Excellencies, colleagues,
I want to start by thanking Minister Wong for her personal commitment. You have launched this initiative together with your friends and partners of many other states because you really mean to make a difference.
You have my full support because the people we speak about today are our colleagues. They are my colleagues. They are people who dedicate their days to helping others and they are being killed in record numbers today.
I meet their parents. I meet their brothers and sisters. I meet their wives and their husbands. And very often, they leave behind little children.
And sometimes, we cannot even retrieve their bodies to ensure dignified burials. And in one instance in the recent years, we were attacked while we tried to retrieve the body. We new that the colleague was dead because he passed while being on the phone with us, and we couldn’t get to him
It shatters me. It shatters our colleagues. It shatters the whole Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement because we mourn too many volunteers.
Deliberate attacks against humanitarian workers are a clear violation of international humanitarian law. They constitute war crimes.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
When such attacks become normalized, there is a risk that violations against civilians have already become the norm. The safety of humanitarian personnel is inseparable from the safety of all civilians in a given situation of armed [conflict] and it is inseparable from the provision of humanitarian assistance.
Without humanitarian workers, you cannot provide humanitarian assistance. This is why it is critical that states join both the Declaration on the Protection of Humanitarian Personnel and the Global IHL Initiative to galvanize political commitment to international humanitarian law.
Together, they reinforce one single purpose: to ensure respect for IHL with the purpose of saving lives and alleviating suffering in war. I really want to reiterate my call to you, as state representatives, to call your allies. [U]se all means of influence that you have in your portfolio – your political means, diplomatic means, financial means, economic means to ensure respect for IHL.
Sign the declaration on the protection of humanitarian personnel and join the Global IHL Initiative. And once you have joined it, if you haven’t done so already, please attend the international conference convened by His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan on December 7 at the highest possible level because we have to make this a political priority going forward.
I thank you.
