 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Institute of International European Affairs, we're delighted that you were able to join us for today's lecture by Peter Marger, who's the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Peter will talk to us about COVID-19 and conflict zones, how the pandemic is impacting on and shaping humanitarian actions. So we're looking forward very much to this event, which will be the third in this year's Irish Age Development Matters lecture series. We're delighted to have Irish Age support and sponsorship for this series, and in a moment I'd ask Roy DeBurke, the Director General of Irish Age, to introduce our speaker, Peter Marger. I've had the pleasure of working with Peter over the last few years in his ICRC role, and I look forward very much to his reflections on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the vital work which ICRC does around the world. He'll also talk more generally about the way in which the humanitarian landscape is being affected by the pandemic. Peter will speak to us for about 20 minutes. We'll then go to Q&A for about an additional 20 minutes or so. You can join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen. And please feel free to send in questions at any time during the session, and we will come to them when Peter has finished his presentation. And now, Roy, I'd like to invite you to introduce Peter. Thanks, David. And thank you, Peter, as well for joining us. In a parallel reality, one untouched by the constraints of COVID-19 would all be here in person at this discussion, and Peter will be in Clemenon Jail tonight. And why is that? And that's because this year Ireland is the donor chair of the International Community of the Red Cross and RecCresence Donor Support Group. And we'd hope to have Peter and his colleagues here in Dublin for a couple of days today and tomorrow for the ICRC's Donor Support Group annual meeting, which would have been in Dublin Castle with an event in Clemenon Jail tonight. We all know why that isn't happening in real life, and that's why we're also in this virtual format today. And we've all had to change and adapt to the challenges which the virus has posed. And the ICRC is one of those organizations which has adapted, and no doubt Peter will touch on that. Peter and I have both been participating in that annual general meeting that I told you about that I just mentioned. We both virtually stepped out and stepped in again in the type of virtual landing and spa. And to be here today, and we both step back in again later on. And I know that I don't want to preempt what Peter is going to say, but it's fair to say that the ICRC is responding bravely because of the conditions where its teams work and creatively to what is not just a health crisis, but it's also an economic and social crisis that's exacerbating humanitarian needs and fragility around the world. The ICRC is working hard to encourage ceasefires and reduce violence, which unchecked will only increase that humanitarian need. The humanitarian need which before the crisis the UN estimated would touch 180 million people this year, and that is only getting worse. Peter will no doubt set out a number of principles which the ICRC is taking to that approach and which Ireland supports. Principles around local support for local needs, being holistic. And also identify and hold some of the opportunities with the pandemic response enables. And as Irish aid, as Ireland, we're very proud to partner with the ICRC in this humanitarian response. And that humanitarian work is not all of course that the ICRC does, you know, as guardian of the Geneva Conventions, it is the custodian of international humanitarian law. And as many of those joining this call today will know, you know, Ireland works closely with the ICRC, you know, on such signature foreign policy issues such as disarmament which come under that rubric. And also last year, you know, the Irish Red Cross celebrated its centenary. And as part of the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is part of that same Red Cross family that the ICRC is, you know, is a sense that the parent of, you know, and through the Red Cross, you know, there's been some really interesting work underway in terms, you know, here, for example, in Irish prisons to make sure that Irish prisoners remain safe from COVID during this particular special time. And that echoes the work that the ICRC is doing worldwide in detention. ICRC has an office in Belfast and continues to work quietly there. One of the many actors on the peace process stage, and it's making a really important contribution in ensuring that our islands remain safe. So there are many things that the ICRC goes which are go well beyond COVID-19 and well beyond humanitarian assistance. And that's why it's really important that Peter is with us virtually today. You know, he's been president of the ICRC since 2012. Under his presidency, the organization has grown to then 19,000 people. The human organization is often a sign of success. I think we have to take that in some senses as a sign of our collective failure, because it shows how much humanitarian need has grown under, around the world, not because of Peter's stewardship, but during the period of his stewardship. And I think we all have to reflect on our contribution to trying to reduce both that need and the causes of that need. And that scale, of course, requires great diplomatic ability. And this is something which Peter has in spades. His background is as a Swiss diplomat, including the Switzerland's ambassador to the United Nations and as a secretary of state for foreign affairs. That's enough for me. Peter is a great speaker. I think you'll enjoy listening to him. Friends, Peter Murray is the president of the ICRC. Thank you. David and Rory and everybody listening and watching and thanks a lot for having me. It's a great opportunity to use the pretext of the Irish presidency of the donor support group of ICRC to talk to a broader public and have an opportunity to interact with the institute. So thanks a lot for having me. Maybe those who follow closer, humanitarian affairs may have seen over the last couple of months, how from the UN coordinator for humanitarian affairs as well as from the Red Cross and Recrecent movement, have seen continuous and increasing appeals for financial contributions coming forward. Just as recently as last week, the Red Cross and Recrecent movement as a whole, the 109 national societies, the Federation of the Red Cross and Recrecent as well as the ICRC have put forward a appeal of more than 3 billion Swiss francs, 1 billion for ICRC's programs, first and foremost in response to COVID-19. That's a lot of money. And just to impress on you, when we ask for so much money, it's also because over the last three months as pandemic spread around the world and the increasing number of states have been affected. We also responded quickly and we saw that some of our traditional work that we have foreseen to do anyway could be prioritized and accelerated and reformed and recast into being relevant and useful in the prevention and response to pandemics. It's not that we are coming without outrageous financial demands to donors suddenly because of COVID-19, but rather we reprogram what some of what we would have done in the past in order to be relevant to COVID-19. What is that? These activities include the support of health facilities in particular in conflict regions. ICRC alone has contacts and relations with hundreds of primary healthcare centers, hospitals and clinics in more than 50 contexts around the world, which are suffering from violence and conflict and we tried our best to equip as many as we can with protective and preventive material. So we have accelerated and increased this type of work. We have also brought water and sanitation services into refugee camps, into vulnerable communities, into detention facilities. We have together with our colleagues from the movement educated and trained volunteers in order to be able to respond to some of the challenges in communities. So there is a lot going on here and I'm sure you most know most of it and therefore I decided to use the opportunity of this presentation here at the Institute for International and European Affairs, maybe in a structured way to highlight 10 points, not necessarily as a narrative over COVID and COVID humanitarian impact, but 10 highlights on what we have to consider when we discuss COVID-19 in the context of humanitarian affairs. Let me just start with the first point, which strikes me how much COVID-19 comes on top of series of other challenges which were a preoccupation of ICRC for many decades. We have been engaged in similar and same contexts in Africa, in the Middle East, in Ukraine, in Afghanistan, in Myanmar, in the Philippines, in Venezuela, but 40% of our activities in Africa, 32% in the Middle East, that's where our focus was already on conflict, violence, poverty, climate change and it impact on the lives and livelihoods of people, it's their humanitarian impact. And COVID-19 just comes as an additional and complicating factor, so sometimes my colleagues say not much has changed with COVID-19 because it's more of the same problems. But at the same time, we have also seen, and that would be my second point, that we have seen new drivers coming to humanitarian challenges and the new drivers include the new dimension of a problem. We have dealt with pandemics before, but we have never dealt with a global pandemic which affects almost each and every country. And we have dealt with, certainly with economic and social issues as a consequence of war, violence, conflict and other big challenges. But I think we have never seen a situation where a pandemic leads to so much secondary economic and social impact in particular on the most vulnerable context. It goes as far as when I speak to my colleagues on the ground, what I see is that their main concern is not the health issue which COVID-19 brings to their country. It's the secondary disruptive impact that dealing with the pandemic has on societies, on the economy. The lockdown leads to the crumbling of the economy in particular the informal sector and this creates new situations. And the third issue on new drivers and newness with regard to COVID-19 is that it's probably the first time at the global level we see such a complex intersection of humanitarian concern and public health concerns. It's not that as humanitarians we would underestimate the importance of separations, lockdowns, isolations, testings, that's legitimate concerns and policies to fight the pandemic. But it has economic, social and humanitarian impacts which are bigger than what we have seen from other pandemics with which we are dealing in the past. My third element I wanted to bring into our afternoon's discussion is that while I hear a lot, global problems lead global solution and this may be true for certain aspects. A second truth is also relevant and the second truth which we are mainly confronted is that global problems need local responses because COVID-19 strikes countries and contexts in a very different way. Depending on the state of resilience, the power dynamic, the economic advancement of societies, the robustness of the health systems, the impact of COVID-19 is very local and therefore the response has to be tailor made, local and contextual. My fourth point I wanted to make is that when I look on how to frame our response, it seems to me important to remind ourselves of some lessons learned from the past. Again, we have dealt with pandemics but I also think we have seen some of the pitfalls of dealing in a too narrow and unilateral and sort of tunneled way with pandemics. Pandemics are not just health issues which in an isolated way hit a society. Pandemics are important and when we deal with pandemics it's important to keep the health sector in perspective and to keep the social systems in perspective. Because if you fight pandemics but just focusing on the respective pandemic, at the end of the day you get mortality rates in other areas of the health sector if you do that in fragile contexts. So it's important to learn a lesson here when we want to fight effectively and efficiently COVID-19, we have to keep the health system in perspective and the social system in perspective. We have also to be able to work in emergency mode responding immediately to the outbreak but then at the same time to strengthen health systems to see that these systems are able again in an equitable way to develop social and health services to people. My fifth point I wanted to bring into the discussion is that when I look at what my colleagues tell me about the big challenges in some of the most fragile contexts again it's not necessarily health but it is also some of the associated political and societal forces which are a big challenge to ICRC's response. It's the stigma of health workers because they deal with pandemics. It's the exclusion of those who are suspected to be affected by the pandemics. It's the injustices in treating some of the patients in an uneven way that create tensions in society. So I wanted to make a point here that dealing with the pandemic brings a lot of societal forces and challenges which have to be factored into a response and which go far beyond a pure health or health system response. My sixth point is that responding to the pandemic comes with some specific challenges and to the specific challenges I would count the dimensions of scaling our operations. When you have a pandemic coming and hitting a country you are immediately dealing with bigger scale than just the local impact of fighting warfare violence and some other challenges to society. So we have a dimension problem. We also have a know how and data problem at the present moment as you will easily see we don't know the no no the don't knows in the society's data are insecure. The development and growth paths and dynamics of the pandemic is unsure and therefore finding a response to something you don't easily grasp its dimension depth is extremely challenging. And then I would also say that COVID-19 has been heavily politicized in many contexts and therefore leading a professional response in a highly politicized environment is something which have challenged us quite a lot. Do you base your reaction on data or on fake news? We have to navigate fake news and to base it on data but how do you do it in societies full of rumors full of stigma full of dynamics which you have difficulties to control. My seventh point is that whether we talk about how an organization responds to COVID or whether we internally how we move and or whether we talk about having an impact on society. I think we have rarely seen virtualization and localization as such powerful accelerators of the humanitarian response as we have seen it over the last couple of weeks. As organizations humanitarian organization within and outside the movement we have all shifted to virtual modes of operation but also to dramatically more local operation. Because once you are living under lockdown you have just to trust your local operators that the logistics that you may put in place virtually are ending at the end with those who need it most. And so I think we have seen with the pandemic a massive transformation of the humanitarian sector of each and every institution in the humanitarian sector and the way to deliver humanitarian assistance and protection services. I think the pandemic and the dimension I was alluding and have also sharpened our sense that nobody can do it alone and COVID-19 will inevitably lead to very new forms of partnership to deliver. We can't deliver the vaccines alone. Neither can a pharmaceutical company but states, business, academia, humanitarian organizations will have to develop new partnerships and new value chains. In order to deliver from research to delivery on the ground a treatment vaccines and preventive measures with regard to pandemic that's a new dimension of issues which we were not used to because traditional humanitarianism deals with natural disaster and conflict as relatively contained domains of intervention while here we are at the global level and at other scales. My eighth point will be that during the last couple of month we have focused on some of our traditional actors, people and contexts in order to deliver humanitarian services. We have stayed with our mandate. We have looked at the most vulnerable people, women, children, the elderly, the disabled. We have looked at some of our most vulnerable contexts, the refugee and IDP camps, the urban displaced, the densely populated urban areas, the prisons. And these are the most challenging places to bring separation, distinction, new behaviors and new hygiene policies into fruition. But I think it was worthwhile focusing on these issues which we knew but to which we had to choose different approaches and different responses. I'm almost at my end, but let me say that COVID-19 didn't come only as a series of challenges but also as a series of opportunities. The virtualization is an opportunity for most organizations. The localization is an opportunity because it anchors humanitarian work much more closely to communities. I think multilateral and multistakeholder platforms are becoming opportunities. New financial instruments at scale of the problems will be absolutely necessary and I see them as opportunities to get out of a traditional modus operandi of financing humanitarian assistance where you just collect money in order to spend. We need to collect money in order to bring people back to productive life. This is what the challenge in so many contexts is. So it opens new opportunities which we have to face for organizations as well as for the delivery of humanitarian assistance. And lastly, and my 10th point is that you don't work in these contexts without big dilemmas with which you are confronted each and every day. Is your priority with the duty of care of your staff or with the continuation of services to affected populations? How do you do the trade-offs? How do you put procedures and processes in place which keep your staff safe and allows them to the best possible way to deliver? We have also seen big dilemmas with regard, I alluded to it with regard to political feasibility and practical and professional responses. Practical and professional responses inform you in one way on what you should do and what the priorities is. For a humanitarian actor, it's needs-based humanitarianism which informs priority. But politicians in a highly visible context, in a highly disruptive context also take positions which may be different from what practical professionalism tells you. And so negotiating a humanitarian space in a highly politicized arrangement, finding this neutral and partial humanitarianism, a license to operate from governments under COVID-19 pressure is something which is a big challenge and which puts the organization each and every day under new dilemmas. And then thirdly, you are constantly navigating between the physical of your traditional responses and the virtuality of a possible new response and finding the balance between physical and virtual in today's humanitarian world becomes a really big challenge for the future. We won't go back to before March 2020 in terms of the modalities of delivering humanitarian assistance, we will need all those virtual tools which have allowed us to do frontline negotiations to engage with countries, to engage with the ligerents, to have meetings with prison directors, to train online prison staff in order to see how we can improve their activities within prisons. We won't go back to do that manually, but we cannot go to completely digital. There is no humanitarianism without proximity to people and what is this new balance that the world will have to find? What are the new arrangements that policymakers around the globe will have to find for humanitarianism to be effective, impactful, and also to deliver on its traditional promise of being mutually impartial and independent and contributing to find a way out of the problems and not to perpetuate the problems. These are issues which more dramatically are put in front of ourselves and which I'm happy to discuss further with you. So with these few remarks I wanted to create an introduction into a discussion which I normally find much more important and interesting in my own words and so I look forward David to listen to questions and try to respond. Thank you very much Peter. That was a rich and I must say a very thought provoking set of 10 points. I mean it throws out many questions. For me among the takeaways are your emphasis on the importance of localization and we'll come back to all of these. I suppose just to kick off the discussion Peter, the ICRC is doing great work in support of the most vulnerable communities and I think that is very much to be commended. What is your experience so far of the sort of international environment within which you're working? I mean if you are trying to protect refugees, IDPs in this current COVID-19 environment, yes we can all see that solidarity is generally you know it's fairly widespread but there are governments who are more nationalistic and xenophobic in their responses. How have you found the challenge of extending protection to these most vulnerable groups? For example are you getting, what kind of access is the ICRC getting? I mean while allowing for a lockdown there's not very much you can do but how are you in practice able to provide or try to provide protection for the most vulnerable groups and are there some governments who are making life more difficult for the ICRC? Let me start off with that to begin with. Well thanks a lot David great question to the point. I think the honest responses there is no generalization possible but I can try to dissect a little bit the question into different aspects. I think we have seen a surprising amount of governments open minded to engage with us and to use the challenge of COVID-19 and also the public consensus that this is a problem to many societies as a vector to increase, to facilitate, to allow access to at least find viable formulas for us to maintain our operational activities. So I have been positively surprised in how many cases, because we are the Red Cross and Red Crescent, we got a year with government officials, we got certain exemption possibilities. We have agreed and negotiated special arrangements on how exactly to deliver. We have assured governments and taken measures of special protection and precaution for our staff in order not to infect communities when we operate close to them. So the good news is a lot of governments jumped on the opportunity of COVID-19 as a positive driver for change. Maybe the most positive driver for change we have witnessed is in detention facilities. I have never seen so many ministers of justice and ministers of detention affairs coming to the ICRC asking for recommendations calling us in into prison that we haven't visited before. One thing to have advice on how to build hygiene systems within 24 hours, how to do isolation rooms, we have built telephone lines because the visiting right of family members has to be curtailed in certain contexts because of the lockdown and ICRC put possibilities of families to contact their people within prisons into place. So we have advanced in a way I was never dreaming that we would be able to advance in positive results. We have seen governments releasing offenders of minor crimes because of the overcrowding of prison facilities. So there's a lot of positive things which we have capitalized on and which governments have allowed us to do. There is of course also the other side and the other side is that we see that the debate around the pandemic and what best to do to respond to those challenges have further entrenched belligerence in their positions. We have also seen that wars continued despite the pandemic and have made additional complications and when battles continue also the right possibilities for access have been diminished. So unfortunately we see both of it and David as a former diplomat in the Irish service and I have been a former diplomat in the Swiss service my point here is this has been and is still a great moment for diplomacy. Whether it is humanitarian or peace diplomacy but I think given the challenge to society it the positive things won't just just happen from themselves. I think we have to make it happen we have to encourage these development these developments these positive developments we have to use COVID-19 as I would almost say as a pretext for good diplomacy. In large access in large humanitarian space this is still done insufficiently and I think we have all seen the unfortunate politicking amongst powers around COVID-19 which of course is contrary to what I would advocate for and what we have seen as positive developments over the last couple of weeks. Thank you very much Peter. So a number of questions which participants wanted to put to you one from Katrina Dowd who is at Dublin City University and Katrina picks up on the reference you made to the fact that we have to operate in a politicized environment that this is a new dimension of the with the COVID-19 response. Could you say a little more about how we're all going to how we can negotiate in a politicized environment like like this. I mean in the past it has perhaps been a little bit easier to come up with with basic concepts and practices. Now we're under greater pressure I suppose because of these political forces you're talking about. Is there anything you'd like to to say about negotiating in in these present circumstances. Well it is a big a big issue and very frankly what in the present circumstances came very handy is that a couple of years ago together with my colleague at colleagues at HCR and World Food Program and Doctors Without Borders and Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva we created a center for frontline humanitarian negotiation and we collected best practices to negotiate difficult front lines and difficult partners in complex emergencies and as we have experienced some of the best practices some of the approaches some of the methodologies before pandemic. It came very handy that we had this body of experience amongst organizations on methodologies by enlarge Katrina Katrina by enlarge when politicization is the art to link things in order to prevent movement on one issue before you could do another issue. Humanitarian negotiations and frontline has to be the art of the linking and of making a case of putting the victims at the center and assistant and protecting the victims at the center and then see whether you can find more technical professional agreement that this is important to do outside the realm of political linking. I think what what is most of the time a convincing argument for belligerence to enter into these negotiations is when communities ask for humanitarians to be able to operate when we are in dramatic situations where also religious and community leaders express themselves. I think that's the moment where we have to be able to act to come in to make proposals concrete proposals and so I would say that negotiating indeed is complex too many actors to complex environment difficult context in which we operate but dissecting a an anal gam of linkages into separable problems time and sequence start with small built up scale and deliver having the support of communities having the port support of leaders is of critical importance just to give you an examples. We brought together in the Sahel over the last couple of months. Religious scholars Islamic religious scholars to work on a fatwa on COVID-19, because we thought it is important that they help us open this humanitarian space that we needed support in our negotiation. And you need to rely on those who have an influence those who have authorities, those who have powers, the communities in order to bring a counterbalance to the equations of over dominant politicization of humanitarian affairs. That was very interesting Peter. Another question, which is from Suzanne Keating with the head of docus that's the umbrella group for Irish humanitarian and development NGOs is Suzanne makes the point that this this time last year, the humanitarian system as such was was been criticized a bit because it was found wanting in relation to the safeguarding of vulnerable people, especially women. So Suzanne was just wondering about the challenges which this crisis is throwing up in relation to safeguarding and, for example, you know, the willingness of staff to serve in the more the more problematic environments. How is I see or see itself adopting to this to the challenges associated with safeguarding in the present environment. Well, Suzanne again, a very good, a very good question is it's obvious that different contexts have different hierarchies of pressing needs and of vulnerable groups. If, if I go to some places in Switzerland, or in Ireland, probably the elderly have been the most vulnerable and humanitarian national societies of the Red Cross is recrescent in those contexts needed to address the vulnerability of the elderly. In the context in which we work, unfortunately, we have indeed seen a multiple exposure to increased violence against women. And it comes from different reasons as we see it today. Always in conflict we had for many years already the challenge of violence against women and we had built specific program programs and projects. What comes as a complicating factor is that in Africa and the Middle East a lot of health personnel are women and therefore with the stigmatization around pandemics and those who have been affected by pandemics and those who help those who have been affected. Women have been more exposed to stigmatization and exclusion. We have horrible stories about women being excluded from their families because they treat patients in clinics. And I think it comes with the dominant role that women have in some societies with regard to the health sector, health, they are health workers and therefore we were particularly concerned. A second issue has really been domestic violence and a increasing continuum which has established itself in many societies from conflict related to domestic and from domestic conflict related. With lockdowns and suppressions and limitations of spaces, we have seen in many contexts violence and domestic violence increasing, intercommunity violence also increasing, clan violence increasing, and this has led to specific vulnerabilities of women and children in particular. And there is no alternative than I think revive and re-energize the two-pronged approach that ICRC and the humanitarian community overall has taken over the last couple of years. You need to change the behavior of perpetrators and changing the behaviors of perpetrators, you need to find an access point. That's what we try to do in our engagement with police forces, with armed forces, with the militaries in order to train, instruct, sensitize them on the devastating humanitarian impact on vulnerable population women in particular and children that their behavior can have. And try to convince them and to bring them into rule-based policing and rule-based military operations. And the second is to try to specifically mitigate and recognize and mitigate the special status of vulnerable populations, women and children in particular, with regard to specific programs they need in order to be supported from psychosocial support to other specifically designed programs for safeguarding women in these particular contexts. So these are some of the issues which are maybe new where we have had to accentuate programs, where you have to enhance and accelerate programs. It's very much at the core of what I mentioned before we tried to accelerate those components of activities of ICRC which are relevant to COVID and direct consequence of the new situation in which we find ourselves. Thanks very much Peter. A couple questions have come in on the issue of localization and the emphasis you gave to it. Suzanne Keating, whom I mentioned a moment ago, she makes the point that the humanitarian system perhaps has been a bit slow up to now to take localization on board. And she wonders whether it will now be more firmly entrenched as we go forward. And Suzanne I think would feel it should be. But another point made by Pat Gibbons, who is the head of the Center for Humanitarian Action at University College Dublin. Pat in effect contrasts the WHO guidelines on pandemics which he suggests are perhaps unduly nationalistic and he feels that perhaps there should be a dimension which recognizes the global nature of pandemics and the need to have therefore international support and coordination. So I suppose Pat's question would be really, have we got the balance wrong there? I mean should we be in fact recognizing that there is an international dimension to the pandemic which, I mean I don't want to over interpret Pat's question but which goes beyond the case for localized responses. Would you like to come back on that set of issues? Thanks a lot. I do agree that in the humanitarian context localization has often been slower than in other contexts and there may be some good reasons that or explanations that it was slower. Humanitarian contexts are particularly fragile, delicate and vulnerable contexts and it is not so easy in some of these contexts to ensure accountability, principled humanitarianism without a more dynamic presence also of outside actors. These are particularly delicate situations. We see how difficult sometimes it is for a local actor to remain principled when local power politics threaten or make it impossible. And therefore and rightly so as I speak at the occasion also of Ireland's donor support group membership, a lot of donors ask us when you have shifted over the last two or three months to more local, can you then be, can you offer us the same level of insurance with accountability for the way the money is spent according to principles? And the honest reply is we do the best effort but it's difficult. And I think we have to recognize that the shift has been absolutely necessary in order to be able to deliver. We wouldn't have been able to deliver with the evolution of power responsibilities and possibilities for locals to operate. And at the same time, I think this is not the end of the story. Balance has been mentioned in your questions. Balance is necessary between local, national and international and balance is necessary also in other aspects. And I think we will probably need to work through some of the hard issues in the months to come in order to establish accountability, reporting and insurance lines. And also discuss openly with donors what is the risk we are taking if we localize, what is the risk if we don't localize, what is the risk attached to each and every modus operandi. But it's a big issue and a good question and it's very much on our radar screen to discuss these issues openly with donors. And Pat, I think you are right that there is a delicate balance to find between international coherent frameworks under which a pandemic is somehow addressed and the specificity which is needed in terms of national and local implementation. As I mentioned in my slogan at the beginning in my introduction, global problems also need local responses. Both is needed. You need to have policy frameworks which are coherent with international best practice and you need space in order to adapt your response to local circumstances. And I would honestly say the balance is not yet found, neither globally nor in many of the contexts in which we operate. This is a constant negotiation to find. But I think that's what also very frankly divides the international community at the present moment. What is the role the international community wants to entrust institutions who are here to offer global frameworks. And what is the competencies and powers that you want to give to those institution and what do you want to keep within the realm of national response. I think not easy questions to find. I am encouraged by what I would call the third way out, which is interesting multi stakeholder platforms, trying to combine the local and the international, the private and the public sector, the science, the industry, and the deliverers of humanitarian assistance, how we can combine them around issue based platforms to find solutions. Nobody will find a solution for either treatment or or vaccine. You need to have these collaborative alliances, and they have to stretch from international to national to local, and they have to stretch from public to private. And I think they have to stretch from civil society to public. So these different equations need to be around the table if you want to have impactful responses to such big challenges as COVID-19 and other pandemics eventually will put in front of us. Thank you very much, Peter. We're coming to an end, but could I just ask you about the Secretary General's call for global ceasefire in late March? I mean, obviously we all attached high hopes to that, but we were perhaps not entirely surprised that it didn't get a universal response. What was your sense about that initiative? Do you think it is at the end of it? Can we expect any further work in that direction? Has the Security Council a role, for example, just wondering what your take is on that particular very laudable initiative? Well, on our side as well, we appreciate a lot the SG's call because as a humanitarian organization, we have always recognized that there is a space beyond humanitarianism, which needs to be addressed in order to be able to create a humanitarian space. And ceasefire is normally the best way forward in a conflict to make headway forward in creating this humanitarian space. So there is no question that we fully support the call of the SG because it can give us space if followed up. No surprise that the belligerence of the world didn't just jump on the occasion and call ceasefires here and there. It's more complicated, it needs to be negotiated, it needs to be discussed. But I think the Secretary General has given a new framework, a new playground for diplomacy, and I think it needs to be used. And frankly, as a humanitarian, I would also say we want to use it at least in terms of humanitarian confidence building. We have seen positive steps over the last couple of weeks and months. We have seen belligerence, which never before talked to the other side, talking about detainee exchanges in Yemen, in Ukraine, in Afghanistan, that's positive. And without the legitimacy of the SG's call, this would hang somewhere in the air. And I think his strength and the importance of this call is that it gives us a framework in which each and every one of us can then try to fill in and to make a contribution to to encourage trust and confidence building, which is of such critical importance. Nobody can expect that the SG calls and the next day actors follow. Things are much more complex, but the SG calls and there is a new orientation point. There is a new North Pole. And I think that's what important at the present moment when we deal with over complex situations in which active conflict meet pandemics and people and too many people are suffering. Peter, thank you very much for that. I'd just like to give Rory a chance to come in with perhaps a final thought and then we will bring the session to a close. Roy, would you like to intervene? I don't seem to have. Peter, thank you very, very much for your presentation. It was, as always, stimulating a lot to reflect on among the 10 points and in the lively Q&A, which we've had since. Thank you for taking the time to give us your observations on the present situation and on the way forward for ICRC and indeed for the overall handling of COVID-19 and the implications it has for the international order. I enjoyed it very much. I can speak safely on behalf of all the participants and thank you warmly for your remarks. We look forward to seeing you again at some point, both physically and virtually. Thank you very, very much on behalf of the IIEA. And Peter, just before I go, I'd just like to tell participants about two other events coming up in the near future. Our President, Michael D. Higgins, will be addressing the IIEA on, I think it is, the 11th of the 10th of June on COVID-19 and the future of multinationalism and from Zile Milambo from the Executive Director of UN Women will be speaking on the 16th of June. And details will be provided in due course. Peter, once again, thank you very, very much for giving us your time and your thoughts today. Best of luck with everything ICRC is doing. You have our complete support in Ireland. Thank you. Thanks to you. I appreciate the opportunity to be with you. Thank you very much.