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" 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. "

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" 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.' "

Peter Maurer

World

End Of The Day

Day

" I have known Sepp Blatter, FIFA and football for a long time, and there are some fundamental values which FIFA and the ICRC share. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" It has always been clear that any use of nuclear weapons would have catastrophic humanitarian consequences. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Local businesses and communities must be included from the very start in developing solutions to fragility, violence, and conflict. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The creative capacity of the private sector should be harnessed to develop new and more effective ways to deliver humanitarian solutions. "

" 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. "

" While the nature of warfare is changing and wars are moving into cities, they are also becoming longer and their consequences more impactful. "

Peter Maurer

Moving

Consequences

" The abuse of civilians and combatants has existed since the dawn of time. "

" 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. "

" Short-termism is no longer an option. We have to envisage humanitarian action with a medium- and long-term perspective. "

" The disconnect between what people think and what the political leaders are actually doing is something that we really need to start raising. "

" Experience shows that the reliance on illegal, immoral, and inhumane interrogation techniques is universally a very poor choice. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We need to understand that the Geneva Conventions are not just some historical documents born of another time, created for another purpose. "

" If private-sector capital can be harnessed for social good, the potential to scale humanitarian solutions is vast. "

" If you back out of a convention... you can't dodge your obligation. Torture is still not acceptable. "

" 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. "

" Even in war, everyone deserves to be treated humanely. "

" The Fourth Industrial Revolution does not just entail risks: it also brings solutions to humanitarian problems. "

" Each day that passes without kids being able to go to school is an enormous burden on the future. "

Peter Maurer

School

Without

" 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. "