On behalf of our International Movement, I have the pleasure to welcome you all today in Solferino at the third World Meeting of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Youth.
It has not been an easy task to first conceive and then plan this meeting. If we managed to do so, it has been thanks to the enthusiastic cooperation of so many young Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers from different regions of the world, who have been working side by side for months, defeating the challenges and the skepticism of those who did not want this event to take place. To all of them go our sincere and warmest thanks.
Your trip to get here from any corner of the world has been a long one, for some of you even longer and difficult. But you are now finally in this place which is very particular and magic to all of us, not only for the beauties of its landscape and the warmth of its people, but mainly for having inspired, 150 years ago, the birth of our great Movement.
Henry Dunant was a genius, one of the few leaders who is remembered not for the number of territories he conquered or for the number of enemies he has killed or defeated, nor for having ruled with the unconditioned and irrational love and consensus of his subjects, but for having started a work that has changed in better the life of millions of human beings. A work that renovates and continues every day thanks to the contribution of all of us.
Latins were used to say “natura non facit saltus”, meaning that history continues progressively and not in jerks. But there are moments in which history seems to accelerate, and it is possible to distinguish “before” and “after” an event. Concerning natural disasters, in the last years, there has been a “before” and “after” the Tsunami. For what concerns Politics, there has been a “before” and “after” the fall of the Berlin Wall or a “before” and “after” 9-11.
In 1859 there has been a “before” the Solferino battle and “after” the Solferino battle, with the birth of the Red Cross. It has been difficult for Henry Dunant to convince others of his ideas, which were at least 50 to 100 years in advance in respect to his times.
Our “dear Enrico”, as we say, had to pay hard for his ideas. His personal history is emblematic of the high price those who oppose human evilness have to pay, sometimes even with their lives. It is emblematic of the price paid by those fighting against the condition of “homo homini lupus”, the opportunism of those who turn to the other side and pretend not to see the violence of men against other men; or against the mediocrity of those who do not put themselves at risk in order to improve other people’s quality of life. It is emblematic of the price paid by those fighting against hypocrisy, against violence covered by legality of those using rules and procedures in order to place their power before the one of other people; against the cynicism of those who are convinced that everything has to change in order for nothing to really change.
Burocrats have been persecuting Henry Dunant during his entire life, mainly not for the bankruptcy of his company, but for the revolutionary and destabilizing power of his ideas. Burocrats were also inside the Red Cross, which has eventually recognized the merits of his founder when he was old and not in the possibility to have his ideas prevailing on the power of bureaucracy.
This dialectic struggle between good and evil, action and routine, ideas and routine, structure and function, innovation and status quo is still present in our Movement. You have to be aware of it in order to act accordingly. In order to improve and evolve, the Movement needs your enthusiasm, your commitment, your action; in a single word, your leadership.
Being a leader means running risks. The risk of doing things that have not been done before, and that other people do not want. The risk to create links and bridges instead of hostility and walls. The risk to expose ourselves and to pay for our ideas, instead of getting passively used to the violence that spreads throughout the world.
Some years ago at the UNGASS, the UN Special Session on Aids in New York, I met Bernard Kouchner, current French Minister for Exterior, who had been a young ICRC delegate in Congo and who founded “Médecins sans fontières” as he was tired of the complexity and bureaucracy of the Red Cross. Kouchner told me “La Croix Rouge est vieille!” « The Red Cross is old ! ».
It is up to you to commit yourselves and fight to demonstrate that “the Red Cross is young”.
It is not an easy task, and you’ll have to unify your efforts to do so, creating a task-force, a network of inspired and committed youth at the local, national, regional and international level, able to act with fantasy and devotion in order to leave a positive footprint of your passage on the earth, helping vulnerable people in their daily struggle for life.
Life is a difficult exercise for anybody. For some of us it is so difficult to become unbearable, even impossible. We can all contribute to make this world a better world, starting to help those who struggle more in order to survive. We call these brothers and sisters of ours the most vulnerable ones, but we always have to remember that in just few minutes, any of us can become a vulnerable person, and this is a good reason why we do not have to discriminate or stigmatize anybody, but we do have to treat everybody as a peer, as a person in need, as tomorrow it could be any of us to be in the same penalizing conditions.
Renewing the Red Cross and opening it to the contribution of vulnerable people as an occasion for their self-help and redemption is not an easy task. Let me suggest it to you as the theme of these days, because you are not normal people, you are twice special people.
First of all because among all the options that can fascinate young people, you have chosen to become Redcrosser. Secondly because you have been selected for your merits among your Red Cross and Red Crescent fellows to represent your National Society.
You are leaders, and some among you will be called upon to take great responsibilities in the next years, within and outside our Movement.
As Ban-Ki-Moon, young activist of the Korean Red Cross, sent in the 60ties to an International Congress of the American Youth Red Cross, during which he met John Fitzgerald Kennedy, or as Juan Manuel Suarez del Toro, President of the Federation for the past 8 years, or Mario Villarroel, President of the League for 10 years and running candidate to the Presidency of the Federation, and as the other running candidate, the President of the Japanese Red Cross, Tadateru Konoe, or even myself. We all joined the Red Cross when we were very young.
It is not by chance that so many young Red Cross volunteers have become leaders of the Movement. Our Fundamental Principles and our ideals can change and direct the course of a life. I believe that their example can inspire those of you who consider the adhesion to them as an important part of their lives and their way of being and doing.
This meeting in Solferino is a unique occasion for future leaders of the Movement to meet, establish contacts and long lasting alliances, to select strategies and synergies that will make the Red Cross and Red Crescent more and more performing and in line with times, adapted to the growing and changing needs of humanity.
It is not an easy task. It is not easy to set priorities vis-à-vis a list of sufferances that does not seem to have an end. It is difficult not to get depressed in front of the enormity of needs and the scarcity of our strengths and resources. As individuals, we are small things, but it is thanks to the cooperation with others that we can make a difference.
In the list of priorities, you have to take inspiration from the Millennium Development Goals and the 4 Goals of the Federation.
Keep always well in mind in all your actions the fourth Goal, aiming at a better society, more tolerant, far from stigma and discrimination towards the most vulnerable ones, towards those who do not have power. Stigma kills! As the Gospel says, “Do not judge if you do not want to be judged, do not condemn if you do not want to be condemned”.
Respect diversities. “Diversity is a gift of live” “Diversity is our best option”. “Diversity has no alternatives”, as many times has been said and written by your fellows in various Red Cross and Red Crescent regional meetings in the last years.
“To do more, to do better, to reach further”. This has to be your agenda. Most of all, do not be afraid, because all together we represent a great power, the Power of Humanity. This is our slogan, and it is not rhetorical, being the power of humanity the sum of all the actions that the Red Cross and Red Crescent do in any corner of the world, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Be aware that you are part of a powerful Organization without falling into triumphalism and selfishness. We are not just an NGO, nor we are part of the Governmental system. We are in the middle, we are the “Third Pillar” of the world, bridging the gap between Governments and United Nation from the one side and Civil Society from the other side, with a unique institutional position that I ask you to always remember and stress, so that everybody can clearly understand and respect it. Governments do not always do that when they consider the Red Cross as a part of the state, subject to the rules and customs of politics and not, as it should be, to the will of its members.
It is in anybody’s interest to respect the independence of our Movement in any circumstances, as a neutral intermediary body, bridging the gap between the rich and the poor, the healthy and the sick, the integrated and the marginalized, between states at war. A Movement that is capable to reach further those who the Governments can not reach or even recognize. “Always ready, always first, always there”, as Richard Gordon, President of the Philippine Red Cross, says.
A practical and concrete action in favor of those who are made vulnerable by wars or calamities, epidemics or disasters, by poverty or, more easily, by the evilness of other men is important, but it is not the only thing to be done.
There also is another dimension of our activities, which is as important as our actions. A part of a new strategy that we call “Humanitarian diplomacy”, and I wish that it will be sufficiently stressed and recognized during your discussions as well as in the final document.
We are not at the times of the Solferino battle anymore. The world is a global village in which communication flows in real time. Apart from the traditional powers, there is now another power in the position to influence the decisions of policy makers, it is the public opinion that thru the media has access to the information that was once reserved only to Governments.
The Red Cross has to speak to the public opinion in the name of our Fundamental Principle of Humanity, on behalf of the most vulnerable ones, of those who are nor represented because they do not have access to the media.
In our world, those who do not appear do not exist. But our world has the desperate need to hear the voice of the Red Cross, because the Red Cross is significant and respected by both Governments and peoples.
We do have to rise our voice and speak loud any time the Geneva Conventions are violated, any time civilian populations are considered as a military target, any time International Humanitarian Law is ignored, or torture is practiced, or prisons become the place where human beings are treated worst than animals. Unfortunately, this also happens in those respectable states that consider themselves as the flag of human rights.
We call this second dimension of our actions “advocacy”, and we always have to remember what is written in the Strategy 2010 of the Federation: “Advocacy is on a safer ground when supported by activities”. Otherwise any position we take would be vain.
A significant aspect of such advocacy has been the Movement’s reputation for what may be defined as realistic idealism, for achieving practical results for the benefit of people in need. In “A Memory of Solferino”, Henry Dunant advocated for a practical, realistic way to help the wounded and sick ones in the battlefield. Dunant detested war as much as anyone else but he recognized that, since war exists, one must do what he can do at a practical level to alleviate its horrors.
Many people in the world, especially those from some NGOs, speak loud and yell without taking any action, and their screams go lost because they are not trustworthy. To speak without action is too easy and uninteresting and the International Movement of the Red Cross and Red Crescent has always to keep its style, adapting it only to the changing times.
Advocacy is not a neutral exercise, and it is for this reason that someone thinks that the Principle of Neutrality prevents the Red Cross to take a position. But the Principle of Neutrality says that “the Movement may not take sides in hostilities or engage at any time in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature”. It does not say that we shall be neutral in front of human suffering. We are always and everywhere enemies of human sufferance and we want and have to fight it with any means against it.
I do expect you to take a strong and clear position on that, to take with you on July the 2nd to Geneva and to bring it to the attention of the leaders of the world and of our Movement.
I say it again: Do not be afraid and do not be reticent or opportunistic. Always be inspired in your decisions by the spirit of Henry Dunant, that is flattering above us in these very days. Show your leadership. The world and the Movement are in great need to hearing your voice!