The lessons from a 'war of values'

By Cornelio Sommaruga

GENEVA: Perhaps you have noticed, as I have, that hardly a day goes by without some aspect of humanitarian work being mentioned on radio and television news broadcasts, without a red cross or red crescent -- or the representative of a prominent NGO -- making at least a fleeting appearance on the screen.

And no doubt you have also noticed that very few speeches on international affairs are devoid of any reference to humanitarian issues... In the last few months of the 20th century the word "humanitarian" is on everyone's lips: we can no longer do without it.

Humanitarian action has of course has always been indispensable. What suffering person has not been grateful for help received? What vulnerable person has not derived comfort, if not from protection, at least from compassion? What victim has not wanted to be recognized as such, with his specific needs, and also his specific rights? Humanitarian aid has always been crucial to those who benefit from it, only today it seems to have acquired a new-found authority, a new-found legitimacy. And it is high time.

In the past few years, or so it seems, the general climate of opinion has become more sensitive to the specific nature of humanitarian work. Perhaps people today have less of a tendency to confuse with the manner in which it is waged. The decline of the great ideologies has brought us back to the central fact of all conflicts: they cause suffering, and each of us has a responsibility to the victims, whatever their race or ideology.

In a word, today we are perhaps more inclined to see war victims as human beings like ourselves, rather than as the pawns of contemptible political forces.

However, we must also beware of an undesirable consequence of the current enthusiasm for humanitarian work. A certain notion of "just war" seems to be gaining ground: we now hear people referring to "humanitarian wars". This, I believe, is a dangerous trend, for whoever decides that a given war is just is of course saying that one of the belligerents is right and the other is wrong.

Such an attitude, especially when it is taken by an organization that is involved in humanitarian work, necessarily calls into question the concept of impartiality, on which the idea of mankind's fundamental unity is based. This is particularly true in times of war.

Humanitarian organizations must be on their guard against all such attempts to confuse -- even for the most praiseworthy reasons such as the wish to prevent a slaughter or a genocide -- the causes of war and the law of war. On behalf of all victims, we must ensure that, whether intentionally or not, efforts to provide them with the aid and protection to which they are entitled are not led astray by considerations far removed from the simple task of relieving suffering.

The responsibility for carrying out humanitarian work falls first and foremost on the immense aid network made up by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, which comprises some 175 National Societies, their Federation and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Like other humanitarian organizations, the ICRC has had to devise new methods of action. In October 1998, it thus launched an ambitious project called People on War, which in the simplest possible terms may be described as a vast and unique kind of opinion poll.

It has not been an easy undertaking, but despite many obstacles the ICRC has been able to gather the personal stories and thoughts of thousands of war victims and combatants throughout the world.

These expressions of conscience will be used to determine how people understand the notion of limits as it applies to warfare. A comparative summary of the results will be made public in Geneva next November during the during the 27th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

The People on War survey will be a precious tool for all those who are motivated by humanitarian ideals. It will provide a contemporary and broad-based articulation of those ideas which, 50 years ago, prompted the international community to adopt the updated and modernized version of the Geneva Conventions.

The same ideas are also enshrined in the two 1977 Additional Protocols, which further restrict the methods and means of warfare and underscore the fact that what is intolerable in international conflicts is also intolerable in internal ones.

The People on War project is based on the fact that it is not weapons -- whether simple machetes or sophisticated missiles -- that cause terror so much as it is the intentions of those who wield them. The purpose of this project is to give humanitarian ideas a universal dimension by backing them up with the diversely expressed opinions of people from all walks of life.

We thereby hope to alleviate the most atrocious aspects of war by giving voice to the world's communities, which harbor warriors. In other words, we wish to use the pressure of public opinion to make warriors behave more responsibly.

In view of the genocides that have been committed in our century, this may seem a vain hope. The fatalistic streak that runs through us all -- the temptation to flee, or to give in -- may lead us to believe that human beings will always commit acts of atrocity, that war cannot be waged without savage cruelty.

True, the wellsprings of human suffering are so inexhaustible that progress may seem slow and insufficient, but progress has been made all the same. Witness the unprecedented amount of money that is being poured into humanitarian work, witness the unprecedented number of people whose intelligence and determination have been harnessed for the task... Never before has the wish to rise above national and cultural differences and help one's fellow beings seemed more natural and more possible to fulfill.

And if the components of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, including, of course, the ICRC, have never been so busy as they are today, it is as much a sign of progress as it is a sign of the amount of distress in the world.

This, and the great wave of solidarity we have recently witnessed, are also a sign that for the general public humanitarian action has increasingly come to seem indispensable.

The writer is the President of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)