Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues,
It is a great honour and pleasure to be among you today. I wanted to be here to speak about the importance and power of the normative. And this is where it is necessary to be brought back to because of the writing and the thinking of Alexis de Tocqueville.
Let me start by saying the ICRC and Europe are entwined. Our mission is grounded in the history of this continent.
Why? Where there is war, there are body bags. There is no situation of war where we don’t bring body bags. And this is something that we must keep in mind when we speak about defence investments.
More than 160 years ago—June 24, 1859—Henri Dunant witnessed the devastating Battle of Solferino. What he saw that day would later inspire the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Moved by the suffering of wounded soldiers left without care, Dunant proposed a revolutionary idea: a treaty obliging armies to care for the wounded, and the creation of the national Red Cross—and later Red Crescent—societies.
The legacy of Solferino lives on today. It lives in universally adopted agreements on the rules of war. And it lives in the work carried by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement around the world.
But it was the unprecedented scale of suffering during the Second World War that triggered the revision and expansion of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
What does this tell us?
It tells us that Europe was the birthplace of a unique set of truly universal international treaties. Europe has since strived to be a stronghold for the values that underpin international peace and stability: solidarity, human dignity, and the rule of law.
Today, these fundamental assumptions are under acute threat.
Upholding international humanitarian law is not just a legal obligation; it’s a reaffirmation of Europe's commitment to the normative foundations of the social contract between a state and its people, and of the rules-based order that governs relations among states.
Commonly agreed rules and states’ commitment to uphold them have historically proven to be efficient and durable underpinnings of peace and economic prosperity.
When respected, international humanitarian law protects human life and dignity even in times of war. What has kept me awake since I joined the ICRC two years ago is not the fact that IHL is regularly violated. It’s that today, the real risk for humanity lies in the permissiveness of its interpretation by the warring parties and their allies. It’s the neglect. It’s putting aside the rules of war and the law.
History has proven that where the barriers to the dehumanisation of the enemy are hollowed out or deliberately tolerated under international watch, violence escalates without restraint, and the consequences quickly spiral out of control.
Today the world is on fire. Conflicts are multiplying. They are intensifying. The International Committee of the Red Cross now classifies about 130 armed conflicts in the world. This is more than we recorded a year ago, and far more than 25 years ago.
The number of armed actors involved in armed conflicts is also on the rise. For example, we are seeing more and more people living under the control of non-state armed groups. And we estimate that over 210 million people live in areas fully controlled or contested by armed groups, almost half of them in Africa.
War never is contained by borders. Its consequences spill over into neighbouring countries through refugee crises, into global markets through economic ripple effects, and into new security threats that can strike when and where we least expect it.
International humanitarian law was not created to prevent war or prevent investments in defence systems. But it is designed to prevent barbarity. If states do not stand firmly behind these rules, they accept the possibility of irreversible destruction and limitless suffering. When those who hold the military might dismiss the rules that protect civilians and critical infrastructure in times war, their own populations risk finding themselves on the wrong side of the line.
Defending the normative frameworks that underlie multilateralism and international cooperation is not political weakness. It is political courage. It is an investment in stability and prosperity—and survival—at a time of tectonic and yet very blurry and unpredictable geopolitical shifts.
There cannot be room for double standards: a human life is a human life. When international humanitarian law is applied selectively, it becomes a tool of politics, not protection.
No one wants to live in a world where the rules of war apply to your enemies but not to yourselves or your allies. Ignoring these rules is a race to the moral bottom—a fast track to what philosophers call the state of nature. The “all against all.” We do not want to go there.
Denouncing your enemies in public statements does not mean you’re standing up for the rules of war. It is merely political positioning.
Because no one fights alone.
I had the opportunity to speak at the UN Security Council last September and again a month ago. On both occasions, I underlined that States need to call their allies when they violate the rules of war, and demand that they stop. Denouncing their enemies does very little—if anything, and we see this on the ground—to change the realities for civilians living through war.
The Geneva Conventions are clear: “to ensure respect” means that each state must not only comply with IHL itself but has a duty to take proactive measures to promote respect for IHL by others. This applies universally, meaning that third-party states—those not involved in conflict—also bear responsibility to act when serious violations occur.
You don’t have to pull the trigger to make yourself complicit.
When the rules are applied selectively, they lose their protective power. Double standards not only undermine the law—they fuel impunity, prolong suffering, and erode trust among people and states.
International humanitarian law is meant to protect all civilians and those no longer taking part in hostilities. It was designed to address double standards in warfare. Under IHL, all parties should be treated equally in conflict. And the same rules apply no matter what side of the frontline you live on.
This is not an abstract issue because when IHL is respected, all sides benefit. It saves lives. It prevents torture, sexual violence, and hostage-taking. It requires hospitals, homes, and schools to be spared from hostilities. It demands that all those who are captured and detained in conflict be treated humanely. It specifies that the wounded and sick must be cared for, and that civilians have a right to receive humanitarian assistance.
When states invoke “exceptionalism”—claiming that their circumstances place them above the law—they do more than bend the rules. They erode the very foundation of the legal framework designed to protect their own people.
Every state has ratified the Geneva Conventions. Their obligations are not optional, nor are they contingent on how the war started. States cannot justify targeting civilians, civilian infrastructure, or disproportionately attacking military objectives by invoking self-defence. The strength of these rules lies in consistent enforcement and the political will to put humanity first—especially when it is hard to do so.
The rules of war also apply equally to all those not taking part in the fighting, including those captured. These protections are not dependent on the status assigned to the detainee by the detaining authority. For example, there is no such thing as a “terrorism exception” under IHL. The rules of war apply to everyone captured in conflict. This means that torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment are always prohibited. The path to peace very often starts in a prison cell with how you treat your enemies.
International humanitarian law is not made for the hopeful days of peace. It is made for humanity’s darkest days, when armed conflict rages and people are in grave danger.
It is essential that states do not take the route of pulling away from treaties or conventions that keep vulnerable people safe and mitigate the horrors of war. We are now witness to European countries thinking and planning to leave some key humanitarian treaties.
Double standards and exceptionalism are not unique to the West, but if European identity is to embody certain values, you must apply the same standards to yourselves and your allies as you project onto others.
The world is looking for moral leadership. Youth are looking for moral leadership. And this starts with seeing all human beings as equal.
I also want to address the numbness—and the risk of numbness—because there was a time when the world was shocked by bodies broken by bombs. By starving children.
Now we scroll past them.
What happens to human dignity when livestreamed atrocities provoke words but no real action? And what happens when we become numb to suffering?
Because in Gaza today, we are watching a people be entirely stripped of their human dignity. If this does not shock our collective conscience, I ask you all—what will? We cannot become complacent in the face of such human suffering.
I just said we must guard against double standards in the application of the law. We must also confront double standards in our compassion.
A child’s life in Gaza is worth exactly the same as one in Israel. A child’s life in Ukraine is worth the same as one in Russia. A child’s life in France is worth the same as one in Sudan, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
If we subconsciously rank human life, put human dignity on a scale believing that one life is more deserving of protection and dignity than another, we accept a logic that can one day be used against ourselves and against our children.
No one should view what is happening in Gaza—or Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar—as a far away matter with little impact on our life. This is too short-sighted.
I want to explain why. Your state may not be at war today. Your family may be far from frontlines. But tides turn. New conflicts erupt. Europe must defend the rules of war today because if we do not, we are accepting a world where wars can be fought with greater barbarity and intensity.
A message I say repeatedly to European leaders is: if you want to protect your own people, you must protect the fundamental principles enshrined in international law, even when it is inconvenient.
Dismissing the law in the name of national interest is short-term thinking with long-term consequences because it informs how conflicts are fought tomorrow—and we can’t afford for the bar to be lowered any further because the world is on fire already.
If everything is permitted, then no one is safe. Tomorrow’s world is being shaped by today’s decisions. The way wars are fought today reverberates from one theatre of conflict into another, and we see this on the ground. They inform the baseline of what is acceptable. If we keep bending the rules beyond recognition, we are inherently accepting that this is the standard for which all civilians can be treated, including if war comes to our doorsteps.
The domino effects of escalating conflict are immediate and real. And cities across Europe are already increasing their security measures. Governments are issuing travel warnings. If we are to reverse this tide, States need to invest more in de-escalation and peace, and this includes respecting the letter and spirit of the rules of war. The spirit of the law—not hollowing out the law.
And there’s another danger emerging, one that deepens the risk of double standards. As warfare becomes technologically more advanced, it becomes more unequal and more opaque. Any state or armed group can harness cutting-edge technologies—drones, autonomous weapons, cyber tools—with far greater reach and far less scrutiny than ever before.
Alongside brutal, kinetic battles fought with advanced heavy explosive weapons, we now face the rise of drone and cyber warfare. They define what’s happening in the field. And as technology evolves, so do frontlines. War is no longer constrained to trenches or physical areas of control, but across vast distances and into the digital and cyber sphere.
In this landscape, double standards don’t just persist, but they are coded into the systems that determine who lives and who dies. And when decision-making is driven by algorithms, it becomes even harder to trace accountability, let alone demand it.
As our capacity to kill and destroy grows with each technological leap, our commitment to the rules that limit that destruction is shrinking. This is a dangerous contradiction. States need to ensure that IHL is fit for the future and accept that this will be far harder to do if we erode the foundations of the law today.
Now international humanitarian law is in a prisoner’s dilemma—and as citizens so are we. The best outcome for all would be that all sides comply with the law. It’s the same in international trade.
This would bring less harm for civilians affected by war, and more security for all of us. The worst outcome is that no one complies, triggering a pattern of endless retaliation that lowers the bar for the conduct of hostilities in future conflicts.
Everyone is acting to win, but in doing so, they get on a path to self-destruction. Rules are discarded, norms ignored and red lines blurred. What remains is a world drifting towards fear and constant uncertainty, where might alone makes right.
If wars are fought with the mentality of “total victory” or “because we can” it signals to their enemy that no rules apply, and it simultaneously sends the same signal to every arms-bearer in the world.
This is how all humanity can be lost in war. It lowers the bar for compliance further and further and cements the assumption that your opponent will violate agreed rules so it’s in your interest to do the same.
How do we escape this trap? This is what I have been asking myself since I joined the ICRC. We can by reinvesting in the universality of compliance.
Europe must show leadership by making the international agreements founded on the ruins of Second World War their political priority again. This starts with the fundamental principles enshrined in the Geneva Conventions.
Last September, the International Committee of the Red Cross, together with France, Brazil, China, Jordan, Kazakhstan, and South Africa launched a global initiative to rally states to take a stand behind these universal and lifesaving rules.
Today, over 75 states have joined, including the majority of European states, and we call on all states to do so. This is an exceptional effort that these countries took, including France, because the current situation demands it. We needed to find ways to break through geopolitical silos and create a novel multilateral platform to revive respect for the rules of war.
States from all parts of the world simultaneously seizing the opportunity created by the global initiative is a genuine effort to escape that very prisoner’s dilemma. It creates a platform for all states to show their commitment to upholding the rules of war together all at once in their national capacity, and not because they are coerced to do so.
It is a chance for world leaders to be clear that 80 years after the world saw some of history’s worst crimes, they will preserve a normative space that protects our future generations.
And Europe is and has to play a leading role in the global initiative, and support France in its efforts.
We need European states to assert and stand up for the moral high ground within the continent but also beyond. This is the concrete leadership that is needed today.
I want to conclude by saying that to accept endless war is to accept a world perpetually on fire where cycles of violence, suffering, and destruction become the norm rather than the exception. This path is not inevitable. But changing course demands moral clarity, political will and courage, but first and foremost it requires a vision for peace.
Today Europe is prioritising defence spending while reducing humanitarian assistance. This paradox can only hold if Europe’s leaders put the values and principles they preach into practice. European leaders must loudly and unequivocally defend the rules of war—not out of convenience or of political calculation, but as a long-term investment in global peace, stability, and prosperity.
More must be done to end wars. To find ways to de-escalate. But that investment begins with Europe holding itself and its allies to the same standards that it expects of others.
This is a very decisive moment for Europe. We have to make it one that upholds the rules of war. That invests in the respect and ensures the respect of the rules of war.
European leaders must recommit to preserving the power of a rules-based order against the might of violence.
Thank you.