Peter Maurer Quotes
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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.
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Torture and other forms of cruel or humiliating treatment are an affront to humanity, and the physical and psychological scars can last a lifetime.
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It has always been clear that any use of nuclear weapons would have catastrophic humanitarian consequences.
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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.
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The discourse of sovereignty is a relative one when a crisis has become a global crisis.
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Where you are born, your parent's beliefs, or your ethnic background should not make you a target.
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We need to understand that the Geneva Conventions are not just some historical documents born of another time, created for another purpose.
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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.
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The ICRC did not see Nazi Germany for what it was. Instead, the organization maintained the illusion that the Third Reich was a 'regular partner,' a state that occasionally violates laws, not unlike any army during World War II, occasionally using illegal means and methods of warfare.
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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.
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The sad fact is that horrendous human conflict is nothing new.
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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.
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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.
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Each day that passes without kids being able to go to school is an enormous burden on the future.
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If private-sector capital can be harnessed for social good, the potential to scale humanitarian solutions is vast.
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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.
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Even in war, everyone deserves to be treated humanely.
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While the nature of warfare is changing and wars are moving into cities, they are also becoming longer and their consequences more impactful.
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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.
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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.
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The whole essence of humanitarian work and the Geneva Convention is that neutral, impartial organisations can operate during war.
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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.
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Urbanisation, poverty, youth unemployment are leading to violence-prone cities.
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Suffering does not change its face.