 for your interest, a couple of words of introduction to the annual report, and I consider these introduction as a reading help because we cover you with a lot of paper or a lot of information. Let me just contextualize. The annual report is our standard reporting to donors. It's an opportunity to tell you where in the implementation of ICRC objectives we find ourselves and what activities and achievements we are accountable for in 2013. So it's not dealing with the period January to today, although in my introductory remark I will try to make the link between the situation today and where we are coming from. You will see from the structure that it deals with the headquarter activity, the field activity, and it gives a lot of information on finance and administration. Let me also say then when you read to the report, just recognize that ICRC is not just a relief organization, and you see it from this annual report once again. We have three important pillars. We are active in policy, in law and law development, law application and law development, and we have an operational arm, which is our assistance and protection work. We are not only active in dealing with the impact of armed conflict, but also in preventing armed conflict within our mandate of international humanitarian law. And you will see throughout the annual report that some of the basics of ICRC's approach to how we deal with issues, very contextual, multidisciplinary, is reflected almost on each and every page of this report. So we are not an organization dealing with only one segment, but trying to find a more comprehensive response to the assistance and protection of people in armed conflict. I also wanted to draw your attention to three new features in the annual report, which is that each region is introduced by a dashboard where you see what we have done overall in that region, in the Africa, in the Americas, and this is very practical and handy for you as journalists. So we have a sort of a separate report, which is, tracks the most important features, which is smaller than the annual report, more handy. That's the kind of thing you wish to have on your desk, probably, just to reference figures. And in the electronic version, you will find, from the major operations of ICRC, three pages, which allow you to find yourself quickly into what we are doing. So that's more the technical part of the introduction I briefly wanted to make, to give you some reading aid when you look things and to draw your attention to what is new. Let me just make a couple of remarks more substantively on our work first. When I came to ICRC two years ago, my sort of first impression in participating in the debates of the governance and the organization was that conflicts were transforming fast. And traditional armed conflict, either international or internal, was disappearing from the landscape and increasing new forms of violence, what we call other situations of violence, urban violence, criminal violence, drug cartels were the ones taking the forefront in conflict and violence. Today, and looking at 2013, we have to recognize that armed conflict has given a powerful comeback. And that in its core ICRC, while we still are observing the other forms of violence as well. And that is the development which we won't turn back the clock. But if you look at this 2013 annual report and if you look at the development since the end of December, we have been busy with very traditional internal armed conflict in South Sudan, in Syria, in the Central African Republic, in many other places of in which we are active for years already in the DRC in Afghanistan. We are looking at regional conflicts. If we look at Syria, we look at the whole region where conflict has broken out in Anbar province in Iraq. So armed conflict, internal armed conflict has made a very powerful comeback. You have also seen that since the publication of the report, we have presented to donor countries in some of those areas important budget additions. This is true for Central African Republic where we added since end of December 15 million a couple of weeks ago. It's right through for Syria where we have presented to donors a major budget increase just a couple of days ago, which was presented to you by the head of the region, Robert Mardini. We have added an important amount to our operation in South Sudan, which is one of the biggest operation in terms of budget in the meantime. With a plus of 48 million, it comes to 112 million, a budget for 2014. We have added since the publication of this report an important budget addition to our activities in the Philippines, which is the mix of natural disaster and conflict on which we are active. So let me just make this clear as, again, an important point, the clear importance of armed conflict. Same point. If you look through the report, I wanted to highlight the will and wish of ICRC to be as complementary as possible with others or to put it in other terms to be where others are not. And just to highlight you a couple of areas where you would like to draw your attention in reading the report. If you look at rural Afghanistan, if you look at southern south of Yemen, if you look at the central and south of Somalia, if you look at the rural DRC, if you look at Iraq Anbar province, if you look at northern Nigeria, if you look at the north of Mali, and if you look at some parts of the Philippines or Colombia, it's ICRC most of the time with very few other actors. Some international NGOs, some local NGOs covering that ground. So our operation is largely complementary to others. It's designed to be covering those areas where others can't. And it's underlining, I think, our capacity still with the specific approach of ICRC to cover ground in terms of assisting and protecting people that other humanitarian actors have had even more difficulties than we. When I say this, let me make a third point, and I'm not underestimating and please do not underestimate the challenges with which we are confronted in delivering. And I have mentioned this several times, but here again, when you read or look through the report, be aware that we have seen in 2013 a quiet dramatic shift in increase of complexities. We have seen many of the conflicts going regional, meaning that the impact is by far not limited to the country in which the conflict is unfolding, but it has regional implications. Syria is the most prominent. You have seen that we responded by making a regional appeal, but the Central African Republic, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, we are looking at a region of instability, which in the future will even more demand that we look in a regional perspective at some of those conflicts. So complexity in terms of impact on neighboring countries have increased. Complexities in terms of origins of violence have increased. I sometimes mention visits to hospitals, which are most of the time the best illustration what I mean by more complicated and complex origins of violence. In a single hospital you find, for instance, in Bangi, the sort of injured from the Seleka and Antibalakas who have fought with each other, you find the poor guy who has been shot at when he stole a bicycle or a banana in the shop. You have families who have been victims of attacks from other families because they are of different religions. So you have interethnic, interreligious, intercommunity violence. You have criminal violence. You have internal armed conflict. And the superposition of these problems have become very complex and difficult to manage. And in this report here you will see how we juggle with some of those complexities of managing those different origins of violence. We have seen important security and access problems. I have spoken many times on those issues, challenges going from Syria to Central African Republic to others with different motives and reasons. We are struggling with increasingly assertive states wanting to control international contributions to humanitarian action, which is a legitimate target of a sovereign government. But at the same time this legitimate target of sovereign governments comes into conflict with our analysis on where the needs are. And we are in increasingly complicated negotiations with governments who think they should control what the internationals are doing and our ambition to reach people in need. And sometimes this is a happy end in the sense that we do agree on a surface of operation which is comfortable for the government and comfortable for ICRC. And sometimes it's more difficult, as you know for instance, at the present moment we continue to be in relatively difficult negotiations with the government of Sudan in order to have again an agreement between ICRC and Sudan for our operational activities. So just wanted to give you a sense and this was my third point that we have some important challenges with which we are dealing. My fourth point is that when you read through the report and I spare you now big figures but nevertheless as examples, despite all those difficulties we have been able to deliver on the biggest budget ICRC in its history has presented to donors. You remember and I have mentioned this beforehand that at the beginning of 2013 we had a relatively modest budget at the end of 2013 with the budget allocations and supplements that we have asked. We have ended up with the largest budget and we do concrete activities. We have visited more than 750,000 prisoners, almost 24,000 individual interviews with prisoners in 101 contexts. We have assisted 7 million IDPs in 55 countries. We have assisted on water 28 million people in 58 countries. We have treated 8 million patients in 326 hospitals and 560 healthcare facilities in different contexts. We have provided assistance to more than 280,000 disabled in 90 countries of the world and we have delivered 22,000 prostheses to those new prostheses to those people. We have delivered forensic services in 50 countries on missing people. We have exchanged more than 100,000 Red Cross messages and we have delivered more than 150 specialized courses for 125,000 militaries in more than 90 countries on international humanitarian law in 2013. I mean these are examples taken out of this report just to illustrate that while we are confronted with important challenges with more complex environment we still manage to do quite important work in assisting and protecting people. My fifth point, may I just draw your attention when you look through the report on some of the horizontal transversal issues on which ICRC has been active and which are recurring patterns of problems and violence in different contexts in which we are active. This is where we report on the healthcare in danger initiative which has progressed significantly in 2013 and which we hope at the Red Cross conference of next year will materialize in concrete recommendations that countries and the movement can agree upon in terms of policy orientation. We have in 2013 considerably increased our activities and conceptualizing on sexual violence and we have deployed in the meantime pilot programs in a couple of countries in particular in African sexual violence and we have considerably also increased and here again in the policy part of the reports you will find accountability on our interaction with different other stakeholders from the movement to the United Nations, to international NGOs, to academia, to the private sector so this report also accounts for how and what ICRC is doing with other actors in the field. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is my sixth point, have a special look at ICRC's law and policy activities. I know that in terms of communication it's always the operational assistant that protection work which is of keen interest to you but we are committed to lead those two processes with regard to improving mechanisms of application of international humanitarian law and which we hope to come to decision moment at the next international conference as well as detention in international armed conflict. You probably know about those processes and we have continued over the past year as we continue now to deal with new weapons and new weapons technology development and international humanitarian law to find the adequacy on automated weapons, cyber warfare, drones and all those issues which need framing in terms of international humanitarian law with regard to those new developments. Let me conclude in saying that while ICRC is happy to deliver on the mandate given by states through the Geneva Convention to assist and protect people in armed conflict, we should never forget that the mandate comes from states and that the final responsibility on delivering is a political responsibility and not a humanitarian. So I know that you are journalists. I had this morning the opportunity to brief the permanent representatives to the United Nations here in Geneva on this report and I made it a little bit more explicit and extensive reminder that humanitarians can solve humanitarian problems. Humanitarians can mitigate on the impact of armed conflict and humanitarian problems and we have modus operandi to do so but at the end of the day if states are not working politically to solve some of those problems at the origin we will always be in attention between our ability to deliver and the needs with which we are confronted. So let me stop here and give you the opportunity to ask a question unless Regis for the moment is fine. Okay. So the floor is yours. Thank you. Yes. Yes. One of the very big ones, the first one is Syria today but with 112 million, it's number two. Yes. South Sudan is number two and the reason for which it becomes second is also because very frankly it's the number of people affected and at the same time it's the logistics difficulties. In South Sudan, the big problem is not so much that we always have access problems, is it not? But it's not that there is an objection of principle somewhere, neither of government, nor of armed forces and rebels, to prevent our activities. They are in principle agreed that we act, but logistically it's extremely difficult with the multiple movements that we have seen since December 15, people are really in places often difficult to access and then it increases considerably also the costs of this operation. Excuse me, a little bit to go, but to explain to you why South Sudan has become the second point of operation of the budgetary but you had a second question. Yes, it was about what was said last week by the CICR, you were waiting for the fever to come to help, to help people in Aleppo, have you received this fever since? No, today in short, I think that if we talk now about Syria, so in short I think that indeed we are always in an approach where we have certain contracts of access and then Aleppo was indeed one of our priorities in relation to the extent of the response that we would like to be able to put into action because we have the capacity to put into action and today at this stage finally we have not yet received the authorizations to put into action this operation. Yes, pardon me. The last year the Ukraine wasn't on the agenda and now we have crisis there and my question is do you think that the situation in Ukraine will increase the budget of ICRC and because I know that the last two weeks ago you asked for more medical supplies for the south and east part of Ukraine, could you speak about the situation in Ukraine is of course very high also on our radar screen and we try to adapt to the problems as they unfold. In our perception for a long month over the past couple of months Ukraine has not been a country with humanitarian problems first and foremost, this has been a country with political problems and tensions. Nevertheless since last year we started to cooperate with the Ukrainian Red Cross in order to increase their capacities to deal with humanitarian problems out of the mass demonstrations. So from zero operation in Ukraine we started to build up a cooperation with the Ukrainian Red Cross around the Maidan place in terms of emergency evacuation, in terms of medical activities. When the situation unfold in the east of Ukraine and in Crimea we increased our operation still working very closely with the respective Red Cross societies in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine and at the present moment ICRC has 22 delegates in Ukraine including the delegates which are in Crimea at the present moment and we have offices in Simferopol, in Odessa, in Karkov, and Donetsk, and in Kyiv. So we are still observing and trying to see where is our activities and problems emerging which are covered by our humanitarian mandate in terms of detention visits on which we have made service offers to the Ukrainian authority as well as to the local authorities in the east in terms of humanitarian problems which may emerge because of the disruption of public life because of the unrest in the country in terms of soldiers which somehow are unaccounted for or where chains of command are not anymore very clear. So we are trying to engage pragmatically with the respective local and central authorities in terms of trying to find how we can contribute to mitigate some of the humanitarian problems. And so while I hope that this remains a very modest operation only future can tell us and the conflict as it unfolds can tell us whether more will be needed. But again it's an operation which is now at the budget of four to five million Swiss francs and unforeseeable for me on what by the end of 2013 or 14 the budget will be. But at the present moment we are running in that category of budget. Just on the budget question so of course yes we are investing money in Ukraine these days because we started with the budget of close to zero because we had no permanent presence. We are popping up the budget and we are looking at what we call a budget extension because of course already with the amount of money spent today and with the situation as it evolves we have gone from being very much in support of the Ukrainian Red Cross to being more directly involved playing also this role we brought in like medical support I mean in the through the different groups so in that sense I think we will play a more direct role in responding to the situation. Let me also be maybe very transparent on one aspect of our activity because I know this is a particularly delicate aspect and it's the relationship between different sections of the Ukrainian Red Cross including the section and Crimea which of course with the change of sovereignty is eager to join the Russian Red Cross. I think ICRC's approach on this is that this is of course a highly sensitive and political environment and we are encouraging all sections of the Red Cross in Crimea as well as in eastern Ukraine and in the Ukraine as a whole to focus on concrete activities and not on status and allegiances. So our engagement is with all of them and in order to try to focus on what do people need and how can the Red Cross and Recrecent movement as a whole or in this case in particular ICRC and the respective Red Cross societies how can we deliver on some of the needs in terms of coping with disruptions of services, access to detention, engagement with armed groups to respect basic provisions of international humanitarian law and use of force. These are the traditional issues with which ICRC is dealing and trying to do capacity building, engage with and contribute to the crisis in Ukraine. Yes, bless please. I think the actor has said what he has to say about his disappointment that he has not managed to put the parties together, what I can say a little in the same direction of what the actor Brahimia said yesterday is that I have strong doubts that we will see as humanitarian spaces considerably different to suffer in Syria if the states are mainly affected by this crisis and have an influence on the actors of this crisis do not work in the same direction and in the same spirit. And for the moment, unfortunately, it is not the case, let's be very clear that the states of influence have different interests and as long as the interests are also different, I believe that the humanitarian space with which we can try to manage in Syria will remain strongly limited as it is today. And so I think the ICRC, the United Nations and others will continue their efforts to convince the states first of their responsibility and also of the primary interest that we would like to see given to humanitarian interests. And you have heard me several times in the past say that, and I repeat it, if the same energy with which we managed to make an agreement on chemical weapons would be used to reach a humanitarian consensus, to create a space in which a neutral, impartial and independent action, especially impartial, may be delivered, we may have, and especially the Syrian people, may be in a much better situation. As long as it doesn't happen like that, we will be limited. And every time you see me, you will hear me say that the space or the gap between what we do and what we should do becomes greater. And this dynamic that I have been criticizing for a long time, it is in progress today, even if we have presented a few days ago a budget record on Syria. And even if I consider that we will be able, first of all, to have this money and to reasonably spend it. And even if we present you a record budget, it will not be enough to change the dynamic in which we are. And so that's exactly what I just said, isn't it? That is to say, there is a political responsibility that we cannot impute on humanitarian organizations. These are the states that must get together and that must find a way to recognize that if humanitarian services are not improved, there will be negative effects on the Syrian people first, on the whole of Syria, on neighboring countries, and on stabilizers that could still hinder us more in the future. I illustrated it through the disintegration of medical systems. We could illustrate it through the difficulty with this situation that continues to have water systems and satisfactory sanitation for Syrians and neighboring people. We will see more crisis emerging if there is no return or another dynamic that must be political. Madame, behind you. Gabriela Sotomayor from Mexican news agency. Regarding the humanitarian situation in Syria and the states that you are talking about, don't you think that they have been very indulgent with the government of Mr. Bashar al-Assad? And I have another question. With regard to, I'm not blaming the ones or the other for the one or the other thing. I'm just saying as long as those who have an influence on developments and actors in Syria do not agree that there are more important things than their differences and that more important things are, for instance, the worry on the health and survival of Syrians suffering from the impact of armed conflict. And as long as there is no overwhelming agreement that this is a priority and is in the interest of those countries as well as of Syrians, we may not find a different dynamic. And so I'm not saying that the ones are indulgent with the regime and the others with the opposition or vice versa. I'm not blaming anybody. I'm trying to say that there may be an interest to look at the overarching interests and responsibilities that we have as international community and as countries. And as a president of a humanitarian organization, it's my task to constantly recall that putting humanitarian interests first place in a context like Syria is not only an issue of law, it's not only an issue of principle, it's not an issue of ethics, it's also an issue of the interest themselves of those countries because what we are seeing is a strong destabilization and destruction of a country, of its people, and of a whole region. I'm going to ask the journalist from Kosovo. Yes, because above all Belgrade, there are a few men and a few Jews who have found a common force. I can maybe start and then, Regis, if you have anything else to add, I said in my introduction that I made you aware that one of the important and often forgotten activities of the CISR in 50 contexts today in the world, and Kosovo is one of the contexts in which we are active to support capacity, procedures, and to accelerate the process that should lead to more clarity for families and their loved ones, the destiny of people who have disappeared, who are missing. So you have seen and you will see in the report that we present today, we are active on the Balkans, we are active with the respective institutions to ensure that all our knowledge and skills are also transferred to our colleagues from the National Red Cross and from the National Institutions to accelerate the process of clarification on the missing. In Brussels, for example, can we put conditions, can we put conditions to disappear, to find, to have better integration, because Serbia and Kosovo are waiting to be a member of the European Union? You know, we do not put conditions in negotiations in which we do not participate, but what I can say is that we hope and we try to convince not only the parties on the Balkans, but also in other contexts in the world to work together to clarify the destiny of the missing. And as you just said, this title is a problem that rests on societies that are often an obstacle to the reconciliation of societies, and that is the reason why we think it is crucial in our humanitarian activity to put as much as we can our commitment on the side of those who want to accelerate and clarify the destiny of these people. Maybe just a few points on that. First of all, thank you very much for the question, because we have talked a lot about the CICR and the CICR, which is present in all these places where no one wants to go, but we can talk about all these forgotten victims. And it is true that one of our strengths is our ability to work in the long run and to ensure that we never forget these victims of conflict and several of these victims are indeed what we call the missing. So the particular case of the Balkans, I think that today we remain as CICR, years after the conflict, the engine for precisely making sure that in one way or another, these families have the right to have news about their loved ones. Now, I will immediately add a part. We will also always have the same message. We must depoliticize the debate when we talk about humanitarian issues. So in our case, we have a unique objective. It is indeed to be able to give news to families and then, because they are in the desert, and they remain, they become old, they will disappear without ever knowing. And that is the main message. We must absolutely avoid using politics because it will ultimately not bring to what should be the primary goal of each of its states is to effectively help us or contribute to what these victims, in fact, these families, can finally have news. But so I think that today, there are a lot of debates on the inside, a lot of questions, but until when are we going to continue as CICR? And we are still there, there is a huge motivation to try to make sure that we have news in relation to the person. So in this case, I think we can count on this perseverance of the CICR, as we can count on the perseverance of the CICR that can visit prisons for years and years, and which will finally continue to bring a minimum of comfort to all these families who need it. What we are waiting for is not to leave all the parties, it is also that they engage themselves, we cannot simply let this work be done by the CICR. And where I travel in the world, and we have activities of this kind, I always try to convince government and parliament that the allocation of resources is of capacity to solve this crucial problem for the reconciliation of society. And unfortunately, in many contexts, we see that this is one of the subjects that is de-priorized, as we call them, this kind of process, right? We consider that it is not current, it is not a priori and sagical in the budgetary negotiations of parliament and government because, in the end, the constituency, the pressure groups behind this subject are not often the most powerful. It is the role of the CICR to always pay attention that you will not have a sustainable reconciliation without having to solve this problem and support those who put energy and capacities in the resolution of this subject. Yes, Mr. Mr. Maura, Mr. Maura, I wonder, you were recently in Iran, what was your most important goal? Did you achieve it? And maybe you could tell us a bit about your personal impressions there. Second question today was UNHCR presented a report about eternally displaced people. We have record numbers of 33.3 million. I just one quote if you permit, it's worse than in the darkest hours of the 90s when we had the genocide in Bosnia, on the Balkans, in Rwanda and in the Congo. That was the quote from this morning, the presentation, and you just said a powerful comeback of armed conflict. I agree, unfortunately, but what is happening? I wonder, I mean, what is really happening? Thank you. A $20 million question. I try first with a slightly easier one on my trip to Iran. Several objectives in our conversation with the Iranian Red Crescent and the Iranian government. First, you may know that for two years now we have entertained what we call a strategic partnership with the Iranian Red Crescent, who is one of the very powerful national societies in the Red Cross and the Red Crescent movement with enormous capacities. And we are developing cooperation with the Iranian Red Crescent in different parts of the world, in which ICRC's capacities and skill for negotiating access and being present, and Iranian Red Crescent capacities to deliver logistics and goods and medicine are very complementary. So one of the aims was to take our cooperation with the Iranian Red Crescent one or two steps further. You never achieved those goals in one visit, but what I can certainly say is that the Iranian Red Crescent is a very valuable partner and we are in agreement that we will continue to enlarge our cooperation, which is valid, which has activities within Iran, but also in some of the contexts in some of the humanitarian contexts outside Iran. With regard to my conversations with the Iranian authorities, the main objective was to find a more structured dialogue with the Iranian authorities on some of the issues of concern to ICRC, but also of concern to Iran with regard to some of the humanitarian crises in the world. So Syria, of course, has been an important issue. We have discussed other contexts Afghanistan, Iraq. You know that coming back to the missing that this is an important file still in the Iran-Iraq relations today from the respective war of 20 years ago. So still an important operation, a tripartite commission that ICRC is chairing between Iraq and Iran on the missing of the Iran-Iraq war. So there is a panoply of activities to discuss, to take stock of, to kick the ball forward and to see how we will work together. We have also discussed how within Iraq to work with the within Iran to work with Iranian authorities in terms of engagement with the armed forces, development of international humanitarian law, engaging on the adequacy and similarities and mutual reinforcing of Islamic law and Islam and international humanitarian law. So it's a broad range of issues that we have discussed and I'm very satisfied on the results of the conversation in terms that they were concrete and specific and allow us to move one or two or three steps forward in some of those files of cooperation or engagement on those issues. With regard to hypothesizing on what is behind I'm not going to speculate on that but just once again to share with you also the impression which probably Antonio has shared today with you and we are talking a lot that we have seen dynamics in several parts of the world which are adding enormous complexities and contagious effects of crises spreading, deepening of crises as I mentioned beforehand in my introduction and some of the result is displacements in terms of refugees and IDPs that you have received the very numbers of. I mean at the end of the day although this seems a little bit an abstract maybe assertion I can do is that obviously we are struggling with an international system which has difficulties to come to consensus and when powers in the international system have difficulties to come to consensus on some of the essentials then you probably see happening what is happening then probably there is not sufficient cohesion in the international system which compels different types of actors to respect certain parameters and if we see or have the impression I don't know whether the impression is true or not there is no sort of objective study on violation of international humanitarian law but we have a subjective impression that we see more violations, deviations from behavior consistency with international humanitarian law then it's also a sign that this system has and struggles with bringing important powers together towards some minimal consensus. More questions? Yes Gabriela? Yes, thank you. If you can answer my second question please because you are mentioning here that there was 1,400 incidents in 23 countries against volunteers and personnel so what about accountability in these cases? Did you call for investigation on these cases or what happened in this particular situation? Thank you. Well volunteers who work with the ICRC or with the National Red Cres most of the time they are employees of the National Red Crescent or Red Cross Societies we certainly consider them part of our activities we try to find their whereabouts the reason of their disappearance the reasons of what happened to them and we engage with the respective authorities in order to find out what happened if we have indication that they are detained by authorities we try to engage for their liberation we are not known and are not an organization with a mandate for legal accountability that doesn't mean that we don't care about legal accountability we care about legal accountability but there are other institutions dealing with legal accountability. Thank you very much. Thank you. I just want to remind that there are more there is more material on our website in addition to the news release that you already got at the beginning. Thank you. There is much more on our... We have 13 international staffs and 9 people who are from the National Red Crescent so it's been 22 staffs. That's roughly an accident. We had people in place because we had a regional delegation that covered Ukraine, Ukraine and other countries and we had a delegation at the time that we closed because there was no reason for us to be present because we weren't in a situation of violence or conflict.