Peter Maurer Quotes
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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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The creative capacity of the private sector should be harnessed to develop new and more effective ways to deliver humanitarian solutions.
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Ensuring the respect of international humanitarian law and principles is one of the key areas necessary to establish accountability chains.
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Torture can destroy the social fabric of communities, degrade a society's institutions, and undermine the integrity of its political systems.
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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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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.
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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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The discourse of sovereignty is a relative one when a crisis has become a global crisis.
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Short-termism is no longer an option. We have to envisage humanitarian action with a medium- and long-term perspective.
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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.
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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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Can you really send back people to where they are fleeing from?
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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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It has always been clear that any use of nuclear weapons would have catastrophic humanitarian consequences.
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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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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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Where you are born, your parent's beliefs, or your ethnic background should not make you a target.
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Local businesses and communities must be included from the very start in developing solutions to fragility, violence, and conflict.
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People living through armed conflicts need infrastructure and services which will last, and the last thing on their mind is which budget line applies.
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We demonize our enemies at our own peril.
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Conflicts are not temporary interruptions: they are structural, socio-economic catastrophes, and funding must be allocated accordingly.
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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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Each day that passes without kids being able to go to school is an enormous burden on the future.
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Very often, development agencies or even some of the humanitarian actors choose the... more comfortable type of work, where it is safe, while the more important work has to be done where it is profoundly unsafe.