 Antonio Dunini, thank you for joining us. You spoke yesterday on civil-military interaction, the future of humanitarian action. Can you tell us a little bit about your presentation? My presentation was from a humanitarian perspective. I've spent the last 20, 25 years of my life working on humanitarian issues. So I was interested in looking at how the relationship between the civil agencies and the military is evolving in crisis situations. So I talked a little bit about the changing nature of the humanitarian enterprise, which over the past 10 years has increased in size, it's become more institutionalized, it's become more predictable in many ways, also more effective. But at the same time, what we've seen over the past 10 years is an increasing politicization of the humanitarian work in the sense that in contexts like Afghanistan, like Iraq, like Somalia today, increasingly humanitarian action is seen as a part of the foreign policy initiatives of governments. And that has positive and negative aspects. And actually I think I focus more on the negative parts in my presentation. I talked about Haiti, I talked about Pakistan and I talked about Afghanistan in particular. Specifically with the Afghanistan experience, what lessons do you think were learned? Well, I think the lessons are that for me it's very important to maintain a distinction between activities like humanitarian activities that have a basic ethical value and activities that are political. And what's happened is that there's been an attempt by the countries intervening in Afghanistan to utilize humanitarian action as a part of the strategy to achieve the political or military objectives of the coalition. And this has had negative impact on the ability of humanitarian agencies to address urgent need. And I gave one example in particular where there was an operation by ISAF and the Afghan National Army where they came to a series of villages in western Afghanistan to bring assistance to this village. And then ISAF or NATO issued a press release saying that in exchange of this assistance the Afghan National Army was asking the elders of the village for information on where the Taliban were hiding. So clearly that was an extreme example of what I felt that was not a good idea because it puts humanitarian plays at risk as being seen as part of a political or military enterprise while the way in which humanitarian agencies work is that in order to have access and to be able to address need where need is assessed to be urgent you need to be able to speak to everybody and to be seen as far as possible as neutral, impartial and independent. Right, and focusing on their needs. Yeah, rather than of course the coalition objectives, you can agree or disagree with them but from a humanitarian perspective I think it's very important to focus on the needs of the population and to have as much insulation or separation from the humanitarian agenda from the political or military agenda. Right, right, and I guess particularly for the military who are in there it's a big ask, they've got military skills but we're now asking them to have a sense of diplomacy and understanding. Well that's what's happened over the past 10 years that increasingly the military have been called upon to perform activities which aren't technically speaking military and I think that there are pluses and minuses to this approach in so-called natural disaster context when there's an earthquake or floods and if there's not a conflict in the country there is a role for the military and the military and the humanitarian agencies can talk and to some extent cooperate but when there's a conflict I think you have to be very careful that what the military do doesn't compromise the work that the humanitarian agencies are trying to do and that I think is what we've seen in Afghanistan, we've seen it partly in Iraq as well we're seeing it again in Somalia where the context of the global war on terror assumes from the point of view of the countries that are active in this so-called war that everybody is participating in the same effort, that we're all in the same boat but from a humanitarian perspective I think it's a mistake to say that we're all in the same boat because the boat that the humanitarians are in is one that focuses exclusively on the immediate life-saving and life-protecting needs of the population and we're not concerned as a citizen of course I have my own views but as a humanitarian we're not concerned on whether this conflict is a justified one or not Antonio you've worked in this field for many years what drives you, what are you passionate about? Well I actually fell into this field by mistake because I'd started my career in the UN working on evaluation issues doing studies on how the organization functioned and for 10, 15 years I was doing that and then by chance I got involved in the special office that was created in 1988 to address the issues of the crisis in Afghanistan so I joined this office, I went out to the region to Afghanistan in 1989 and since then it's sort of grown on me that why one does these things is difficult to explain maybe in a sense because for my generation we perhaps many of us believe that we were going to change the world back in the 60s and 70s and when that didn't happen we in different ways looked for areas of work that would give more immediate meaning to what we do and one of the pluses of humanitarian action is that you're able often to see the results of your work and I know it's a very, it can be quite difficult work but it's also rewarding in the sense that you are able to be in sync with the communities that are suffering from the consequences of crisis and conflict and hopefully be able to do something to alleviate their condition So what does the future hold for civil and military interaction? Well I think that probably with the kind of crisis that we're seeing now and particularly in Asia with climate change and urbanization I think we're going to see more interaction between the civil and the military players what we're also going to see is more interaction with the state in the sense that climate change and urbanization if you intervene in these areas you're going to inevitably be working in either incorporation or sometimes intention with the state authorities and I think one of the lessons of the past 10 years is that the sort of interventionist spirit of humanitarian agencies has got pluses but it's also got minuses for a long time there's been a perception which I think is justified that humanitarians were state avoiding working around the state and in these crisis linked to climate change urbanization potentially technological disasters I think it's not going to be possible to do that so we'll have to work with the legitimate state authorities that are there and in a sense if the government is organizing or coordinating the response then it's going to be easier to define the roles of the civilian and the military agencies it's in countries in conflict like Afghanistan or potentially like Somalia where it remains very difficult but when there's a legitimate state I think it's okay we can find ways and there's guidelines that define how the different sorts of players should operate Antonio, Denini, thank you for your time today it was great, thank you very much