Independent Humanitarian Action: Can it Survive?

INDEX

Introduction

Katharina Vogeli
Executive Director, Swiss Foundation for World Affairs 3

Opening Remarks

Pierre Kraehenbuehl
Director Of Operations, International Committee Of The Red Cross (ICRC) 4

Presentations

Richard L. Greene
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (PRM) 

Roy Gutman
Foreign Editor, Newsday 

John Prendergast
Advisor To The President, International Crisis Group 

Panel Discussion 

Questions and Answers

Katharina Vogeli: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Can everybody hear me fine back there? All right. Well, good morning and welcome to this event just before Thanksgiving. I think the fact that the room is full attests to the commitment to higher ideals of the Washington community, though perhaps not the ideals of family, more the ideals of work.

Nevertheless, you are most welcome. I am very pleased to welcome you here today.

I am Katharina Vogeli, the Director of the Swiss Foundation for World Affairs. We are part of Johns Hopkins University, the School of Advanced International Studies here in Washington, DC..

When I was preparing for today's conference, I was thinking back a little bit to a time when we thought that peace had broken out. Nineteen eighty‑nine you all remember. It was the end of the Cold War. And we thought we were entering a time of multi‑lateralism, civil society engagement, NGOs. NGOs became very involved in the democratization, conflict resolution, humanitarian action, all sorts of initiatives that were mostly the privilege, if you want, of states beforehand.

The Cold War was gone. So militaries had to find new tasks. Instead of fighting wars, they were becoming involved in humanitarian actions. The concept of humanitarian interventions came up. You will remember that. There was Somalia. John would know, I think 1993, when the military was providing security for humanitarian aid workers.

Medecins Sans Frontieres became very well‑known for its ultra political pronouncements. They took very clear positions. When they saw crimes happening, they took the governments to task.

And now today, 15 years after the end of the Cold War ‑‑ and what is it, 4 years ‑‑ no ‑‑ 3 years after September 11th, when the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were attacked. Nobody thinks any longer that peace has broken out.

It's just the opposite. There is a lot of confusion. We don't know who the enemy is, where the enemy is, whether there is an enemy. There is a confusion about roles of civilians to military international law. Is it still valid or is it not? What is the role of politicians? What is the role of humanitarians?

The trouble is that in the last 15 years, the lines between humanitarian, political, and military actions have become very blurry. The ICRC's traditional approach has been criticized, "traditional" meaning working with confidentiality, using diplomacy, instead of naming and shaming, if you want. But they have been criticized.

And calls have become louder from governments, from NGOs, from activists that they should take better or clearer positions. But we will hear whether that might perhaps endanger their very mandate.

And as regards the involvement of military in humanitarian actions, it is exposing civil humanitarian workers to increased risk. I'm thinking of Margaret Hassan in Iraq, the CARE director who has just recently been murdered. Then at times perhaps the military is also offering the humanitarian workers the protection they need to work in very unsafe areas.

And then last, but certainly not least, the humanitarian aid and humanitarian activities, I would say, might also provide a fig leaf for the lack of political action to resolve conflicts, the very conflicts that are underlying the humanitarian crisis. I'm thinking of two cases that are at the moment very present. That's Darfur and Iraq, but we can also think of issues like Rwanda or northern Uganda and so on and so forth.

Well, we will discuss these and other issues with an outstanding panel today. I will first just introduce our main speakers, the person who will offer the introductory remarks, after which I will introduce each panelist as he is about to speak.

So let me introduce Pierre Kraehenbuehl. He is the Director of Operations of the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross since 2002. He helped steer the organization through wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Liberia, and the recent crisis in Haiti.

Before that, he served in former Yugoslavia from '95 to '97 and as the head of the Balkans task force headquarters in '98, from '98 to 2000. Since joining the ICRC in 1991, Mr. Kraehenbuehl has served in El Salvador; in Peru; and Afghanistan and Bosnia‑Herzegovina; and, of course, now in Geneva.

Please welcome with me Pierre Kraehenbuehl.

(Applause.)

Pierre Kraehenbuehl: Thank you very much, Katharina and ladies and gentlemen. Good morning. Very nice to be with you this morning. It's a great pleasure and honor to take part in today's discussion together with John Prendergast, Rich Greene, and Roy Gutman. I would very much like to thank the Swiss Foundation for World Affairs and the Johns Hopkins University for the invitation and the opportunity.

On the 3rd of October, 1993, Mike Durant, a pilot of a U.S. Army special operations helicopter was shot down and captured by followers of the Somali faction leader Mohammed Aidid. And almost 20 U.S. servicemen lost their lives during the confrontation. Mike Durant himself was severely injured on that instance.

The first few days in captivity were, as he described in his own book, terrifying. During a recent radio interview, Mike Durant relived the what he called unforgettable moment when five days after his capture, an ICRC delegate walked into the room.

After that, he said his conditions improved. And the possibility of making contact with his family was considered by him as tremendously uplifting.

I really chose that example to introduce my remarks because I feel that it illustrates all too well what the ICRC stands for and is about. We currently have 10,000 men and women, colleagues of mine, working in 80 different countries around the world, accomplishing moments like the one I have just described every day of the week.

And to do that, my colleagues travel through zones of combat, across front lines, seek access to prisons, seek access to populations at risk in very remote places, negotiate with military, with faction leaders, with police, paramilitary, rebels, and child soldiers.

They are in a way, as every ICRC delegate throughout the last 140 years, driven by a very simple, yet very fundamental, ethic, which is that of helping people affected by war.

Now, as the title of our discussion suggests, the question is whether this approach can be sustained in today's world. In exploring this, I will try to identify what is new in the overall environment of armed conflicts, how that impacts on the ICRC's operation of decision‑making, management of security, but also how we see the future of neutral and independent humanitarian action in today's world.

Now, looking at the changes in the environment, one striking feature certainly that has occurred since September 11 is a renewed polarization and radicalization in the world, stemming largely from a global form of confrontation between states engaged in the fight against terrorism and radical non‑state actors that are prepared to use and resort to nonconventional methods, such as deliberately targeting civilians or so‑called soft targets, among which also humanitarian organizations.

I would like to mention three areas in which these changes have impacted on the ICRC as an organization. And the first ‑‑ and that was already mentioned in the introductory remarks by Katharina Vogeli ‑‑ lies in the field of security.

Now, it is clear to anybody who has worked in zones of conflict that carrying out humanitarian activities in such situations has always been a dangerous undertaking. Security of our staff and of beneficiaries alike is an absolutely fundamental priority of the ICRC and a responsibility of the organization.

Now, although this is not a very good expression, the classic security environment is one where the main risk, in fact, you will find is to be at a given time at the wrong place at the wrong moment. That is certainly in our experience still today very much the most typical situation that our staff members are exposed to and confronted with, typical but by no means easy to manage.

I recall, for instance, last year and all too well the tense weeks that we experienced with our colleagues working in Liberia at a time where the environment was dangerously unpredictable and they were crossing front lines to evacuate wounded in the heart of Monrovia, something certainly very important to do but very dangerous.

Now, beyond those traditional risks, the ICRC was last year, in 2003, the victim of a series of deliberate attacks that claimed the lives of several colleagues in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And several other organizations, as also were just mentioned, have suffered the same terrible fate, including our colleagues in MSF this year in Afghanistan. And, indeed, most recently Margaret Hassan was murdered in Iraq.

Now, the question is, is that the new element in the security environment, the fact of being targeted? Well, unfortunately, not specifically, because we had deliberate attacks against the ICRC staff members, for instance, in Burundi in 1996; in Chechnya, where six of our colleagues were murdered the same year; and in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 2001.

In our view, the new element today is the global nature of that particular form of threat. And the ICRC's security concept was traditionally based on assessing local risks in a given context. So we have colleagues working on the field trying to assess the local risks in that environment with acceptance of the organization among local actors considered as the primary means of reducing those risks.

Today, however, you could very well be in a situation where your local parameters seem to be manageable; fairly safe; and, yet, have actors coming into that context from the outside and deliberately targeting you there because you are less prepared to face those risks.

One may then in that sense feel safer today in Amman; in Cairo; or, for that matter, in Geneva, and, yet, not be able to exclude the targeting in those environments presently.

A complicating factor in that regard is that access to the groups that carry out these types of attacks is today, of course, very difficult when not outright impossible.

And, yet, for the ICRC, as you certainly know, the dialogue was all actors involved somehow in conflict is a vitally important part of our operating procedures if we are to be accepted and able to work.

In today's polarized environment, you have, in addition, the fact that there is stronger pressure on any actor to take sides when it's friend or foe, enemy, or ally. And this makes it all the more difficult for actors such as the ICRC, who invoke principles such as independence and neutrality, to get their message across.

And in that regard, we see two very significant risks facing the organization, not comparable in nature, but these are two that I would like to highlight. That is one of being rejected as a humanitarian organization or of being instrumentalized.

It appears today that any actor contributing or seeming to be contributing in any way to the stabilization efforts in Afghanistan or Iraq is potentially at risk.

And since, in addition, our identity is perceived in many parts of the world as being mainly Western, the risk of being associated and mistaken as an integral part of a broader political and military involvement of the West is high and the risk is being rejected along those lines as well.

Now, there were no claims to date of responsibility on the part of anyone for the attacks carried out against our colleagues in 2003. And, yet, something that no one, certainly not we, can afford to ignore is that there have been statements attributed to radical Islamic groups, in which they point out that Western humanitarian organizations are a part of the list of what they consider to be their enemies.

Another risk is certainly that of being instrumentalized; in other words, that humanitarian action is integrated or becomes an integral part of political and military operations or in the conduct of anti‑terrorist campaigns.

Now, we have seen plenty of signs over the past two years in that sense, including statements that refer to military deployments in different countries as mainly humanitarian or to humanitarian organizations as being force multipliers. And the establishment, for instance, of the provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan is certainly also one example of that.

And the ensuing blurring of lines, therefore, between political and military actors, on the other hand, and humanitarian actors, on the other, represents a serious perception and operational problems for the ICRC. So that is the first element in the field of security.

Now, there have been serious implications also for international humanitarian law. The ICRC has faced that challenge very significantly over the last two years, in particular, with questioning that we have been confronted with around the relevance of international humanitarian law.

And there have been clear indications for within some governments, academic circles, and the media that while the Geneva Conventions may have once reflected a very noble vision, that they are essentially today hopelessly outdated and simply not in tune with new conflicts, primarily the whole situation in the fight against terror.

Now, I don't want to embark here on a lengthy discussion of the merits and the pros and cons of that debate from a legal perspective, but I'd just like to illustrate it from an operational point of view briefly.

I'm often asked what humanitarian law, what international humanitarian law, means for me from an operational point of view. Have I ever seen it work I'm often asked as well.

Now, in response, I'd like to say for me international humanitarian law is essentially a backbone, something that guides our actions, gives me and my colleagues in the field the legitimacy to act, and without which the ICRC would be simply a self‑declared actor in situations of armed conflict. With humanitarian law, we are mandated to become involved.

Now, again, there we are confronted with two separate challenges to international humanitarian law in the current environment, again, not similar in nature but I'd just like to briefly mention it.

The first challenge is obviously from non‑state actors that use deliberate terror against civilians and are involved, as we have seen, in kidnappings, execution of hostages, all of which are acts that represent total disregard for even the most basic tenets of humanity.

Actors such as these claim that their conventional disadvantage leaves them with no other method of combat possible. Well, that in no way changes the fact that international humanitarian law prohibits such acts.

For their part, some states have claimed that persons captured in the framework of the fight against terror do not enjoy any status under the Geneva Conventions and appear in that sense effectively to be placed outside of any specific legal regime.

Some people have suggested also ‑‑ that is always a point that surprises us very much ‑‑ that the Geneva Conventions are an impediment in the fight against terror; for example, preventing states from detaining or interrogating detainees.

Now, what we have always maintained is that every government has a specific responsibility to keep its population safe from harm and has, therefore, a right to adopt measures that it believes can contribute to their security. It is perfectly, therefore, ‑‑ and we have to be very clear about that from the ICRC perspective ‑‑ entitled to detain and interrogate.

At the same time, however, such a government has obligations under domestic and international law governing the status and treatment of people detained. In our view, it is perfectly possible, perfectly possible, to provide security while adhering to those obligations.

Indeed, I think something that has to be recalled here is that the Geneva Conventions were, in fact, carefully crafted, a carefully crafted compromise precisely between the two notions of military necessity and basic humanitarian considerations.

Therefore, the repeated attempts to challenge the relevance of the Geneva Conventions and the serious consequences we believe that might have in eroding longstanding protections for troops and civilians in situations of armed conflict around the world is a very serious concern for us.

And that leads to for us an increasing need on our part in our daily operational decision‑making to demonstrate the added value that IHL, international humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions, have. And for the ICRC, it's really at the heart of everything that we manage to accomplish on the ground.

So, as we have heard at times, the attempts to describe the Geneva Conventions is essentially today a dusty set of volumes, something that, of course, I cannot agree with. And we think that it's something that is very much alive through the work of our colleagues in the field.

The third aspect that has been challenging in the recent environment has been implications for what we consider neutral and independent humanitarian action. And the combined effects of what I have just described in the field of security and the challenges to international humanitarian law have led to some serious thinking and debate within the ICRC and with other actors, the question being, are we witnessing the end of this way of doing humanitarian work?

Now, it's probably useful that I tried to describe what we mean by neutral and independent humanitarian action as we try to debate this. Let me, first of all, say that neutrality is the reason why I had originally not intended to join the ICRC. I believed when I was at a university that the organization did a poor job in communicating its work, values. And I couldn't personally understand why it chose the silence that it chose at times or this approach of confidentiality when confronted with daily suffering in the world. Neutrality in that sense I saw as something impossible, in fact, to uphold, as tantamount to complicity.

So even today, I have to say I very well understand when people find it difficult to accept the ICRC's position in that regard. Neutrality I have noted is often perceived as indifference. It is kind of sort of a cozy way of not becoming involved in difficult situations.

Well, I can tell you when I look and having on the basis of my own involvement but particularly on the involvement of my colleagues today in very difficult situations, nothing could be further from the truth. Not one member, not one staff member, of the ICRC was born neutral. Not one of them is indifferent in the face of abuse, violence, or destitution.

On the contrary, I think whenever colleagues of ours supply water in Sudan or Haiti, fit amputees with artificial limbs in Afghanistan or Angola, Cambodia, or reunite separated families in western Africa, what characterizes the ICRC delegate is the refusal of the arbitrary nature of war. And you will find no one neutral in the ICRC in that regard.

So what is neutrality about, then? Well, simply put, it means not taking sides in political or military controversy or confrontation. And I have to underline here that this is not an aim in itself, but it is chosen deliberately as a means to reach an end, which is to reach people in need.

Now, this is not very easy to get across as an idea to parties to a conflict who believe that they have good reasons to wage a war and who often misunderstand the motives of those who being neutral do not support them in that regard. And this challenge I have to tell you is as old as the ICRC.

My own experience in Balkans showed me that many times on the Bosniac side, it was felt that the ICRC inappropriately placed them at the same level or on a par with the Serbs they perceived as their aggressors or today in the case of a global war against terror, governments and public opinions in countries that have been affected by active terror find it very difficult to understand why the ICRC believes there is a middle ground for us to operate in. And, again, this results from a fundamental disagreement or misconception of what neutrality is.

If a case is considered right or just by a given party, there can be no neutrality is what we are often told. The problem with this view is that in our experiences, there are few belligerents who consider their cause anything else but just. And that, yet, doesn't make it just for their enemies.

Now, the ICRC has not simply been mandated to review the moral justifications or legality of a given war. The ICRC exists to ensure that in any war, whatever its justification, applicable law is applied to the way in which this war is conducted. And however irritating that may sound at times, those rules apply, however noble the cause may be.

This is important to understand because it is not necessarily the way that other humanitarian actors see their own role. In that sense, we also recognize that you cannot say that the humanitarian community as such is united in its views. Many believe in promoting equal rights, freedom of religion or expression. That is not part of our particular agenda.

We see neutrality as a way to reach victims in countries where others maybe could not or we would otherwise not be able to if we departed from that approach. I think here of the work that we carried out during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, for example, or in rural, remote areas of Darfur currently.

So what leads us to believe that this approach can be upheld in today's polarized environment? Well, we will only succeed if we manage to hold the line and demonstrate through our operations, our daily operations, that we are independent and neutral in the choices we make.

Now, it's clear how difficult it will be for us to reach acceptance on the part of some groups. We have a longstanding practice of interacting with groups that have been difficult in the dialogue without acting different; for instance, Hezbollah, Jihad, Hamas, the LTTE in Sri Lanka, the FARC, the Taliban. And, yet, this dialogue is need for the security of our teams but also for the security of the populations.

The question of independence, on the other hand, is also not new. The humanitarian community has always struggled to assert its independence from state and donor communities. But a new and maybe more complex element today is that the perception of being an instrument of Western powers can be a serious risk for some groups.

Some people may ask us why some groups of state actors should believe that the ICRC is independent considering that its two main donors are the U.S. and the U.K., today very much involved in this campaign against terror.

Well, I have to say that, for instance, in the case of the United States, its largely unearmarked financial contributions to the ICRC is the very key to our independence because of the flexibility it allows us to operate within.

For most groups, though, ‑‑ and I accept that perfectly well ‑‑ they won't take our words for the benchmarks. They will analyze and judge us on the basis of our actions in the field.

This brings me back to a point I made earlier. We have to keep clear lines of separation between political/military actions and our humanitarian involvement.

Now, before I'm winding up these comments, just a word on confidentiality since that is all so often an element misunderstood or simply, as I said earlier, not integrated in the way in which people analyze the ICRC.

Why does the ICRC keep quiet? And how much does it take until it does denounce a given violation or situation? The question is often put to us, don't you agree that a clear public statement would actually have far greater impact on a given situation than dozens of confidential representations to actors in a situation of armed conflict?

And, as you well know, this working method was very much put under the microscope during the recent Abu Ghurayb controversy and was compounded after the leaking of one of our confidential reports in that regard. And, again, here I have to say, unfortunately probably but it is the truth, it is bound to be our everlasting dilemma to speak out or to remain silent.

In my own experience in the recent years, including Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan, there were many moments where at a personal level, faced with what happened, I would have liked to denounce the situation.

But our practice, the daily practice on the ground, has convinced me that bilateral dialogue has greater impact over time for an organization like the ICRC and allows for access to people that we would otherwise not reach.

Bear in mind that while we talk a lot about our access and work in Guantanamo, which are, you know, roughly around 600 people over the last couple of years, well, we visit 470,000 detainees around the world every year. And that is something that I think we would not be able to do if we departed from that position.

The ICRC is in that sense not convinced that adding its voice to a chorus of condemnation will actually serve to help people it is mandated to protect and could have the opposite effect in our regard because alienating parties to a conflict and severing the dialogue means could mean that we could not reach people in need.

At the same time, I would like to stress the important and essential work that the media and human rights organizations carry out in preventing and serving the vital checks and balances against abuses. It is that element of complementarity between those who speak and those who decide not to speak and act on the ground that ultimately best serves the interests of people we have an obligation to protect.

Now, working in today's conflict environments involves making some very difficult decisions almost every day. And I can say to you very openly that deciding to stay in Iraq after the car bomb attack against our organization on the 27th of October last year was by no means easy to take as a decision and certainly not for the colleagues who remained on the ground and work in that environment.

We are convinced that the best way ahead is a way to reinvent on a daily basis the ICRC approach around the core ideal and core principles that I have just briefly reviewed with you. And to do that, we believe that we have to prove every day that we can make a difference for individual people, such as Mike Durant. And for those concrete achievements, my colleagues and I are ready to invest every shred of imagination, energy, and creativity.

I thank you very much.

(Applause.)

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you very much.

I will introduce the panelists as they are about to speak. I would first like to introduce to you Richard Greene, to my left. Richard is the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. He has led the State Department humanitarian assistance efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Middle East more generally. Richard is the key official in overall U.S. government post‑conflict activities.

The floor is yours, Richard.

Richard Greene: Thank you, Katharina. A lot of people would share that last portion of your description.

I appreciate the opportunity. And, like other panel members, we're amazed at the turnout here.

So what is the future of humanitarian action in a world where people like Margaret Hassan are kidnapped and presumably murdered, where suicide bombings are aimed daily at innocent civilians, and where targeted assassinations, beheadings, and IEDs have become commonplace? What works in a world where the very nature of civil‑military relations is being questioned in situations where there is significant military presence? What works in a world where the acceptance of a neutral humanitarian mission is not assumed or assured by certain elements in conflict situations?

Today we are all here as part of a great humanitarian community or network. This network delivers simple, measurable, life‑sustaining goods and services to millions of the world's most vulnerable people. This network includes the U.N., the Red Cross movement, NGOs, host governments, donor governments, neighboring countries, private contractors, and in exceptional circumstances military forces.

For reasons we do not necessarily accept or fully understand, our global humanitarian network operates in an environment of great uncertainty regarding leadership; capacity; assessments; funding; political developments; and, probably more so today than ever before, security.

Getting this humanitarian community to work in safety and more effectively on behalf of the world's most vulnerable people is an important U.S. government objective and one that is clearly shared by most nations.

Clearly the challenging security environment in key places around the world places further strain on the humanitarian community's ability to protect its workers and those they serve. And clearly in important locations like Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, Chechnya, Haiti, Kosovar, Gaza, and numerous other places, improving security capacity and ensuring safe access for humanitarian organizations is probably the greatest humanitarian challenge of the day.

As the world's largest donor, we, the United States government, recognize that achieving these objectives requires the engagement of the U.S. government. Engagement means we will need to continue to use the political, military, diplomatic, and resource tools that are at our disposal. And we recognize the need to work closely on these issues with key donors in the humanitarian assistance community.

However, dealing with a more challenging security environment is, unfortunately, a challenge that the United States government has a lot of experience with. We have learned a lot from bombings of our facilities in Beirut, Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam. We have learned a lot from attacks on our staff in Athens, Amman, Karachi, Islamabad, Baghdad, and Kabul.

We have learned a lot from the daily threats that we deal with against our people all over the world. And, unfortunately, we have learned a lot from the murders of scores of our State Department colleagues, whose names you can see etched in stone in the main lobby of the Department of State. For all of us involved in it, it has been a searing experience. And the lessons that we have learned from that we hope to adopt to this situation.

So let me throw out some ideas on what contributions, what combinations of strategies might work in this very challenging security environment and also admit to up front what are the associated donor responsibilities.

First, we would stress the importance of building into military planning a better understanding of the entire range of humanitarian and civilian tasks. There needs to be a clear understanding from the beginning as to what the military should be expected to do and, for that matter, not to do, to support the achievement of humanitarian and post‑conflict objectives. The entire range of tasks involved with any humanitarian intervention needs to be spelled out in great detail regarding who is doing what, where, and under which circumstances.

Second, we need to continuously work to ensure that these roles are clarified, understood, exercised, and drilled. The principal role of the military should be to provide the security that creates a stable environment in which humanitarian organizations can act. Military components should only step in and provide aid as a last resort when situations are simply too volatile, as happened in the last week or two in Fallujah and which is still the case in remote parts of Afghanistan.

In fact, I think the improvement in the performance of provincial reconstruction teams, the PRTs that Pierre referred to in Afghanistan, is a testament to the value of working to clarify roles with the humanitarian community.

Third, we need to create a culture of humanitarian readiness. I think this is somewhat akin to the diplomatic readiness principles espoused by Secretary of State Powell and the military readiness principles espoused by almost all recent Secretaries of Defense.

In the U.S. government and I think with the general public in the United States, there is a pretty clear understanding and acceptance of the value of ensuring that our soldiers and diplomats are well‑trained and deployed with the right information management, security, and field support packages. There's no reason why we should not have that same goal for humanitarian workers that deploy all over the world. This means that the international community must move towards having well‑resourced and trained and supportive assistance workers ready to respond.

Interestingly enough on this point, U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland has recognized this same need and initiated a system‑wide assessment of the current state of humanitarian readiness.

Clearly security awareness and training and equipment should be a key component of overall humanitarian readiness. And, just as clearly, the investment in humanitarian capacity will have a significant price tag.

Fourth, security practices in the humanitarian world need to be significantly improved. Staff competence and leadership on security issues matter. And, frankly, it's a matter of life and death.

Operating overseas we all adopt some form of security risk management, but in the humanitarian community, the sophistication of that analysis in the decision‑making process needs to be significantly enhanced. Significant investments in training and equipment and personnel will be required. And I think a culture of security awareness and sound security operating principles needs to be adopted.

Fifth, we need to expand information sharing about risks and ongoing activities of the various organizations operating in the field. This could be accomplished by strengthening the exchange of real‑time information between civilian and military components, between government and nongovernment components.

The use of on‑the‑ground civil and military coordination centers, humanitarian coordination centers, humanitarian information centers are perhaps something new. And the use of liaison officers and educators and significant contributors to planning efforts must be expanded.

We also recognize that in some cases, the activities of these coordination centers must be made more relevant for the field operations of humanitarian organizations.

Sixth, there is a need for increased donor dialogue and coordination on CIVMIL and other humanitarian intervention issues. I think the Good Humanitarian Intervention Donorship Initiative is an excellent step in that direction. In addition, we, the U.S. government, have initiated a number of bilateral humanitarian dialogues where CIVMIL and security issues are high up on the agenda.

Seventh, the uncertainty in terms of roles and mission responsibilities among humanitarian operators exacerbates CIVMIL tension. There's a lot of uncertainty there.

Consequently, we need to move I think beyond the collaborative model currently employed by the U.N. to more defined leadership and accountability models of humanitarian intervention. I think that the IDP protection and camp management gaps in Darfur highlight the weaknesses of the U.N. collaborative approach.

Eighth, we need to ensure that military actions are preceded by comprehensive humanitarian impact assessments by military and civilian components. The assessment and planning phase happened before military action was recently launched in Fallujah, and this included the pre‑positioning of aid stocks and food distribution as soon as major combats diminished and providing security for NGOs to access surrounding villages where the IDPs had fled. I think this has been the norm for coalition forces activity in Iraq.

Ninth, we must continue to respect and promote the principles of neutrality in humanitarian actions and the principles of humanitarian law. We do this while recognizing that in parts of the world, our foes clearly are not guided by these same principles.

In fact, these force oppose the very sorts of values and progress associated with humanitarian action. When it comes to respect for the principles in international humanitarian law, the lengths that U.S. and coalition forces go to is exemplary; unprecedented; and, unfortunately, often puts them at risk. The few problems that have been identified have been or are thoroughly being investigated.

So I think, in summary, what could work to mitigate the security challenges we're discussing here today to humanitarian action is strengthening, understanding, and communication between civilian and military components, not pulling away. Integrated civil‑military planning and training, security professionalization, and investing in humanitarian readiness are also core components. We think that now is the time to strengthen ties and linkages between elements of the humanitarian community and with the military.

Now, we recognize that these steps imply significant donor responsibilities, and they would include some of the following: first, funding, especially to cover security capacity‑building costs; second, fostering increased and improved communication and linkages between military, civilian, and humanitarian components; third, supporting an integrated model of humanitarian intervention. Will we work closely with the community in identifying field planning and implementation gaps? And, fourth, an undiluted respect for international humanitarian law and well‑defined roles and states between military forces and the humanitarian components.

So, in conclusion, none of what I have offered today is a panacea but collectively I think points to a way forward on this very difficult issue.

We can't collectively allow these legitimate security challenges to paralyze our actions. There is simply too much at stake here. I'd argue that now is the time to strengthen the ties between the various elements of the humanitarian community, not to pull apart.

There are many examples where this has been done to the benefit of vulnerable populations without sacrificing principles of neutrality and independence. For example, in the run up to military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, we had direct conversations between military planners and representatives from humanitarian organizations. These conversations clearly helped minimize the humanitarian impact of war and clearly helped save many lives.

That level of cooperation is a good thing. And during this time of spirited review of CIVMIL relations, we need to maintain that ability to work together to achieve common goals.

The U.S. government will continue to be a force for the important principles of neutrality, independence, and humanitarian space. And our funding decisions will continue to match my rhetoric of today by providing significant funding to organizations that hold those values as core operating principles.

Thank you.

(Applause.)

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you very much.

The next speaker will be Roy Gutman. Roy Gutman is the Foreign Editor of Newsday. And he has been reporting on international affairs for more than three decades. From 1989 through '94, during a very crucial point to which I have referred, he was European Bureau Chief for Newsday. During that time, he addressed the fall of communism in Eastern Europe; the reunification of Germany; and, of course, the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

He won a Pulitzer Prize for covering the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia‑Herzegovina. He has also co‑edited with David Rieff a very important handbook on international humanitarian law for journalists.

Roy Gutman, the floor is yours.

Roy Gutman: Thank you, Katharina. And thank you for inviting me.

Thank you for coming. I must say the eloquence of the two previous speakers stands out. And your presence here this morning suggests how very important this subject is that we're discussing today and how important it is we really have to be about humanitarian law, where it's come from, where it is, and where it should be going.

I think it goes almost without saying that the laws of armed conflict or international humanitarian law have probably never been so widely known as a concept as today, never been so widely recognized a set of principles that are said to apply in conflict situations.

It's never been so well‑developed as in the period since the ‑‑ what do I say? ‑‑ the last decade, last 12 years, never been so widely reported on by journalists and never been so widely paid attention to by nongovernmental organizations.

But it also seems to be to me that it has never been in such jeopardy as it is today. It is non‑state actors who have decided that they can totally negate and reject all of the principles of humanitarian law and attack civilians right and left, be it in U.S. embassies in East Africa, be it airplanes, be it the attacks on 9/11.

And, unfortunately, state actors as well, starting with the United States, have raised major questions about whether humanitarian law, whether the laws of war apply to themselves. And certainly the events of Abu Ghurayb, Guantanamo, or Bhagram are testimony that the U.S. government is going through, is putting everything on the table for questioning.

It's a basic paradox, though, that underlies humanitarian law that I've at least observed. It is universally applicable. It is universally agreed to.

Humanitarian law distills the lessons of history about the limits of war, where you must not go. And, yet, we're dealing with sovereign states on the whole who are defending what they believe to be their very existence, the well‑being of the citizens.

And it's states who on the whole in their domestic affairs try to uphold law, to adhere to law, to prosecute under law, to incarcerate people for violations. Yet, in humanitarian law, the nature of the violations is often by states or in this case by non‑state actors. There is no real means of enforcement. Since you're dealing with sovereign states, it's really hard to see how there can be.

At the end of the day, I think that the only kind of enforcement you really can have for humanitarian law is self‑enforcement. The only way I can see that coming about is to the glare of publicity when there are violations and timely, reporting timely, exposes of the violations.

There are a lot of people who put their hopes into the U.N. Security Council, into the ad hoc tribunals that have been set up, and into the International Criminal Court, which has now been constituted in the Hague.

I don't have to tell you that in the United States, the current administration is fighting some of these developments, particularly the International Criminal Court, tooth and nail. The President himself stated during two of the three debates that he was totally opposed to the International Criminal Court. And they have been running a campaign basically to weaken it in every way they could. To my amazement, the other side, represented by candidate John Kerry, never really responded to the President's assaults.

And so, as I say, the big question is, how do you enforce, how do you bring about international justice when you're dealing with sovereign states?

Those who put their trust in the U.N. have to recognize that the U.N. itself is us. The U.N. is the member states. And U.N. institutions suffer a kind of a process.

I think, under Kofi Annan, a lot of them have tried to do what Pierre has described the ICRC is trying to do, namely to reinvent themselves, to redefine themselves every day and every year.

But, on the whole, U.N. institutions tend to degrade over time. And they do not easily reinvent themselves, just by the nature of the lack of a specific constituency, that they have to respond in a sense to everybody. And very often that means to nobody.

So I personally think that if we are going to have any kind of a regime ever where humanitarian law takes effect, it's probably going to rely on people in this room, people in my business, in the news business, people in the NGOs, and also people in government to bring violations before the public at the earliest possible moment we can.

As I've mentioned here, there is plenty of cause for despair. The United States, which really was at the forefront of drafting the major codes of humanitarian law, which has been the champion of it, which in the last decade, certainly at Kosovo, was the leader of upholding the law and making sure that huge violations did not occur.

The United States at the presidential level and certainly at the level of the new Attorney General, who was then the presidential legal adviser, has been describing many of these laws as quaint and no longer applicable.

And, yet, you see what happens when you abandon humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, be it the third or the fourth convention, as your guideposts when you are in a conflict situation.

Those who claim that values will sustain us, that values will motivate every soldier, every reservist, it's a noble idea, but it simply doesn't work. Law is needed. Law is needed. The norms of international humanitarian law are simply inescapable. And they happen to have, as I mentioned earlier, a kind of a historical basis that gives them a moral power that, despite the lack of implementation, is just as strong as it gets.

And what you have in the abandonment of humanitarian law principles is scandal, international opprobrium, loss of moral leadership, loss of face, loss of advantage. And we don't even know what the price is that we're going to be paying for Abu Ghurayb, for Guantanamo, and for Bhagram in the years to come.

Now, it is easy to say that the Bush administration and one of their big failures in a sense was that they ignored the lessons of the previous decade that the Clinton administration had learned in a very long and painful way. It's not the first administration to want to walk away from the lessons and experience of its predecessor.

The Clinton administration did learn something over its eight years in power. They basically decided in Kosovo that they had to observe humanitarian law, they had to actually implement humanitarian law in a preemptive way in order to prevent what would have been an immense human rights outrage in Kosovo.

Again, to drive the point home, the United States was not the only major state in the 1990s that on the whole ignored humanitarian law.

If we look in Bosnia, for example, where I obviously was there covering it almost from day one, the most interesting thing occurred maybe about four or five months or six months into the conflict. That was when the United Nations decided to send in what they call peacekeeping forces into a war zone.

The leading country maybe that was helping to organize this was Great Britain. And France sent a lot of troops. And then there were a lot of Nordic troops as well and obviously, as you know, no Americans.

The interesting thing was the U.N. troop contributors did not obligate themselves as they went into Bosnia to adhere to, to uphold, to promulgate the Geneva Conventions. Blue helmets had at that time the option of opting into the Geneva Conventions or a miniature version of it or not. In this particular case, they did not.

And so in a sense, it's not as if they were going to go out and violate the Conventions, but in terms of the obligation to observe and to see to it that the Conventions are upheld, they abandoned that.

Now, this has changed. Under Kofi Annan, there is now a compact between the ICRC and the U.N. peacekeeping department. And every major state if it's going to send forces in as blue helmets does have to observe the rules. At least they have to say they will.

Of course, the bigger issue in Bosnia were what was actually happening. Every major state, as you may recall, denied that there was a genocide. They treated ethnic cleansing as a kind of just movement of people, not as a massive systematic deportation. And the various crimes against people they just simply treated in a very discreet way.

Britain and France were the leading powers in that particular case. And I think that they really set the tone. It was the wrong tone.

I think that I don't want to as a member of the media think that we should be tooting our own horn, but I think in this particular case, the media did expose many of the crimes to a good extent. And eventually people took notice.

Humanitarian organizations also played a very significant role. I have to tell you my experience with the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Balkans was a very positive one, as an organization which did not want to go public, had to cross the lines, had to administer to every detainee they could on whatever side they were, but tried to be supportive and encouraging for those of us in the media who were doing our reporting there.

As I said, by the end of the decade, the U.S. government certainly recognized the lessons of Bosnia and decided it was not going to have a repetition in Kosovo. But let's recall some of the other events of the '90s: Rwanda.

Now, if you remember ‑‑ and this is a case where the major powers starting with the United States denied that there was a genocide. They sent in forces but only to evacuate Westerners. Then they removed the forces, and they sat back and watched, silently almost, as the killing occurred.

Humanitarian organizations were in a terrible bind because the governments did even worse than just simply doing nothing. They did absolutely unhelpful steps.

Operation Turquoise that the French mounted with the help of the United States, the U.S. logistics, basically was not to catch, to nail, to spotlight, to do something about the genocide, but it was actually to protect the genocider.

The humanitarian organizations who were involved in helping at the camps that were set up after for the people who fled from Rwanda were put in a terrible mess that they were actually having to support people they knew were criminals.

What happened? Well, at the end of the day, the French ‑‑ it took several years but they lost face. They lost so much credibility because of what they did that the French lessened their role in central Africa significantly. They pulled back a great deal.

Third example, Afghanistan. Pierre has mentioned it. Afghanistan under the Taliban ‑‑ and this is the subject of a book I am working on right now ‑‑ is an example to my mind where the international community, the humanitarian organizations ‑‑ and I have to make exceptions for Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to some extent ‑‑ and certainly the news media failed.

We failed to expose what was happening within two years of the Taliban takeover. The systematic widespread use of tactics against civilians and the slaughter of civilians was not exposed by anybody at the time in any serious way with the exception of, as I say, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International. We in the news media failed utterly to do our job to expose this.

And then the final example ‑‑ and I don't know to this day whether anybody has really studied this and looked back at this and decided we ought to examine this for the lessons and decide how do we go on from here.

Finally, as I mentioned already, we had the examples of the abuses in circumstances of detention during the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

It seems to me the U.S. military, which had really been a champion of humanitarian law, which certainly helped develop it, which wrote it into its manuals, which certainly advocated it publicly at every point, found itself ‑‑ and I think it was really because of the civilian leadership ‑‑ in a situation where it was supervising basically the systematic violations of humanitarian law, obviously Abu Ghurayb but Abu Ghurayb is a product of two other places: Guantanamo, where the U.S. abandoned the most basic principle of distinction that is carried out in international humanitarian law, mainly to determine if you have arrested somebody in Guantanamo, who are they? Are they a combatant? And in the sense that ‑‑ in a functional sense, did they really ‑‑ were they really fighting in a war or a noncombatant picked up in some other circumstance?

By not insisting on commissions right from the very start, by not allowing commissions right from the very start, the U.S. government basically set itself up for a huge problem, not only in Guantanamo, because some of the principles of Guantanamo were then carried on to Abu Ghurayb.

And then from the other side, from Afghanistan, operating methods of interrogation were set up in Bhagram and in other places, where there was really no supervision, where there were no rules, where we still don't know what really happened.

And individuals who were veterans who had led the military organizations, in both places were then brought together at Abu Ghurayb. And that's how you have the next scandal where that occurred. So something went very, very wrong. And I think we still don't know the truthful answer.

So, finally, just to come to the point that Katharina actually asked me to speak about. And that was the issue of confidentiality versus disclosure. I don't think any of us in the news media can seriously ask of the ICRC or others who have this confidential information about the actual treatment of prisoners ‑‑ we cannot ask you to go public because it jeopardizes your very ability to carry on and help those people.

And, yet, quite honestly, I don't see in ‑‑ you know, this is a paradox. With humanitarian law being on its very nature of sovereign states not wanting to punish themselves for violating it, I don't see any other way for this to be stopped, for this to be somehow halted than for us in the public, us in the media somehow to find out about it.

It's the ultimate challenge for ICRC and for others. I think they're probably doing a lot of soul‑searching right now, as Pierre said, about Abu Ghurayb. Did they say enough early enough? Did they even get enough hand sources, the confidentiality really? Did it become kind of a cover for abuses, instead of a means of carrying out humanitarian law?

I don't know quite how you square the circle. All I know is it has to be done. I think it is really essential that timely reporting be allowed somehow, that the word get out in a way so that the public knows about it because once this comes before the public, once this is in the public spotlight, the abuses, especially in a democracy like the United States, can hardly be carried on any longer.

Thank you.

(Applause.)

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you very much, Roy. I am glad you decided to touch on the other subjects, not just the last one.

Let me now introduce our last speaker of this panel: John Prendergast. John is the Special Advisor to the President of the International Crisis Group. He has focused most of his 20‑year career on conflict resolution in Africa and the shaping of U.S. foreign policy towards that region.

During the Clinton administration, John served as the Director of African Affairs International Security Council from 1996 to 1999 and as the Special Advisor to the Department of State from 1999 to 2001.

Please, John?

John Prendergast: Thank you very much, Katharina.

The first thing you learn in coming to Washington, D.C. is if you don't really know the answer to the question that you're asking, you just focus diligently on a question that you think you can answer. And you hope you get away with it. You hope nobody notices.

Besides the fact that there is an extraordinary panel and even members of the audience, like Jim Shearer [phonetic] or Geoffrey Loane, could say much more than I could about the main subject, I am going to focus on the flip side of this instrumentalization coin; that is, the issue of aid being used as an instrument of the strategies of war and repression by governments and rebel groups throughout the world, thus undermining that very independence of humanitarian action that we're focusing on today.

In my 20 years of visiting and working in African war zones, I've seen aid agencies engage in what I think is an epic struggle against instrumentalization and manipulation of this kind. The work of Pierre really is a testament to that. The attempt to use aid as a weapon of war and a weapon of repression is alive and well.

I got so charged up by this issue about a decade ago that I went and wrote a book about it. And I'm going to be the first person to appear on C‑SPAN and announce that you should not buy my book. I'm personally horrified by everything that I've written that is more than two weeks old. So that is probably the reason why. But in case you are interested, Frontline Diplomacy, Lynne Rienner Publishers. I'm sure you can get a good deal on bulk orders. There are lots of copies in the basement.

In the book, I wrote about the seven deadly sins that have allowed aid agencies to be instrumentalized by warring parties. And I propose ten commandments for reducing that instrumentalization. I obviously was going through some kind of a religious experience when I was writing this thing.

During the decade since then, we have seen a great deal of improvement in the work of the agencies in this regard. I think the NGOs and aid deliverers have worked assiduously and sacrificed greatly to maintain that crucially important independence.

So the bottom line is that independent humanitarian action can indeed survive and impartiality should remain the goal of humanitarian agencies. And that epic struggle will continue. But I am going to focus more today on a deeper malaise connected with this subject.

Over ten years ago, many of us in this room were writing and talking about the phenomenon of the substitution of humanitarian aid for political engagement.

Now, aside from the tendency of the sort of neoconservative impulse to invade rogue states or whatever we're calling them these days, in general this principle of substituting humanitarian assistance for political engagement remains the norm in international relations, particularly in peripheral zones, particularly in Africa. And that default mode is where we end up being in most occasions of tremendous crisis.

We're getting better and better, though, at providing our humanitarian Band‑Aids, principally because the aid agencies again are so conscientiously trying to improve performance, but we remain, I think, unwilling or unable to expend any leverage or take any real risks to attempt to confront or to counter crimes against humanity or war crimes in the world's peripheral zones outside of our perceived national security interests. And often those are humanitarian crimes. Those are the aid‑related violations and gross abuses of international humanitarian law.

So, for example, during the first debate just a few months ago between President Bush and Senator Kerry, the candidates were asked, "What would you do or what will you do ‑‑ now that both of you believe that genocide is occurring in Darfur, what would you do to stop that genocide?"

President Bush responded very frankly by saying, "We're providing $200 million in humanitarian assistance to Sudan." Humanitarian aid has become, in effect, the means by which the government here, governments around the world, and the United Nations exonerate themselves from the grave and urgent responsibility to protect human life.

So now back to the subject of the forum, "Independent Humanitarian Action: Can It Survive?" I think, of course, it can. It is often in the interest of mass murderers and genociders not to rock the boat too violently in this regard while committing their humanitarian crimes.

Therefore, I think that one of the biggest challenges, as I see it, is how the political arms of donor governments, not just the humanitarian agencies and the donor agencies, how they respond to attempts at instrumentalization and manipulation of aid.

When aid is used as a weapon, when it's used to consolidate ethnic cleansing strategies, when it's used to sustain or support militias or militaries, what should be the political reaction?

Now, of course, these tactics are used by warring parties because they work. They are successful tactics of insurgency or counterinsurgency. And so, therefore, these parties will use them.

So they are fundamental war strategies that should be an integral part of how we judge and assess our political response to these governments and to these rebel organizations.

The violations of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions, the protocols, should be basic conditions for our rewarding or punishing these actors.

We really have to move ahead vigorously in enhancing our experience with and deployment of specific tools that punish the perpetrators of humanitarian crimes.

I think there are three areas worth talking about very briefly. The first is the whole targeted sanctions arena. We all know what these things are, and they have been debated widely. But I think that the travel bans and asset freezes that are needed in so many cases, the experience that is being built now as a result of the counterterrorism efforts, as we learn better how to track assistance and movement, track money movements and people movements, that we have to use that experience for those that are committing the kinds of criminal actions that at least drove some of us to come and sit in this room today.

A second area is accountability and accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including these kinds of humanitarian crimes. We have, of course, on one extreme the International Criminal Court. And working down the continuum, we have special tribunals. We have the mixed courts. We have domestic courts. And we have commissions of inquiry.

So there are a lot of different tools that over the last decade now experience is just being built. And I think that we all need to advocate very strongly that those who use aid as a weapon and try to undermine the independence of humanitarian action, this is the kind of sanctionable offense that ought to be considered when accountability is on the table.

And then, thirdly, arms embargoes and arms restrictions and reduction of weapons. You need to begin at least by naming and shaming much more vigorously those that arm and sustain the perpetrators of humanitarian crimes.

So all of these things ‑‑ and there are many, many other strategies that all of you could come with ‑‑ require more investment in intelligence assets to track the money and the arms that sustain the criminals of war that perpetrate these kinds of activities.

I think that the more progress that we can make in these three areas and the more we can target humanitarian crimes as triggers for action and the more seriously we humanitarian and human rights activists in this room are able to press governments and the U.N. to engage politically with an understanding of the humanitarian dynamics, I believe the more successful we're going to be in supporting and upholding the space for impartial humanitarian action in the decades to come.

And remember - do not buy this book. Thank you.

(Applause.)

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you very much, John.

To start the conversation, I would like to just give every one of the speakers an opportunity to first react to all the other interventions. Perhaps I will start with Pierre.

Pierre Kraehenbuehl: Thank you.

Yes, I think it was really a very wide range of issues. And the dilemmas that were put on the table are clearly reflected also in our experience.

Taking also the last comments that John Prendergast has just put forward on the risks of instrumentalization in other forums, not simply in the way, in the framework of the security‑related relationships but in the conduct of humanitarian action, take, for instance, the situation today in Darfur, where you have the risk of over‑concentration of humanitarian assistance into the main urban centers, where IDP camps have been located, running the risk of attracting further movements of populations for today residents and who feel that if the only place where they may receive assistance is these urban centers, that they would have to move again and swell the movements of the concentrations of IDP populations.

So one of the strategies that we are currently trying to implement in Darfur is precisely to assist resident populations so that further movements don't take place. And that is an assistance strategy that is protection‑linked in the sense that we should be able to give people the means to remain. That is the whole logic of international humanitarian law.

But I have to say that referring back to the Bosnian examples that Roy Gutman was also referring to, that one of the terrible challenges that we faced in situations like Bosnia and elsewhere was that the whole logic of international humanitarian law was turned upside down because the whole notion is civilians and people who don't take part in the fighting should be allowed to remain in their homes and their villages and be protected and respected there; whereas, in that particular conflict, it was precisely the civilian who was from the other side that was hunted down, tracked, expelled, and any trace of his past or social or religious background, et cetera, erased.

So the whole framework in which we operated was completely conflicting with the logic of the parties, which then put us in the position that our actions were considered as no longer neutral because by assisting civilians, of course, we were in the eyes of the parties taking sides because we were saying, "That means you're taking sides for the other one that I'm trying to expel."

So I think there was a real interesting round of dynamics put forward there.

Thank you.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

Richard?

Richard Greene: I would agree with Pierre that the presentations really did a good job of outlining the very important and vexing challenges that you face trying to make progress on these issues, which, again, are life and death issues for millions of people.

I would make one small comment on John's presentation in that I'm not sure if John meant to imply that the only thing the U.S. government was doing in Darfur was providing humanitarian assistance.

I mean, obviously there's a lot of other high‑level diplomatic activity going on. It has been a particular focal point of this administration, notwithstanding the incredible horrible conditions there.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

Roy Gutman: Well, I would also comment on Darfur that it seems to me this is a first in the modern times that major governments, starting with Congress but then the administration itself, has labeled this a genocide in the making or genocide underway.

And the invoking of the Genocide Convention is like the rest of humanitarian law in a sense. It's not an empty gesture. It's a very important determination. The big question is, where do we go from here?

The problem the U.S. has faced, as I understand it, at the U.N. is that it ‑‑ one of my reporters at Newsday did an article about this. I think John has spoken about this very eloquently himself. The problem is that the United States in the current situation is not able to really lead the world into concerted action. At least we see this with Ambassador Danforth's remarks I think in this morning's paper. The frustration with the U.N. is so great.

But, you know, we have to come back to the truism that the U.N. is us. The U.N. is the United States and it is all of the other nation states and all of the other actors. And something has happened with the American ability to lead at the U.N., which is tragic, which is really sad because here for the first time you actually have this critical mass of thinking in Washington that something must be done about Darfur.

I'm not sure where we go from here, but I still say there's a little bit of progress in Darfur compared to the Sudan conflict over two decades, which, again, John is really an expert on, namely that for the longest time, this country really was looking the other way and we in the media also were looking the other way. And only the humanitarian aid organizations were trying to draw attention to it.

So things have now reached ‑‑ and, you know, I have to balance it against what I said about the administration on other issues. This is one case where they I think have tried to do the right thing. What they do next I'd be interested to hear if somebody in the audience has a view.

Thank you.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

John?

John Prendergast: I think just to continue along the line here and continue the theme on Darfur just for a second, with all of our advocacy and all of the incentives that we have offered through the Security Council and through the aid donors to the warring parties and the visits of the Secretary of State and the U.N. Security Council, despite all of this activity that Richard rightly points to, the government of Sudan and the rebels in Darfur continue or, in fact, are increasing efforts now in the last month or two to undermine humanitarian action.

The situation has deteriorated with respect to humanitarian access, the safety of humanitarian workers, the attacks on civilians. And I think this results because there is total impunity for these kinds of activities.

An incentive‑based strategy, a constructive engagement strategy with people who are willing and able and demonstrate that willingness and ability over, you know, a 15‑year empirical evidence basis, that that approach of incentive‑based constructive engagement is wrong. And it needs to be abandoned and that, in fact, the kinds of tactics that I outlined, some measure of accountability for these crimes.

Go to Liberia for these kinds of things. Go to Sierra Leone, northern Uganda, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If we don't introduce accountability into the equation, we're going to see a continuation of these things.

It's a hard balancing act ‑‑ I acknowledge that fully ‑‑ between the desire to retain some diplomatic access to these groups at the same time as you're pursuing an agenda of accountability, but it's a fundamentally important one that we have to in each case confront very assertively. And I think the time has come now in Darfur, perhaps more than any place in the world, to confront that issue of accountability.

Roy Gutman: And how? How do we confront it?

John Prendergast: As the moderator, is that okay?

Katharina Vogeli: Of course, of course. Please.

John Prendergast: How do we confront accountability? I think it's precisely using those strategies. This government in Khartoum is a government that has demonstrated that if you pressure it, if you utilize punitive actions, they will change their behavior.

They did it in response to their support for terrorism in the 1990s when a simple travel ban was imposed by the U.N. Security Council. And we saw some fairly substantial changes, the tossing out of bin Laden, the dismantling of al‑Qaeda's commercial infrastructure.

We're seeing movement. So I think imposing similar measures in the form of arms embargoes and asset freezes and travel bans and pushing the envelope on accountability ‑‑ where it goes we'll have to see ‑‑ is the way to quickly gain Khartoum's attention and quickly get an arresting of the activities of the Janjaweed.

You know, ten years ago ‑‑ remember, there is a history of these things. We don't just all appear yesterday and go, "Gee, I wonder what we should do about these terrible militias."

Ten years ago you all remember perhaps that there was a major phenomenon of slave raiding in southwestern Sudan. That slave raiding was underwritten by government‑supported militias that were being paid to support and armed and utilized by the government to attack the civilian support base of the southern‑based rebels. It's the same phenomenon we're seeing with the Janjaweed we saw with the PDF in southwestern Sudan in the Dinka areas.

When the pressure got too great on the Government of Sudan and at the same time most analysts were saying, "Gee, the militias are out of control. We can't stop it," the government pulled it back. There were a number of other factors involved. And there is no slave raiding in Sudan now.

So I do think that there are specific measures you can take in specific circumstances to garner specific results. In this case, it's a very clear empirical basis for that assertion.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you very much. I think I hear two key issues here that may be hindering or preventing independence from military action, which was the thing we started out with.

It was interesting listening to the four speakers talk about this fine line between cooperation and independence. Richard Greene, for instance, was saying that there needed to be more cooperation between military planners and humanitarian agencies. I think you were talking particularly about Afghanistan at that point. You were also talking about an increased or improved security risk management that was necessary.

If I understood you correctly, you were suggesting that there needed to be very close cooperation between military/government action and humanitarian action. I'm not sure if I am misinterpreting that. I understood that the initiative, the direction for this should come from the government side.

Richard Greene: Excuse me, Katharina. Just emphasis on respect for roles, proper roles, with military creating space for humanitarian organizations to operate.

Katharina Vogeli: All right. Thank you.

Roy Gutman was talking about how important it was to do timely reporting on the violations of humanitarian law. I wonder where you get the information for timely reporting, particularly if you don't really have free movement of journalists in crisis regions or in war regions.

Pierre, in your second comment you mentioned this tension between the instrumentalization and the rejection of, for instance, the ICRC as a humanitarian agency.

John, also a little bit along the lines of what Roy had said, you were mentioning how important it was to name and shame the perpetrators of actions.

I think all of this plays into the last point that you were elaborating on, the accountability, how this could also perhaps prevent the resolution of the humanitarian crisis.

There is this fine line between cooperation and independence. How are we going to resolve this? Is this the issue? Did I understand this correctly? And what is the resolution for this? If there's a new crisis ‑‑ I'm not naming any countries that might explode, but should there be a brand new crisis, how should one go about it?

I don't know. Pierre, can I put you on the spot first?

Pierre Kraehenbuehl: Yes, it is a fine line between cooperation and independence. And I think, just to make that clear, when we are asked, you know, "Is it a problem for you to interact with the military in a given conflict zone?" it isn't because it is part of our daily business. In fact, we work with armed forces in every conflict zone where we operate. I think it is important for us to be understood and predictable in that sense.

So the element of dialogue and interaction is there. Where we draw the line in our case ‑‑ and, really, I can speak only for the ICRC in terms of humanitarian organizations ‑‑ is that we will not be part of processes that integrate us into a political and military strategy.

Why do I say that? Because if you think back to the 1990s and again taking the examples of U.N. peacekeeping deployments that Roy was referring to earlier, there might still have been at that time the notion that there was sort of a benign deployments to secure situations. There could be cooperation. It could be understood by all of the parties between the U.N. and other actors.

Today the military deployments that we see take place in Iraq and Afghanistan or in other contexts carried out by the international community are, of course, active and perceived by some as hostile military deployments.

Now, if in that framework we as ICRC are misunderstood as being a part of that, then the security of our staff and the understanding of our role is in jeopardy. And that is where we don't have a position on the provincial reconstruction teams as such.

We think it can be perfectly understood that from the perspective of the international forces on the ground, a system like the PRT is established. But to the extent that it starts to integrate humanitarian responses into a strategy that is to defeat an enemy, then we start to have a serious problem because you have civil affairs officers that go out to different regions, at times dressed in civilian clothes like the delegates of the ICRC, and the population starts to misread who is who. And then the military operation is carried out in the region.

Again, we have nothing to comment about the military and political strategies that are implemented, but we will not be integrated into those. That's where we want to define the line, which means in no sense that we don't interact, discuss with these groups on the ground. That's where the line is for us very clearly.

On the issue of timely reporting of violations and again coming back to Abu Ghurayb. I was struck, when we look in retrospect, that there was one very interesting document that Amnesty International put out on the 18th of March of this year, about one year after the beginning of the U.S. and international operation and invasion of Iraq.

In it, there were descriptions of some of the key patterns of what was happening inside Abu Ghurayb. If you go back and read it, you realize that there were things described there Amnesty International recognizes itself to its disappointment. I will not say more.

There was very little public debate about what was in that report. Why was that? Now, this is only a hypothesis on my part. I can't back that up with any facts. The fact was that words were simply not enough. And it took photographs that then started to circulate about what had happened at Abu Ghurayb to really generate the debate.

And that is probably the point where we have to also explore because the discussion the ICRC is sometimes confronted with is speaking out versus not speaking out.

Well, at least one lesson that I drew from that debate maybe was that if Amnesty International is to be taken as the benchmark there in that regard, it�s not enough to just have spoken. The photographs were needed to create the debate. And that's something we probably will never be able in that regard to inject into and provide.

Roy Gutman: Maybe I could just respond on that because, also coming back to your question, Katharina, about how our reporters ‑‑ how is the public to know about these things happening when we can't get inside?

And, you know, the challenge for a reporter is those places where the doors are locked, where we can't get inside. I mean, you either want to get around it or you want to find some way to find out what the hell is going on behind those doors, those locked doors. And Abu Ghurayb was one set of locked doors. And Darfur is on the whole a set of locked doors.

Well, you know, human ingenuity is such that, actually, there are ways around these problems, but it takes a lot of effort. And it takes a certain amount of faith that there really is a story there and a hell of a lot of determination until you find it.

I think this is a failing of the media, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq. I think those doors were closed in both places. The Taliban would not allow the media in to cover the country. They would not allow the media in in 1998, after the massacre in Mazar‑I‑Sharif, thousands of people killed. Media basically ignored the story.

And, yet, there is a way to cover it. The way to cover it is the people who escape from there, the refugees. As they arrive, you simply have to talk to them. And you have to put together a story, a mosaic if it is, and try to assemble the best way you can what happened.

You try to check it out with humanitarian organizations that may or may not know their own information with governments. At the end of the day, it's a journalistic risk that we have to take.

I'm sorry to say that in both cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, we failed. And in the case of Abu Ghurayb, for example, you know, it's not that the Americans were allowing a lot of people to depart Abu Ghurayb because they didn't have a procedure there, just as in Guantanamo, for determining who they had, whether they had the right people, the wrong people, whether they had criminals, whether they had terrorists. They were just taking thousands of people off the streets and from their homes without good cause.

And, of course, the reason they turned to torture and abuses and interrogation was because they had the wrong people on the whole and they couldn't get intelligence out of them.

So one mistake leads to another. And the absence of this principal distinction in terms of determining who you have, do you have combatants, do you have noncombatants, is at the heart of the mistake there.

So I think we as media have to master the rules and understand some of the principles of humanitarian law. And then we have to make it our obligation to find the people who have been released or find people who know what is going on behind the doors and put together our picture as best we can.

And I hope in the future, we might. We certainly didn't in the last examples.

Katharina Vogeli: Yes. John?

John Prendergast: Just building on something Pierre said, not getting integrated into military strategies, whether local or international, I think is a crucial imperative for humanitarian actions. That would certainly be our theme.

This is the general rule. I think if we look at the counter‑terrorism operations ‑‑ and, again, unfortunately, I am limited to only African experience, but in the current counter-terrorism efforts in Africa at this point by the United States government, most of the money that is being expended for these operations is not going into poverty alleviation. It's not going into outreach to Muslim communities. It is not going into improving the rule of law. It's going into training the host government militaries to border security and supporting civic action by the U.S. military.

Now, when civic action is done by the U.S. military, the lines are blurred. When the U.S. military goes in and does these grab and jab kinds of things for a couple of weeks and then leaves, that undermines I think independent humanitarian action. And I suspect that counter‑terrorism efforts going forward are going to continue to put at risk the independence of humanitarian and development aid efforts, at least in Africa and perhaps more broadly.

Richard Greene: Katharina, there is a difference between cooperation and integration. Cooperation works. It worked in Kosovo, it's working in Afghanistan and is working in the horrible conditions that humanitarian organizations, those that are left, face in Iraq.

Let me also come back to the element of instrumentality. Clearly we as the United States government hold as a core value providing humanitarian assistance to conflict victims. It's a core value of this administration. It was a core value of the last administration. It's going to be a core value of any government of the United States.

And it can be a core value of us. We can implement that without I think crossing the line into instrumentality that Pierre is talking about, again the difference between cooperation and integration.

Katharina Vogeli: So I guess this would probably be a difference between what people like the insurgents or terrorists in Iraq perceive to be instrumentalization or cooperation in terms of what the common goals are between humanitarian workers and, say, the military and what is actually the fact on the ground. That might be a discussion for another time, the need for cooperation, I assume.

Roy Gutman: Well, can I make one point, you know, just to state the very obvious? The reason that this is such an issue now, whether the aid organizations are being instrumentalized or being manipulated or being used, have become part of the occupying force in a sense, is because the occupying force has not been sufficient in either Afghanistan or Iraq to provide the security in which the aid organizations can work.

I mean, this is a huge issue because we didn't send enough troops, and we don't have enough troops in either place. So how can they operate at all except under the kind of military umbrella? And then that causes immense problems from there on out.

I mean, you cannot simply use aid organizations in the way that we're asking them to operate unless you provide real security.

Katharina Vogeli: Right. I would like to open the floor to questions from the public now. I would suggest ‑‑ yes, the first one is already coming through at the microphone. Please just state your affiliation, your name, and keep your questions brief, please.

Question: I'm Al Milliken affiliated with Washington Independent Writers.

Have any of you noticed anything supernatural and/or super powerful from the symbol of the Red Cross, the empty, yet blood‑colored Christian cross itself?

I'm continually amazed at how many Christians and even Red Cross workers themselves do not understand the Christian origins of the organization.

Doesn't it seem significant that when even other monotheistic religions, like Islam and Judaism, find the cross offensive and foolish, some ‑‑ and do any of you? ‑‑ recognize the power of God it represents and preaches in actions more than words?

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

Pierre, I will put you on the spot for that one.

Pierre Kraehenbuehl: We have had discussions with ‑‑ I've named a few groups that we have been interacting with in the field earlier in Muslim societies and in many other countries.

The emblem is an issue. There are people who are sensitive about it. But it's not the main concern today. I'll be very frank. In most groups that we ask, they say, "Yes, that is a question that keeps coming up among our militants. And they wonder why you've chosen that particular emblem and where it came from, and what it represents. And, yes, we do associate it with other chapters of history," et cetera.

But if you look at it, for instance, we have over the last years on average spent annual budgets in the excess of 6 to 700 million U.S. dollars a year around the world. Half of that money is spent in conflict zones in the Muslim world and has for a long time.

So we have obviously managed, despite the sensitivities associated with that, to demonstrate through our action and choices that, in fact, these sensitivities have to be discussed and reviewed but that the quality and the choices that we make in operational terms have also been to the benefit of populations that are from different social, religious, political, and other backgrounds.

I think for me, I don't deny that it is a challenge in today's more polarized environment that people will look at that even more than they have in the past, as they may look at where our funding comes -- essentially from Western governments -- as they may look at at times the staff composition.

But look at it from another perspective. If there is one organization that is multinational in its staff composition, it is the U.N. And, yet, they have also been attacked.

I think for us at the end of the day, it's what people understand of what we stand for that will make a difference in how they judge our independence.

Many of the groups, fairly radical groups, that we deal with have said, "Our element is that we will judge you on your independence." So the emblem is an aspect, but I don't feel it is the primary one today.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

Question: Yes. I want to thank you all for your presentations, very thought‑provoking, very interesting.

My name is Paulette Lee. And I'm wondering whether it has to be an either/or situation. It seems to me that there is a role for the ICRC to be for confidentiality and neutrality and for other organizations to speak out and to have that be part of their mission. And if the ICRC is aware of abuses, certainly there are channels by which it can convey that concern to other organizations who are more willing to speak out.

So my question is, does it have to be an either/or situation?

Thank you.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

Does anyone want to take that?

John Prendergast: Well, I'll say something quick about it. Absolutely I think the division of labor is key as a person who works for ICG and someone who worked for Human Rights Watch in the past and other groups of that kind, the advocacy world.

There are plenty of advocacy groups that with the kind of information that is garnered on the ground often from humanitarian organizations which share in the interest of their humanitarian mandate, we do the job of advocacy.

I never have expected that humanitarian actors play that role unless that role is not being fulfilled, for whatever reason, or the situation is so abusive on the ground with respect to humanitarian principles and, for some reason, that message is not being conveyed fully that they have to withdraw and state why they are withdrawing.

At the end of the day, it's a failure. If the factors are not identified as to what is happening on the ground in a particular place, it's not the failure of the humanitarian organizations in conveying that. It's the failure of the human rights community and those that purport to affect policy on the issues that are of concern to humanitarian groups.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

Roy Gutman: Does that apply in your mind, John, on Abu Ghurayb and Guantanamo? Have the humanitarian organizations failed? It seems to me that terrible abuses have occurred. The United States has been right at the heart of them. And we only find out with great delay. And I'm just wondering.

As I was saying, mea culpa, I think the media have not done their job sufficiently. On the other hand, you mentioned humanitarian organizations. I just wonder, have they done their job?

Pierre Kraehenbuehl: It certainly was asked several times, "What would it take, again? What would it take for the ICRC when you had the images of Abu Ghurayb?" And we were asked, "Well, what did you do about it?"

Our response is ‑‑ that's never a very attractive one when you have to face that type of question and the intensity of what the images were signaling about what had happened. We had to go back to make the usual jargon about, "Well, we have made confidential bilateral representations."

And people say, "Well, how effective was that if we look at the photographs?" Well, I have to tell you, in all frankness, that when we reviewed that, it was very clear that some of the aspects that you then saw in the report that was leaked were documented on a regular basis since the middle of last year to the various parties responsible on the ground, whether the CPA or simply the military forces there and the legal officers and everything.

There were clearly instances in which we felt those recommendations were taken on board and other aspects in which we clearly had disagreements there on the table that we were working on.

So in our judgment ‑‑ but, again, that can be challenged. That has to be under scrutiny as well. In our judgment, there was progress being made in that regard. But, of course, when you are then confronted with the photographs, of which, by the way, I have no indication as to when they were taken, which is just another point, which blurs the debate to some extent because I could not say to you, these photographs were of the time of the situation which we considered very serious and documented into the report that you saw and were then addressed later or whether those photographs were more recent than that at the time they were disclosed, which, of course, changed and would change the debate somewhat.

But we felt it was clearly being worked on by the teams on the ground. And then it is always a question of others judging whether we made the right call on that one.

It's clear that I felt ‑‑ and that's why I referred to the amnesty report also ‑‑ that even before the photographs came out, there were elements in the public domain that, to take your point, could have been maybe explored more by other sources than by our own.

For us, it was vital ‑‑ and you will understand that also ‑‑ on the basis of what was documented in Abu Ghurayb for us to continue to have access to these people considering also what was going on.

Richard Greene: Let's also not lose sight of the large number of very extensive U.S. government investigations that were launched among Abu Ghurayb.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

Question: Hi. I am Stephanie Hill with Voice of America.

I have two questions. Regarding the first question, I was curious to know, is the situation for humanitarian workers on the ground getting better or has it been unchanged?

Mr. Kraehenbuehl mentioned that targeting aid workers is not a new thing, but Mr. Gutman had mentioned that it seemed like it was getting more dangerous. So I was just curious to know what the situation was for aid workers on the ground.

And the second question, I was wondering what the U.S. government should be doing to ‑‑ is there anything the U.S. government can be doing to help aid workers on the ground in places like Iraq, Afghanistan or ‑‑ I was listening to several speakers mentioning Abu Ghurayb and Bhagram. And I was wondering if the U.S. troops in country are part of the problem.

Thanks.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

So perhaps the first part would be for Pierre, the second part for Richard.

Pierre Kraehenbuehl: Well, I don't think that for us the security parameters on the ground have significantly improved. I mean, it's a very, very dangerous environment to work currently in Iraq. And we have had to take measures that are unusual for the ICRC as a result of the choice that we made to remain present. So I think that part is clear.

Now, from the point of view of what kind of things we considered just after the attack on the 27th of October, when we were wondering whether one can remain present in a context where one has suffered such an attack and delivered one, of course, one option that would have been on the table theoretically was to resort to armed escorts or to armed protection of our premises. But we ruled that one out almost immediately because considering the type of environment that we are in there, we feel it could not be ‑‑ first of all, which armed escort would we choose? And which would be understood as being acceptable to all parties in an environment like that? I think you can immediately understand the difficulties there and the sensitivities involved.

So we had to steer clear of that type of an option and have for the moment just simply decided to operate in a very flexible and low‑key and not as predictable and visible a way as we have traditionally in other operations and in other contexts, trying to then gradually over time reestablish levels of acceptance that we would find again meeting our normal criteria.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

Richard?

Richard Greene: Improvement comes from political progress and from, picking up on John's point, accountability. And that's clearly the focus of our efforts in Afghanistan and in Iraq, in Darfur as well.

About four months ago, losing track of time, Dr. Rice chaired a meeting with leading American NGOs on Darfur where the security issue was talked about at great length. The focus of the discussion was not capacity and what can we do to get to populations who are clearly in need now today and will continue to be in need. The focus of the conversation from the leading American NGOs was, what are you, the U.S. government, doing to bring about a political settlement where these issues of security or issues of humanitarian access are taken care of? I mean, that has got to be the focus. John is right on that point.

In terms of working with aid organizations ‑‑ and we have one here in the audience who can talk about experiences in Afghanistan working on the part of a PRT.

Clearly, we work closely with aid organizations on the ground in terms of information sharing. We work closely to try to limit those instances where there might be a conflict over who is doing what where.

I think the Afghan PRT experience has significantly improved over what it was a year ago. The key here is information sharing. And the key here is achieving the overall objective of providing secure humanitarian space for agencies to operate.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you very much.

Question: Heather Foote (phonetic), American Foreign Service Committee.

Would you comment on what you see as the state of the discussion within government and between government and humanitarian aid agencies on the question of the role, who are humanitarian agencies, who does humanitarian relief work because there seem to be some widely varying self‑identifications as to how those words apply to different actors.

There has been over quite some time a military‑civilian debate on these issues, but I am asking for what your perception of the state of those discussions is in the present day.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you very much.

I would leave that up to the panel to discuss as you feel like it.

Richard Greene: My impression ‑‑ and, admittedly, sometimes I find myself in the minority on this ‑‑ is that this is not as big an issue as it is sometimes made out to be. Organizations and governments have worked in a cooperative way on these issues for any number of years.

Sometimes the issue comes up ‑‑ and John and Pierre referred to this � about some situations in conflicts when military officials are delivering assistance. And that is built into military doctrine. It's built into training. It's built into every single CIVMIL conversation that humanitarian organizations have with military officials and civilian agencies have with military officials on the importance of respecting space.

And there are going to be instances where your only military organizations are going to have access to humanitarian organizations. And then it's a matter of, Do we want assistance delivered or not? Clearly we want that assistance delivered.

I think we collaboratively as a humanitarian community are working through this. And I think we have gotten smarter about how we do PRTs in Afghanistan. And I don't see it as the burning issue of the day. I see the burning issue of the day, what the theme of this panel is, humanitarian security.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

Anyone else?

Pierre Kraehenbuehl: I think it's true that the number of actors today involved in humanitarian action doesn't necessarily make it very easy, for instance, for military actors that deploy in a given context to understand exactly where everybody is coming from and going.

I have often discussed that with people in military in the Balkans and others saying it is very difficult for us to understand when you come into a place like that what your different mandates are, what you refer to, why you seem to be describing neutrality, independence, and others from different angles. I can see that difficulty, and it's true.

That relates very much to the 1990s, where, as other persons here have referred to, there was this retreating of political action and pushing humanitarian actors forward to try and respond in the face of lacking political commitments in some of the important conflict zones around the world.

That created, with a lot of money available, a multiplication of the number of actors involved in the field and, it's true, a lack of predictability probably also in terms of who was doing what and how.

Again, it doesn't change the fact that on the ground, we can work very clearly on what we want to be part of, information exchange, predictability, and understanding of our mandate and added role. But also just we say to the military actors that we have never said that military actors cannot or should not be involved in humanitarian responses. I mean, that's precisely built into the whole Geneva Conventions logic.

If a military force is engaged in combat and there are wounded or people that are in need of assistance, it is very much the role of the military to try and attend, evacuate, attribute to that; particularly in situations where the humanitarian actors cannot reach the front line. That's not in question.

The point is to resist the temptation to make, then, out of the broader humanitarian community an instrument of political and military strategy.

You could take the case of Mike Durant. We would not have had access to him in the hands of Mohammed Aidid if the impression was of that faction that the ICRC was part of the broader political military approach of the U.N. deployments and other international presence.

That's where we just have to recognize the respective roles, but that requires interaction. It requires dialogue and understanding of each other's mandates.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

John?

John Prendergast: Just a very quick footnote to what Richard said. I think that when the U.S. military does exactly what relief agencies do in sort of small‑scale and medium‑scale relief and development interventions, that becomes a potential problem. But it's much better to focus on things the humanitarian agencies can't do in the context of civic actions.

I'm quite sure we're going to see an increasing role for U.S. military in civic action. There ought to be a distinction between the kinds of activities that are usually done by relief and development organizations in the kind of larger‑scale infrastructure development that the military might be able to bring a comparative advantage to and, thus, provide a degree of separation perhaps, not ideal but just becoming sensitive to how the U.S. is perceived and understanding how it's perceived from the perspectives of the communities we're trying to influence is crucially important.

And the disconnect, having just spent a lot of time in those areas over the summer, the disconnect between what the U.S. military has articulated as to what they are accomplishing by virtue of their civic action and the Muslim communities on the ground.

In the places that I visited over the last few months, it's profound. The gap is profound. So I think we just need to continue to see what would make better sense because I am sure we are going to keep doing this stuff.

Katharina Vogeli: I was going to say we have one more question, but I see somebody standing and somebody sitting to ask a question. So I would ask you to just be very, very brief. Perhaps both ask your questions and then one last round of answers.

Question: There has been a lot of talk today about accountability of other nations, but my question is about the accountability of the U.S., who have seemingly sent a signal to the world that the new candidate for Attorney General has been one of the ones that has been responsible for the memo that seemingly led to putting aside the Geneva Conventions for those who were in the terrorist group.

Does this send a signal to the world that we're abdicating a little bit on moral leadership for protecting the rights of all people?

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

Please?

Question: Mr. Greene, in regard to your point about improving cooperation between humanitarian organizations and the U.S. military, where possible, should neutral humanitarian organizations also cooperate more with insurgent fighters and groups? If not, does that not risk increasing the identification of humanitarian workers with the U.S. military?

Thanks.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you. Why don't each one of you just take a shot at these questions? And then I think we need to close already. Why don't you start, Pierre? You were the first one.

Pierre Kraehenbuehl: Well, I think the thing that I would like to pick up on there is that ‑‑ there are two things. On the international humanitarian law side and the importance of it, we have often heard that we are entering a new phase to which the Geneva Conventions are not fully applicable or at least not designed, really, to apply to.

As was said earlier, I think by Roy, that our message is a bit to work outside of that framework or don't apply it at your own risk. And I think that is a little bit different from the message of Abu Ghurayb because we think we agreed fully.

I mean, if you ask me as an operational person do I think that the Geneva Conventions cover every possible situation, do I think it is perfect in giving me and my colleagues the means to respond to violations in the field, I would say no. Of course, we could imagine stronger backbones in terms of, for instance, internal conflicts and others.

So we're always prepared to discuss that, but we say until a better deal has been found, apply existing law in good faith. And that is our fundamental message.

The other point on the interaction with non‑state actors and everything, it's clear it's ICRC standard practice. We do that. And I know that it is not very easy in today's environment to suggest that if there were opportunities to sit down with representatives of some of the radical groups involved in some of these actions that we have been describing, that the ICRC would do that.

But I prefer to leave nobody in any doubt � this is part of our standard operating procedure. We have visited and worked and talked with people in past contexts that have been described as members of terrorist organizations by governments around the world for many, many years. Sure, it's not very easy to get that message across about why we do that, but we think that is the best way, namely that we can offer added value in trying to protect people in situations of conflict. And we will continue to do that.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

Richard?

Richard Greene: Clearly we would totally reject the accusation implied in the gentle lady's first question and point to the number of very visible and wide ongoing investigations of Abu Ghurayb.

Regarding the second point, for many years have we been the leading supporter of the ICRC�s role and mission and how it carries out its mandate. And I'll leave it at that.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

Roy?

Roy Gutman: Well, again to second what Richard said, the U.S. is investigating the abuses. There have been several reports out. And there are still some to come. Court-martials are underway and more are to come. I think, frankly, we haven't really had a complete accounting yet. And I'm not sure when we're going to get it.

What is going on right now in Guantanamo, from everything we're reading, is an unacceptable, imprecise, ambiguous, secret, and just strange process of both determining who is a combatant and who is not in order to decide whether people should be held there; and then, secondly, with those who are accused of war crimes actually having a fair and reasonable process for determining what sentence to pass, what the crime is, and then what to do about it.

This whole system just doesn't work. It is a failure. And everything you read just sort of ‑‑ the Wall Street Journal had a very good series about a month or two ago on the procedures in Guantanamo. It just chills you because you realize this is such a divergence from rule of law that this country stands for. Nevertheless, the reporting on that is improving. And we have to give credit where it is due, that there are reports and investigations underway.

And on the issue of ICRC and other organizations dealing with insurgent groups, I don't see how they have a choice. They have really got to ‑‑ if they're going to take care of the detainees try to keep people alive, they have to go to both sides. They have to cross. They have to walk through fire, if you want. And it's a unique function that only they can carry out.

I think nobody in their right mind would want to stop it.

Katharina Vogeli: Thank you.

John?

John Prendergast: Well, I think I am the only person in this room who is not an expert on Abu Ghurayb. So I will make one more urgent appeal. Please do not buy this book.

Katharina Vogeli: I think we have plenty of material for at least one other panel. And then I will not forgot to bring all of the other panelists' books along, particularly also Roy's, but I am right now standing very much in debt, which is very interesting as well.

I have you to thank you all for your attention. I want to thank an outstanding panel. John, Pierre, Richard, and Roy, it was wonderful to have you here. Thank you for making the time. And now all that is left for me is to wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving.

(Applause.)