 I wanted to talk about the work which was carried out over a two-year period by SCHR just very briefly. SCHR is an alliance of seven NGO networks and the Red Cross Movement, ICRC and IFRC, where we carried out some work to basically try and answer the question of whether or not it was objectively possible to differentiate between principled actors and others. We decided to focus on the principle of impartiality, see whether it was something that we could actually measure and assess. We decided to focus on the principle of impartiality because we felt this was core to the humanitarian endeavor. This is about prioritizing resources and responses and basically based on needs. We really zoomed into that principle and tried to look at what would it take to measure it. We had a whole conceptual approach which was about identifying the different key moments within a cycle of project or organizational decision-making where the principle of impartiality would be relevant and important and then test it out. The work we did is not finalized, there's still a lot of work to do but I think there's enough to be done that has been done that we can already draw some findings from. Basically, we came up with an operational framework looking at where in the decision-making cycle of an organization would impartiality be relevant. We identified three main areas. The first being what we call the institutional predisposition which you could also call the policy and the processes that you have in place which are about the institutional commitment which are about the strategic and policy decision-making and the support to staff in terms of training and commitment across the organization. Then we identified the program planning and design stage and at the final stage the actual response and the monitoring and evaluation of the response. Those were the three stages and for each of these stages we came up with a bunch of indicators that we then tested. I won't go through any of the details. Just to say that the institutional commitment stage we tested through self-assessment which gave us some interesting findings in so far as was some organization may not have policies in place it doesn't mean that they don't have practices but it's also very clear that when there aren't policies and clear guidance in place the space for interpretation is very very large. It was also very clear that if there was this sort of policy framework in place the chances were that strategic decision-making and operational decision-making would more systematically examine the question of impartiality than it would otherwise. And then we carried out a sort of very light peer review of different organizations operations in Columbia looking at specific projects and testing the whole indicator framework around the program design and program implementation. Very broad findings. We think it is measurable but it's measurable on the condition that we can contextualize the decisions which have been taken. We need to understand the context and we need to understand why these decisions have been taken based on the context. So it isn't just one size fits all and yes or no tick box. It's very much a whole thinking and analyzing and decision-making process which needs to be looked into. It's very clear that there aren't any easy answers. In most cases we're not able to be impartial but there are very clear reasons for which we're not able to be impartial. And what's important there is to make sure that the people in charge, the people who are making these decisions have the elements to balance the different components and reach a conclusion as to why they are making the choices that they're making. One of the biggest obstacles to impartiality that we found was the issue of funding. The issue of lack of resources which stops organizations but also let's be honest local authorities and local actors from going to try and look at needs outside the areas that they're already operating on because they know they wouldn't necessarily get the resources to answer these needs. Obviously we've got issues of access linked to security. There's also logistics reasons. Another important finding and I think I'll stop, two more important findings that I'll highlight. One is the fact that when you're looking at the issue of impartiality you need to decide at what scale you're looking at. If you're looking at the issue of impartiality at the scale of the project you may actually be meeting the basic indicators. If you're looking at the level of the department, the country, the region or globally it's a very different game. And the question is for us very much about how do we make sure we balance these different levels and again how do we make sure that we have a rationale for the decisions that are taken. The last point that I'll make is that we found that the issues of examining the principles were taken very, very seriously by the teams, especially the teams on the ground. But they tended to be a confusion between the principle of neutrality and the principle of impartiality. Which in a lot of cases didn't matter as the right questions were being asked but could matter hugely in a conflict or in a really insecure situation when you actually have to make a trade-off between applying the principle of impartiality and appearing in the perception of your neutrality. Thank you very much and I'd like to flag early on. I'm going to come back and ask you a question about this pragmatic nature. I mean I'll let you in on a secret. ICRC is a very principled organisation but we're also really pragmatic. I should also say that, look I'm not speaking in any official capacity for MSF. Of course my experience, 15 years in MSF means that a lot of what I'm going to say is based on that. But I also over the last couple of weeks have spoke to, I'm based in London and I've spoke to people from some of the other major NGOs just to see if they have any, what's their take on this. So I'd like to say a few things. In keeping on the pragmatic side, I think in MSF one of the things I was very proud of is the degree to which we view ourselves and act as if we are a principled humanitarian actor. In other words the principles actually matter and we talk about them and we get in fights over them and we pull each other's hair out over them. These are ideas that are alive and well in the discourse of the organisation. And how do you make that? What does that look like up close? Well it looks like training of staff. And I think almost every organisation has some sort of training where they basically tell people here's what impartiality is, here's how neutrality is defined. But it also comes back to the organisational structure and capacity. If you for instance want to be independent. What are the implications of that for instance in a medical organisation? It means that you will have in-house expertise on medical issues. So that you are not dependent on the expertise of others. Logistical independence, what does that mean? What does it mean if as an organisation you must wait for a UN helicopter or a UN convoy of trucks versus your own? And so looking at it from the organisational side there's quite a bit of discussion that comes out of the principle. There's also just the fostering and we do have debates about things like what does impartiality mean in a given context. So fostering what you might call just a lively discussion. And then I think something that Kate just talked about and that is the idea of deliberate compromise. Of course these are signposts, these are beacons, but in the very, very often perverse circumstances in which we operate, being impartial or neutral, independent is of course an exercising compromise. And how do you go about that and making sure that the compromises you make are first judicious ones but also that they're done deliberately. And to look at the principles not as a formula but as a framework, they reinforce one another but they also come into tension with one another and you must make trade-offs between principles. But I also wanted to say maybe just away from the pragmatic to drift a little bit into sort of the global view and that is that we don't actually, structurally, and I haven't talked to any organisation that actually goes out and really tries to say are we acting impartially, neutrally, independently and to measure it, to assess it. You can look at the sphere standards. And the sphere standards will tell you all about how many latrines per square foot and very, very detailed guidelines on what it means. And yet when it comes to impartiality, neutrality, independence, there's very little in terms of some sort of tangible guidelines, targets, anything like that. And what it appears, if you look at it with a slightly cynical eye, is that to a certain extent these are assumptions. We are humanitarian therefore we're good and that means we're neutral and impartial and independent and we know that we compromise on those things but the goodness of our actions outweighs what we're trying to do is help people and that outweighs these sticky points like principles. And to a certain extent we believe in ourselves that way and we do not look. I have not seen rigorous attempts to really judge ourselves or to admit the extent to which we are no longer impartial, no longer independent and no longer neutral. We redefine those things individually in organisations so that you can get to a point where you are essentially taking funding from a belligerent party to work in a war zone and many, many organisations don't see a contradiction of that for instance independence and neutrality. I'll just wind up by saying on the other side of that discussion an academic named Mark Bradbury says assistance that is policy driven rather than provided on the basis of need is no longer humanitarian. And what I'm getting at is I think too often there is this assumption that because we're humanitarian we're more or less in line with the principles rather than seeing that label that we all aspire to of humanitarian as being a consequence of our pragmatic actions on the ground in the degree to which we adhere to those principles. And what I think I am hearing in some of the discussions around the World Humanitarian Summit but elsewhere is that the double standard by which I will say the large western NGO applies these principles. The principles have become a bit of a bully stick with which to say that other actors, military actors, other governments are jeopardising that they have to respect our independence and impartiality and neutrality. It's used very much to push back on external threats and it is also being used to safeguard fortress western NGO against all those other NGOs that want to become part of the humanitarian mission of the humanitarian project. And it's a way of saying yeah but you're from that country you can't possibly be neutral like us as if we are somehow divorced from the ideology for instance of western governments or the ideology of our main donors. So I think there's a real danger in this double standard. I think it is one of the, it is going, it is a weak point in terms of some of the negotiations around globalising humanitarian action where if it becomes viewed as some sort of western imposition the way for instance that human rights in some circles is seen the way the international criminal court is now being seen as something kind of western it's used to beat up on others if humanitarian principles go down that route it will go down that route because of our actions and it will be a shame. Thanks everyone and I'm delighted to be here. I've been with the Red Cross for four years and I pretty much joined the Red Cross because of the humanitarian principles. I felt there was a principled organisation I really was committed to the principles and I thought I'd come to the Red Cross and find this spirit of the principles imbuing everything that we did everything that we said that there would be these live debates where we were tearing our hair out and I have to say I was a little bit disappointed. I think that collectively the humanitarian community looks at the principles as if there are some kind of God-given normative ideals that are derived from above and I think we have forgotten the fact that they are actually practical tools and that they have an ethical basis but that ultimately they were derived they were distilled because of a process where they were found to be useful to give us access in situations of conflict and I think that we've lost some of that I think we externalised as Mark was saying the threats to humanitarian action we talk about humanitarian action being politicised being instrumentalised we talk about the blurring in stabilisation agendas between political, military and aid efforts we now talk about the criminalisation of humanitarian action due to counter-terrorism laws and I'm not rejecting any of that I think all of that is very important a lot less time looking at our own actions and questioning whether we are being principled whether these principles that we exclaim that we hold ourselves aloft about were actually using them in the way they were intended and so coming into the movement I was also interested in whether this issue about whether the principles are just for international actors we say that they're global we say they're universal actually they're talked about a lot in international circles but here we have a federation of 189 different national societies how are national societies applying the principles and are they relevant to today's crisis and do they help us gain access and improve our security and so we started a small research process looking at how different national societies were applying the principles in practice what they actually did and trying to unpick whether or not it helped them gain access and how they went about this and there were a lot of national societies to choose from and so we chose the ones where they had been applying they're known within the movement for applying the principles well and so we started with the Lebanese Red Cross which it's first of all interesting because it's a Lebanese Red Cross in a context which is now considered to be predominantly Muslim and so how does a national society using the Red Cross in that context gain access but also it had grown up out of a situation where it had suffered a number of different security threats during the 15 year civil war and had gone through a deliberate process of trying to apply the fundamental principles and fundamental principles in the Red Cross being seven rather than four and so it was an interesting exercise to see whether or not this had given them any benefits and I have to say it was pretty extraordinary you go to the Red Cross and they run the National Ambulance Service on a shoestring they've got I think it is 2,700 volunteers who volunteer 12 hours a month and then or 36 hours a month and 12 hours one weekend and they have access pretty much all over the country in the context where there's 18 different confessional groups where politics, where business, where even your mobile phone is kind of decided upon confessional basis these ambulances have access pretty much everywhere in context where even the government doesn't have access and it's fascinating to understand how they've done that and what they've done is pretty much take that bolster off the wall they've said you know we are going to apply these principles and first of all extraordinary leadership let's down to what Mark was saying is creating a culture where the principles are alive and so the leadership started this process where their policies were reviewed their strategies were reviewed and there was a deliberate process of applying the principles in all decision making they looked at their hiring policies and made sure that they were hiring volunteers from across these confessional groups and had this deliberate policy of that if you ring the Red Cross and you want the Red Cross ambulances to provide services you can't choose who the Red Cross is in this different context you can't say it needs to be a Maronite or a Christian or a Sunni Muslim it's the Red Cross and because we abide by these principles you accept us and so the Red Cross volunteers are hired on their basis of an ability to demonstrate the principles and you talk to them and they talk about the Red Cross being a form of sanctuary in a context where everything is decided on confessional grounds and people come to the Red Cross because of this sanctuary and that creates its own ethos in ambulance stations the news isn't played because that might spark off difficult conversations and then you talk about at different stations about how does this influence your decision making you talk to people about the extraordinary decisions that they have to make how difficult it is when they hear that you know one of their relatives has been affected in some way in some crisis but by a process of triage that they have to decide to go to someone else and to provide medical services first to someone else and what that actually means you are talking to someone else who was involved in a siege in a refugee camp and their brother is part of the military services and while the brother is responding to the actual conflict they are working on providing medical services to those wounded so the most extraordinary and inspiring tales of volunteers working across this now quite conflict affected context and I feel that we need to do more as a community to really understand how we put the principles in practice that we talk about them a lot that we may use them to create a fortress but there is not enough attention to the strategies of how we can apply them in practice what they actually mean what space they provide us and where the red lines are but then also about what they don't do because the principles are tools they are not going to grant us access they give us potentially a seat at the negotiating table so also a very realistic understanding of how far we can go in context where aid is compromised where aid is instrumentalised