Peter Maurer

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

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. ”

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

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

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. ”

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. ”

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

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 sad fact is that horrendous human conflict is nothing new. ”