Peter Maurer currently serves as the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the largest humanitarian network in the world.
Harvard Political Review: How would you compare your previous diplomatic experience to the humanitarian work in which you are now involved? Do you think your years in the diplomatic service prepared you for your current position as president of the International Committee of the Red Cross?
Peter Maurer: There are points where diplomatic work prepares you for the position in terms of networking, engaging with states and, of course, covering, in the humanitarian area, an important policy domain which is part of most countries’ policy and practice. And there are differences. If you look at what I did as a diplomat of a country, you negotiate about interests and power. When you are representing the ICRC, you don’t negotiate interests and power. You are a representative and guardian of the Geneva Conventions. You are representing a normative system, which is to a large extent customary international law and to which there is nothing to negotiate. And at the same time, you represent an operational agency, active from the ground, which needs to translate norms and principles into practice. And this means engagement with parties in conflict, and it leads to translation of norms and principles and practice of the law into workable agreements in how you can work to assist people.
HPR: The ICRC is responsible for the lives of not only populations in need but of its staff and volunteers who work in the field. How do you balance ensuring the safety of your staff in the field with being able to access and meet the needs of the people you are trying to aid in conflict zones.
PM: It’s probably the biggest and recurring challenge for the organization as a whole. First, [one must] recognize that indeed there is a dilemma between the daily necessity to access people and the need to do it in a way that is safe for your own people who operate the humanitarian assistance. I think that the ICRC has developed a known methodology which is basically negotiating with all sides in a conflict, getting in contact with all weapons bearers, who are in control of territory and populations, and to base its activities on consensus. Our security comes from our ability to negotiate consensus with those who are in control of territories where we have humanitarian operations. So it depends intrinsically from our ability to negotiate those arrangements and to the reliability of those arrangements in practice. It is not that we have to decide every day, yes or no. The question is do we get sufficient guarantee. Are we able to get in contact with all those who are in an area of operations? Can we communicate to them what we are doing? Are they satisfied with the fact that we are doing what we are doing in the way we are doing it? This is kind of the best protection that we get.
As you know, the ICRC is committed to non-weaponized security. We keep weapons out of our operations. We do not protect ourselves with weapons for self-defense, nor do we engage in private or any other security in order to provide security … The deal on the table is really we deliver humanitarian services. We are transparent, close to people, close to operators, close to armed groups on the ground, and we notify them about what we are doing.
HPR: What are the main challenges that the ICRC faces in trying to access populations that need aid in conflict zones, particularly in the Middle East?
PM: I think that access challenges, or obstacles to access, are always a mix between security considerations and political objections about humanitarian agencies doing work because the one side or the other side is considering it as support for the respective other side.
It’s sometimes objective, regulatory, or administrative hurdles. When you do a medical operation in a country, the country will insist that certain standards of medical services are respected, but these standards can at the same time be obstacles to humanitarian delivery and can either complicate or make things difficult. There is a combination of security and practical and administrative obstacles that we have to overcome.
There is of course the broader political framework as well. We are confronted with conflicts, which are increasingly de-structured and characterized by radical extremism, where the basic value of humanitarian space is not part of the consensus. This is the broader framework in which we operate. Even if there is broad consensus, in many conflicts in the world, including those in the Middle East, we find again that security, practicality, and local politics may be obstacles to overcome.
HPR: As Syria is now entering its fifth year of war and you can reflect on the past, what have been the ICRC’s primary areas of focus in bringing humanitarian aid to the millions of Syrians affected by the conflict? Moreover, as the conflict continues in Syria, how do you see the ICRC adapting to meet the needs of the evolving crisis?
PM: With regard to the past, as you may be aware, the ICRC is not just a relief agency, but relief is an important area of activity. In the past five years, we increasingly focused on bringing assistance in basic needs—which is food, water, sanitation, health, basic livelihood and household items—to people who have been displaced through violence either in the country or in neighboring countries. So it is very traditional humanitarian assistance. We provided food parcels for hundreds of thousands of people each and every month. We provided sanitation and waste management services. We fixed water distribution systems.
But the ICRC, like I said, is not just a relief organization. We have a mandate with respect to international humanitarian law, so our attempt has also been with the different armies and armed groups operating to ensure that IHL is known and that it is respected. And this is with particular regard to the conduct of hostilities and how hostilities are executed.
HPR: How does the ICRC work to stay independent, neutral, and impartial while engaging with other state authorities and non-state armed groups? In a broader sense, is it even possible for complete neutrality to exist in international conflict?
PM: I think we are deeply convinced that [neutrality] can and must exist because the whole idea of the ICRC and IHL for the past 150 years has been that even in war, there must be a space which is not ruled by exclusively military or political logic. It’s the humanitarian space in which neutral and impartial actors, acting according to international humanitarian law, have a function to fulfill. Now, this is not just a status and a template. You can’t pretend you have it. It’s also something you have to continuously explain and to convince parties to the conflict about its importance.
I think this is what we are trying to do by engaging with all weapons bearers in a conflict, which I think is so singular and specific to the Geneva Conventions that it legitimizes the ICRC to engage with all sides without prejudice to recognition, as Article 3 of the Convention says. I think this is very much the core of a neutral and impartial engagement.
HPR: A common school of thought believes that countries have the least incentive to enforce and punish noncompliance of human rights law compared to other types of international law. Do human rights treaties make a difference at all? How would you address this uncertainty?
PM: I’m always very skeptical about opinions that try to suggest that respect for the law is just something going downhill. This has not been our experience. If you look at our engagement with armies and armed groups over the past 50 years, I think we made a lot of progress in getting the law known and also applied. [That opinion] doesn’t say that the law isn’t violated, but I think today more members of the armed forces and armed groups know about IHL than ever before. It doesn’t relieve from the fact that this law is violated in a very systematic and outrageous way in many conflicts, but it questions the logic that things are getting only worse. They are bad in many circumstances, but there are also positive engagements and recognitions that the law is an important framework to respect.
The enforcement of a legal system is not necessarily a guarantee that the system is not violated, and bigger or lesser punishment is not directly linked to bigger or lesser respect. Here again, never before in history have so many countries incorporated accountability legislation. Never before in history have we had so many international forums engaging for respect of the law, and building accountability is chained to the respect of IHL and the international criminal court. A lot of international legislation goes in the direction of accountability. This may be a reaction to outrageous violations, but it also shows that the accountability architecture is rather expanding than shrinking.
HPR: In what ways is the ICRC integrating technology in its current humanitarian efforts?
PM: With our strategic objective to assist and protect people in need and suffering from violence and armed conflict, I think we have a continuous challenge to improve and to do things faster, better, and with fewer resources. I think these three elements are critical drivers of innovation. So, the ICRC internally has a working group on innovation which tries to capture the best practices and make them mainstream in the organization. We are partnering with universities and the private sector on innovative practices. We have a corporate support group with whom we try to figure out what innovations in the private sector can be transported and translated into humanitarian practice. We are tapping into research potential of universities to see how and whether there are tools developed which produce innovation. And we are trying to learn in a more systematic way about our negotiating experience and the critical dilemmas with which negotiators at the ICRC are exposed. Innovation is basically a continued companion in humanitarian work, but our understanding of innovation is not only technical. It is also trying to systematically learn from difficult dilemmas and experiences in the past and to do better in the future.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Image Credit: Flickr/International Committee of the Red Cross