternal and child health programme
• We are developing better building materials for humanitarian constructions with Holcim Lafarge
• We are using big data to better understand today's challenges
• And we are developing new financial instruments, such as humanitarian bonds, to boost private investment.

And – but this you know – we are working with Novartis on a programme to improve and ease access to medicine.

Our direct proximity to war victims means that, historically, the ICRC has focused on war-specific health services. In conflict zones, between bombs and mines, war surgery was the priority until just a few decades ago. We therefore invested heavily in this field, trained doctors and, together with experienced surgeons, developed a standard reference work on war surgery that is still in use today.

However, with increasingly long-drawn-out conflicts, often in cities and other inhabited areas, the demands on humanitarian health strategies have evolved: in addition to war surgery, we have expanded our rehabilitation programme for mine and amputation victims, with the positive side-effect that, thanks to their prostheses and physiotherapy, war and accident victims gain renewed access to the labour market and social integration.

But the range of health-care needs does not end here. Non-transmissible diseases, such as diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease – that is, public health problems with no direct link to conflicts – are increasingly the greatest dangers in war zones.

In Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan, people are dying today not necessarily because of the bombing or the fighting, but because there are no dialysis machines, no chemotherapy and no MRIs.

The joint programme set up by the ICRC and Novartis Access is therefore ground-breaking. Through a pilot project in Lebanon, we are seeking to improve access to affordable and sustainable treatment of non-communicable diseases for particularly fragilized communities, including Syrian refugees.

Our health strategy is thus more diversified than ever before: paediatric, gynaecological and psychiatric hospital services are important aspects, as is the integration of mobile technology in our health work. Partnerships and collaboration with academic institutions, experts and the private sector are central to our strategy. Just as we worked with surgeons to develop war surgery, today we must team up with leading experts from industry, if we want to provide the best solutions for the problems of people in war zones.

There is also great scope for such partnerships in the context of the so-called migrant crisis. The new arrivals are often better informed than we would assume, and bring from their fragile homelands problem-solving approaches that we can learn from.

When we are talking about the migrant crisis in Europe, it is important to remember that most of those who flee violence and instability never cross a border. Of the 60 million displaced people worldwide, more than two-thirds are displaced within their own countries.

And of those refugees who cross borders, most remain in neighbouring countries, meaning that the countries around the major crisis areas bear the greatest pressure: Iran and Pakistan because of the war in Afghanistan; Ethiopia, which is sandwiched between the conflict in the Horn of Africa and Sudan; and Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, which have taken in most of the Syrian refugees.

Today's migration dynamics are of course complex. Talking to people in Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria, I have learned how carefully they weigh the risks and benefits of fleeing. Instability is a driving force, but so are economic despair and concern about their children's education – often indirect consequences of war, violence and destruction. What they are looking for is nothing out of this world: jobs for the adults, schools for the children and safety for the community, as a village chieftain 70 kilometres from Mazar i Sharif in Afghanistan put it.

Clearly, in order to address these complex migration flows, interlinked mechanisms are necessary in which different players, including governments, businesses, local authorities and communities, work together.

Before closing, I should like to say a few words on the current immigration debate in Europe, which is mainly characterized by fear and defensive statements. I often wonder: where are all the economic leaders and academics who, for years and years, have been writing and quoting studies about how European – including Swiss – economies, social systems and innovative strength cannot be sustained without immigration?

I firmly believe that resolute political vision and action are necessary. Of course, we first need to better manage the current flows, and, obviously, not everyone can simply decide to come and live in Europe as and when they please. Far be it from me to brush away people's fears and legitimate concerns. But we all know we need to strike a balance between providing support and protection for those in need and endorsing uncontrolled immigration. However, I do not think that this is the main problem.

Basically, we must see how we can ensure that the growing numbers of displaced who really need protection can secure a decent existence. This can not happen without education, jobs and security, not just for the migrants but also for long-time residents.

Pragmatic and humanitarian commitment can provide a good basis for finding this balance. I am convinced that, in the current situation of polarization and politicization, humanitarian organizations and businesses have similar interests. It is vital not to be drawn into polarizing political debates but to find solutions, for those people who are our clients today will be your clients, colleagues and shareholders tomorrow.

History teaches us that violence and wars come and go, but never disappear completely. Similarly, cynically speaking, humanitarian aid is a secure business for the future.
We have to adapt and prepare for this future, as do you.

We both share a common approach: identifying real problems and providing pragmatic solutions.

Let's join forces to find these solutions. I am proud of what we have achieved together so far, and look forward to working with you again in the future.

Thank you very much.