 Good afternoon everyone, welcome to this press conference both here in the room from the 49th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos and also welcome to everybody watching online and on social media. Thank you for being here. Thank you for watching. You're joining this press conference under the title The Humanitarian Crisis That Will Shape 2019. And we've already had yesterday and today we heard about a lot of economic crisis and I think we want to take this opportunity with our wonderful panel to take a closer look at the humanitarian crisis. I'm joined to my immediate left by Heba Ali, she's the director of IRiNEWS or as you will soon learn the new humanitarian as it's rebranding itself rightfully so at the moment. To her left we're joined by Peter Mauro who's the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross ICRC. Right there in the heart and center of our panel we're joined by David Milliband who's the president of the International Rescue Committee and last but definitely not least we're joined today by Tara Nathan. She's the executive vice president for humanitarian and development of MasterCard. Thank you very much for being here today and Heba without further ado let's hear from you. You recently launched with IRiNE and overview over the coming crisis that we have to brace ourselves for. So what are these key crises and trends to watch in 2019? Absolutely thanks Georg. We every year run a list of crises on the horizon. We're a news organization that reports specifically about humanitarian crises and have a network of about 200 journalists around the world who do so. I won't go through all 10 because that would take up the entire press conference so I'll list just three of them but if you want the full list you can find it on our website erinews.org. For us the big story of our beat remains fragile states that likely won't be a surprise for many of you but Syria, Yemen, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo all feature on this year's list and in each of those countries there are arrays of hope that in the year ahead there could be some improvement but in all of those countries no silver bullet solution and a lot of long-term humanitarian implications. So in Syria the government is closing in on victory but military victory will not solve the deeper political problems that are tearing the country apart nor will it address the needs of some 12 million people who are displaced both inside and outside of the country. In Yemen a national peace deal may be on the horizon but what we've been seeing is at the local level there are a number of grievances that could lead to continued conflicts even if a peace deal is successful nationally. In South Sudan there are hopes that the latest truce will hold but we saw that in 2015 and that fell apart soon after being signed in DRC. Again hopes for peaceful transfer of power for the first time have been tainted by disputed election results and allegations of fraud armed attacks are continuing in various parts of the country you've got Ebola outbreaks you've got severe food insecurity all of which are intersecting for a very dangerous mix. So we feel it very dangerous to take our eyes off any of these countries despite some of these recent signs of progress and fragile states are becoming even more relevant now with new instability emerging in the Sahel among other places. Last year we embedded a journalist with a new separatist group gaining power in Cameroon we've recently been reporting about the spread of the insurgency in Mali in Burkina Faso we're seeing rising militancy in Nigeria in Somalia and elsewhere. So the risk of course is that these emerging conflicts go on to become like the others on the list of major humanitarian crises and for us the big question is whether the international community can develop a more effective way of dealing with fragile states. So that's number one. Number two is climate displacement until recently climate change has often been talked about as a gradual threat of the future something that affects polar bears and cooler reefs and what we're seeing in our reporting very clearly is that climate change is already dramatically affecting people's lives today. Our reporters have met migrants in Bangladesh who were displaced after watching their land disappear due to river erosion exacerbated by climate change. We've met villagers in the Pacific islands who are warning that their entire communities are going to be wiped off the map as sea levels rise. We've met farmers in Somalia who have abandoned their farms and moved to the cities because of yet another bad harvest. Herders in Senegal who've been plunged into poverty because of unpredictable weather patterns threatening their way of life. The World Bank as many of you will know predicts that climate change could force 143 million people to migrate by 2050 but we are finding plenty of people around the world today who are already facing the prospects of displacement as a result. So that's something we'll be certainly watching and lastly refugees returning prematurely across all of our reporting there are millions of refugees being pressured to return home to countries that are in no way ready to receive them. One example a 35 year old woman in Afghanistan who after two decades as a refugee in Pakistan returned and found herself sitting on a plastic chair at a UN reception center in a dusty border town with nowhere to go. She was among almost one million Afghans who returned from Pakistan over the last three years but they're coming home to a country that is mired in conflict where aid and jobs and reintegration support are in limited supply and where the voluntary status of their return is questionable. 2019 is shaping up to be quite a pivotal year for the year the the world's four largest refugee crises Syria Afghanistan South Sudan Myanmar and involuntary return to fragile regions could be a whole new crisis in the making so I will leave it at that. Thank you Hema thank you very much you mentioned climate change and you mentioned briefly the Sahel Peter you're just returning from Sahel what's the picture you're seeing there and and what maybe are signs of hope for you there. Maybe a couple of remarks from my side as well first because humans are used to calculate years it's not that every year start the new set of priorities I'm sometimes surprised to realize that since I'm president of ICRC there is always the same regions which are regions of concerns because they are particularly fragile one third of everything we are doing is happening in the Middle East 42 percent the second 42 percent or the first 42 percent is about conflicts in Africa and so these figures will remain the same most likely in 2019 as they have been from 2012 to 2019 so there is an issue of fragility that Hema has mentioned before which continues to be of particular concern. I think in a place like the Sahel what struck me most and it might be emblematic for what we are seeing in many other places is that when you look at the history of conflictual relationships and violence in the Sahel you see that just the superposition of poverty exclusion discrimination violence is now topped by scarcity of productive land because of changing rainfall patterns which normally we draw back to climate change and so it just jumps into your eyes that a particularly fragile and resource scarce reason I mean natural resource scarce region is then particularly challenged because of climate change and this again translates into scarce resources and conflict that have been traditional conflict and they have been there beforehand particularly between agriculturalists and pastoralists in that region suddenly get violent again because conflict regulation mechanisms are not any existing anymore because the state is too weak to be a neutral mediator in a resource scarce environment and so you have exacerbation of conflict because of climate change speaking changing rainfall patterns so it's just jumping into your eye that when certain regions of the world can adapt to mitigate climate change others cannot unfold immediately below the threshold of of survivability for many for many people second issue which preoccupies us also from the insights in the Sahel and again is not something which is limited to the Sahel is really the transformation of violence I think we see with dramatically fast pace almost in each and every conflict the conflagration of political violence intercommunity violence crime and banditism and I think this challenges humanitarian actors more than in many times before we are not anymore confronted as a neutral outsider confronted with a conflict of political military strategic conflict between two sides or three or four sides it's a mix of violence which challenges us particularly in many conflicts my third point on the hopeful perspective I mean there is no question that in hyper fragile context like the Sahel and many others humanitarian actors need to substitute themselves to the non-existing social services of public policy actors having said that I have been impressed by the resilience of people and by the populations and organizations in the Sahel being the first responders and engaging in productive activity even in the most adverse situations and for me this has been an illustration and the call to humanitarian actors to look much more closely on how we can support productive responses of communities women's organization youth organization who go into income generating activities and despite all the difficulties managed to get on with their lives and with a little bit more support from the international community not in substitution of what they are doing but in support for income generating activities that would change a lot and could change the dynamic my last point is just to draw the attention that we are here in Davos not least because we are convinced that there is a deal out there to make between the investor community and the humanitarian community and I'm particularly happy tomorrow to be part of the launching of the high level group on humanitarian investment because I truly believe that we need to partner up with the private sector with with the investing community to find ways of scaling and speeding humanitarian response into particularly fragile contexts investors will not go there if humanitarians don't show a little bit of a way and humanitarians can't be there any longer in innovative ways if we don't get support for more than just state-driven humanitarianism which is necessary but as such is limited will be limited and will be insufficient to cope with the dimensions of problems with which we are confronted so these are a couple of issues of a big preoccupation to us but also with a perspective that may be a kind of new type of dialogue brings actors of different kinds together with a more impactful response to some of the big issues that we are dealing with thank you thank you Peter David let's hear from you how you see these trends and how these trends are impacting humanitarian crisis and also maybe if you could could follow up on what Peter said on how the private sector can play a role there please sure I'll be very brief to leave some time for questions the international rescue committee is a global humanitarian agency helping people whose lives are shattered by conflict or disaster so very much the fragile and conflict states that heba and peter have spoken about what we see is a growing number growing length growing complexity and growing severity of humanitarian crisis that's what one symptom of that is the 68.5 million people who are now refugees or internally displaced the internally displaced I think are a significant and under recognized category alongside the refugees countries like northeast countries like Nigeria especially in the northeast of the country are emblems of the kind of problems that we're challenged by also Yemen which has not yet been discussed in detail is a country now facing according to the UN 14 million people at the risk of famine if the peace talks that heba referred to are not followed through I'd like to just pick out three very dangerous or significant trends if I may the first is the rise of what I call the age of impunity that is the idea that belligerence and a conflict are able to commit crimes and not be held accountable for it Yemen is often described as a tragedy but in fact it's better described as a series of crimes second is a crisis of diplomacy we're seeing a retreat by the major global diplomatic players in a way that creates a vacuum that we believe is a direct contributor to the rising levels of violence and humanitarian tragedy that we see the third is an inertia of humanitarian aid reform and we think that 2019 needs to be a year of significant reform the truth is that the SDGs the sustainable development goals are not going to be met because of failure in fragile states more than four out of five 82 percent of fragile states are falling behind on the SDG commitments and from our point of view that is a clarion call first of all for more accountability through specific targets for tackling the extreme poor after all there are more extreme poor today in Nigeria than there are in India second is a change in financing the kind of short-term drip-drip financing that is predominant in humanitarian settings is completely out of kilter with the nature of the needs and explains why less than two percent of global humanitarian funding goes on education even though most of these humanitarian crises run for 10 or 20 years and third is the core agenda of reforming the way the humanitarian sector works on the theme of the so-called grand bargain that was achieved at the World Humanitarian Summit two years ago but has been honored more in the breach than in the observance I'm here in Davos because I believe that a time when governments are in retreat NGOs and the corporate sector have to step up and that's what we're hoping to see this week thank you thank you David Tara that's a wonderful bridge over to you David made it clear that the private sector has to has to step up now it's a bit unfair because obviously at Mastercard you're doing a lot already but let's hear from you what actually could be the role of the private sector in in this in these crises sure thank you I think I might even just reframe it from a mandate or a calling on the private sector to step up and say that the private sector is stepping up and wants to play a critical role which is a nuanced distinction what we're finding is that our employees that the that the people who work for us are saying overwhelmingly that they want their companies they want their CEOs to stand for social change there was a recent Edelman trust poll that was released that talked about how 85 percent of employees said that they relied more on their employers to beat social agents of change than their own governments that they're looking for that role I think we're seeing that we're seeing that in our employee base not only in our ability to attract high quality talent but but in our ability to sort of retain and to have that action so when I speak about Mastercard I run a team we have numerous arms within Mastercard that focus on philanthropic types of engagements but what I think is really interesting is the team that I lead which is an effort to figure out how we can leverage Mastercard core assets capabilities technological innovation in in digital transaction services to apply them into humanitarian and development context we think that the private sector has a great role to play both in preventing potentially the causes of humanitarian crises as well as post humanitarian crisis in creating some of the resilience mechanisms that sort of generate local market activity what does the private sector do in space we we create employment we look for you know giving access to education access to markets access to health care and these are the types of things that we at Mastercard are have been doing and increasingly look to do more of we have partnerships with or with a lot of the traditional sector players we have a partnership with the IRC where we are looking to create digital tools as an example around how can we make the delivery of health care or the delivery of vaccines more effective and more traceable we have platforms that we're building to enable small holder farmers to gain access to vibrant local markets so how do you give them access to large-scale agribuyers so that they have more agency and they have more power to extract economic rents from from the produce that they make and the examples can go on and on and we're just one company and that's the role that we can play but we think that by this example that there is a broader role for like I said for private sector to play in creating these vibrant local markets thank you Tara and you're one of 1600 global business leaders here in Davos if you look at your 1599 fellow business leaders in Davos do you have the sense that this message is is reaching the community or do you feel you're you're you're fighting a lonely fight for these causes like I said I think it's not us fighting it's not us fighting against the community I think I along with the other 1599 leaders are hearing the same message from their employee bases and that is that companies increasingly I think you're going to see are going to have a social mandate I think there was a an S&P study that said that of the S&P 500 companies out there in 2011 only sub 20 percent had a CSR report an ESG report published in 2017 it's 85 plus and what I'm saying is I don't think that's because we're being dragged I think it's because our employees are pushing us to to to get out of in front of these issues no matter what the issue is whether it's humanitarian whether it's development whether it's local market context whether it's sustainable supply chains whether it's you know access to education whether it's data integrity all these issues are things that that the employees and the communities are are pushing us forward on thank you very much let's see if we have some questions from the floor we have a microphone if you could say your name and organization please for the sake also of our online audience please thank you hello James Bayes from Al Jazeera if I could ask the panelists about Syria and how they see things in Syria was regard to the humanitarian situation in the area where the US is pulling out and where it was saying it was providing some sort of umbrella for some humanitarian activity worries about northern Syria Turkey and the Kurds what preparations are being made by the two agencies that represented on the panel in those two places and what was mentioned before returning refugees whether there is pressure on some to return now to Syria and their view on on the circumstances on the ground so thank you very very much the humanitarian situation Syria and the returning refugee question so we're obviously very concerned that the northwest of the country becomes a killing zone Idlib is now host to about three and a half million people the province of Idlib that includes about one one and a quarter million internally displaced who have either been chased or moved voluntarily from other parts of the country and we were very fearful in the run up to the October 15th agreement that there would be a full frontal attack on that on those people with consequences directly for them and then for knock on for greater refugee flows in the northeast we obviously don't comment or recommend military maneuvers but we do say that whenever conflict players do make military decisions they have to take into account the humanitarian consequences and there's no evidence that the US decision to withdraw its 2000 troops has had any dimension of humanitarian concern built into the policymaking process and obviously that's a source of great concern for us we do see in some of the surrounding countries pressure for refugee return and all of our evidence from the refugees themselves that they don't consider Syria yet to be safe they also see various signals from the Assad regime that the regime doesn't want them to return and that speaks to the need for continued focus on support for countries like Lebanon and Jordan Peter Mara rightly referred to the need for consistency in humanitarian policymaking there's a danger that the situation in Jordan and Lebanon becomes yesterday's issue and we think it's incredibly important that the international system supports in a far more effective way the governments and people of those two countries in ensuring that refugees are able to stay until it is genuinely safe to go back can I just add that what David mentioned in his introduction a lack of diplomacy is particularly visible in the case of Syria where of course the international community is obviously split on the future political deal with regard to Syria and these inhibits also humanitarian actors to come big scale into working in Syria and bridge that famous gap everybody is talking about short-term humanitarianism and more long-term resilience and development aid which would be badly necessary given the massive destruction that the country has seen and displacement that the country has seen over the last couple of years so I think we will be able to scale and speed humanitarian work in Syria only in a sustainable way if there is some other political deal than the present political deal in Syria I would just add that we've it it almost happened by accident we we have been reporting about counterterrorism legislations and the implications for NGOs in Syria and one story led to another led to another and it has become the legislation legislation itself has not in most cases gotten worse but the application of it has and it has caught many NGOs up and made it a lot harder to deliver aid in Syria in particular and that's something we can expect to get worse next year because there are a number of investigations by the US government that are likely to to reveal even more kind of stringent rules moving forward thank you very much we might have time for one last quick question yeah the lady in the center there the microphone is on its way thank you question for David Sophie Edwards from Devix in the face of Brexit and considering UK's leading role as a humanitarian actor is there a danger that we could see the UK stepping back its leadership role and would you have a message maybe for the government on that I have many messages Brexit related but not all of them are completely focused on the subject of this press conference look the UK I I'm really proud that across both parties in government over the last decade there's been a very strong commitment to international development and also to international policy reform I think the Department for International Development has been a really good policy reformer as well as a funder of international efforts I believe actually that there is cross-party consensus for that global global Britain role to continue after Brexit but there's an obvious arena where Britain's influence will be lost and that's within European development and humanitarian policy and when we first came into government in 1997 European Union development policy was at a very nascent stage which is a diplomatic way of saying it wasn't very good and over the last of 20 years the European Union has become a really leading player not just in the amount of funds but in the quality of funding that it gives in development and humanitarian context echo is an outstanding humanitarian player these days and that's not all thanks to Britain but Britain has played its part in the renewal and renovation of European development and humanitarian policy and that voice will obviously be lost now I think there's enough momentum in the European system but it's obviously one of the tragedies of Brexit is that Britain's role is diminished what I very much hope is that if Brexit does indeed go ahead that the government negotiates a way for it to continue to partner with European institutions after Brexit so that the forces of Britain and continental partners are at least combined in this vital area thank you very much and mindful of the time I'm closing the press conference here thank you very much to all my panelists today and thank you very much for being here and thank you for watching thank you