Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

Peter Maurer

Children

Good

Impact

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" Ensuring the respect of international humanitarian law and principles is one of the key areas necessary to establish accountability chains. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Can you really send back people to where they are fleeing from? "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Conflicts are not temporary interruptions: they are structural, socio-economic catastrophes, and funding must be allocated accordingly. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" People living through armed conflicts need infrastructure and services which will last, and the last thing on their mind is which budget line applies. "

" 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. "

" Not enough countries, not enough armies, not enough armed groups are abiding by the fundamental human values enshrined in the Geneva Conventions. "

" 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. "

Peter Maurer

Need

Drive

" You treat detainees humanely because you know the other side will also treat detainees humanely. "

" We live in an environment in which connectivity and cyberspace are transforming all workplaces, including the humanitarian workplace. "

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