Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

Peter Maurer

Year

Red

Committee

" Humanitarian assistance, once conceived as a short-term relief effort, is increasingly the only substitute for long-term development work in protracted armed conflicts. "

" 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. "

" Torture can destroy the social fabric of communities, degrade a society's institutions, and undermine the integrity of its political systems. "

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

" 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. "

Peter Maurer

Last

Risk

" 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.' "

" Cities are drivers of growth and wealth, and at the same time, cities are becoming increasingly violent. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Humanitarian action cannot be held hostage to political ends. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Suffering does not change its face. "

" We need to understand that the Geneva Conventions are not just some historical documents born of another time, created for another purpose.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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When millions of kids are missing out on school, delivering educational services becomes an issue that concerns the humanitarian system. "

" 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

" While conflicts have expanded and deepened and transformed, actors have transformed, and humanitarian assistance is transforming. Protection work is transforming and taking on another character. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" As responsible politicians, you have to manage migration. "

" Every day, we hear of civilians being killed and wounded in violation of the basic rules of international humanitarian law and with total impunity. Instability is spreading. Suffering is growing. No country can remain untouched. "

" Not only does disability impact individual health and well-being, it also leads to social and economic exclusion. "

" 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. "

" Urbanisation, poverty, youth unemployment are leading to violence-prone cities. "

" 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. "