 Ladies and gentlemen, you're all very welcome to today's event, which is the second in the Development Matters series, supported by Irish Aid. My name is David Donohue. I'm a former Irish Ambassador and Director-General of Irish Aid, and I will be moderating today's session. We are delighted to be joined today by Jagann Chappagine, the Secretary-General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Mr. Chappagine has been good enough to take time out of an extremely busy schedule to speak to us. He will speak for about 20 minutes, and then we will go to Q&A with our audience. You'll be able to join the discussion online using the Q&A function in Zoom, which you will see on your screen. Please feel free to send in questions and comments at any time they occur to you during the session, and we will come to them as soon as the Secretary-General has finished his presentation. Both the presentation today and the Q&A are on the record. Please feel free to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIEA. We are also live streaming the event, so a very warm welcome to those of you who are joining us via YouTube. Before taking on his present role in February 2020, Jagann Chappagine spent more than 20 years with IFRC working across Europe and Asia. He was the Under Secretary-General for Programs and Operations. He was also the Chief of Staff, and he was the Director of the Asia Pacific Region at the IFRC, so he brings a wealth of experience and operational know-how to his role. He has played a key role in building leadership in the response to large-scale humanitarian crises and in building resilient communities. I would now like to hand the floor to Robert Mead, the Deputy Director of the Humanitarian Unit in Irish Age, to say a few words on behalf of Irish Age. Robert? Excuse me. Many thanks, David. It gives me great pleasure to welcome here today Mr Jagann Chappagine, Secretary-General of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Prison Society, the IFRC. This is a very timely visit. The global humanitarian landscape is increasingly challenging and complex and evolving rapidly. We as the humanitarian community are today facing some of the most severe challenges in seeking to respond to unprecedented interlinked humanitarian needs. Secretary-General Chappagine, you have recently returned from the Horn of Africa where famine is unfolding, and you would have witnessed firsthand the devastation that millions of people are facing, and how also the ongoing war in Ukraine is compounding food insecurity there and elsewhere. On top of this, we constantly see now how recurring natural disasters and climate change are drivers of hunger and displacement, and how conflict also adds to this. Adherence to the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence provide the foundation for humanitarian action. They are essential if we are to deliver humanitarian assistance to those who need it most. Yet more than ever, these principles are under increased scrutiny and pressure. The team of the Secretary-General's address today, principled humanitarian action and complex humanitarian emergencies, has never been as relevant and important as it is now. As the world's largest humanitarian organization, the IFRC is a key partner for Ireland. It is uniquely positioned to act as a first responder to provide immediate response to sudden emergencies. It does so working through its network of over 190 Red Cross and Red Present member national societies, and through its 14 million volunteers, members and staff globally. Ireland has provided over 30 million in funding to the IFRC since 2010, and I am therefore delighted that the Secretary-General has the opportunity to engage with a wider Irish audience today. As David said, Secretary-General Schapigan assumed his role in early 2020, having spent his career working across Europe and Asia for the IFRC, and prior to being appointed Secretary-General, he served as Undersecretary-General for programs and operations and guided the IFRC relief and development efforts around the world. He also served previously as Chief of Staff and Director of the Asia-Pacific Region, providing crucial leadership during large-scale humanitarian crises. Ireland is a long-standing and vocal champion of principled humanitarian action. It informs every aspect of our humanitarian support, from our funding to our partnerships and our advocacy. But what do we need to do collectively now to ensure that these standards are upheld and to ensure that we continue to strengthen humanitarian action and to improve prevention of yet more hunger crises? Your wealth of experience, Secretary-General Schapigan, can perhaps give us some insight today on what needs to change. It gives me great pleasure now to hand over to you, Secretary-General, and thank you once again for joining us today. The floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you so much Ambassador David Dunhu and Robert Mead. Thank you so much and thank you for welcoming me and giving me this beautiful room here in your office. It's amazing actually to be with you here. It's truly my honor that I could come here and share some thoughts with you. You mentioned of course number of things I did, but the one of the things I did that I value the most in my life has been the young volunteer. At the age of 14 I started volunteering for that cross in Nepal. I come from Nepal and that experience is a young man trying to make a little difference, you know, with very little that I had at my disposal of course with my colleagues and friends in my school had set up, set myself to be who I am today and I value that experience the most in my life. Now just to share some of my thoughts on of course to start with today's situation in the world. Let me share with you some of the things maybe pre-COVID, pre-COVID just before the COVID how the world looked like and I have been saying that actually ours is the generation which is living in the best time in the history pre-COVID best time in the history. If you look at it the longest life expectancy in the history if you look at you know the recorded history we had the highest longest life expectancy. Networking has never been easier the way it is today. Though those of us who like sports, the sports have never been better. Those of us who like shopping the shopping has never been better or easier now with all the online shopping and all the shopping malls. Technology has never been better. Healthcare has never been better and this was the life in this world just pre-COVID. So that means the wealth, the science, the technology, the health, the education we are living in the best time in the world but at the same time there are also other statistics and I want to share with you these statistics from pre-COVID time. I don't have the latest right now in my hand. Pre-COVID two years ago over 700 million people were living on less than two US dollars a day. About 71% of the world population lived on 10 US dollars a day. That was the statistics. Two US dollars a day, not a lot. One billion people lived in slums which could be doubled by 2030 and actually we could reach that number sooner now because of the COVID and climate impact. More than one billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water and I'm just using the word water, not clean water. Over 815 million people around the world go to bed hungry every evening. Over 205 million people are affected by weather-related disasters annually, more than 90% in developing world. Around 37 million people are living with HIV, about 5,000 infections per day. Over 15,000 children under 5 die daily from preventable diseases like malaria and diarrhea. That's one every six seconds. One child dies from preventable diseases every six seconds. So while we have this world which if you compare with the past, it's supposedly the best time in the world. These are some of the statistics that existed pre-COVID-19 and these statistics are probably much worse now. I think I can confidently say that these statistics are much worse now than they were two years ago. I wanted to say this with you because this must, this must hit us. This must show us the inequity that exists in the world, the best and the most likely the worst at the same time and this should wake us all of us. Let me share with you maybe the three major, three major crisis pressing the world today and just to remember easily, I call them three seeds. The first sea is the climate crisis. I think I have been saying this and I truly believe on this that the most consequential of the crisis we are dealing today is the climate crisis. I think it's impact, it's a global impact and it's long lasting impact would be actually probably one of the, you know, one of the most serious impact on humanity is coming from climate. It's not only disasters, of course we know the number of disasters have increased, the frequency, the death it brings, it has increased but its impact on everything else is massive on the environment, on the food, food productions, on energy consumption, massive, massive impact a climate is having. The second sea is of course COVID-19 and as we saw the impact of COVID-19 on populations, on the health infrastructure and not only developing world, I think for the first time we felt that we had a disease which actually affected almost everybody but we also know that its impact was felt differently while it affected everybody, its impact was felt differently. The people living in the poorer world, the marginalized communities, the refugees, the migrants, the people living in the slums, I think they were affected disproportionately higher and it again showed the inequity that exists in the world. Even on a pandemic like COVID-19 we were actually very selfish. The science did very well, I think there was a very good collaboration among the scientists so we came up with the vaccines very, very quickly but then we started becoming very selfish. We started keeping vaccines for ourselves. Why now in the West, I see in Ireland, I currently live in Geneva where we have no restrictions but you go to Africa, the vaccination rate orbits around 15 to 16 percent today and this is a virus as we saw, the Omicron when we saw this in South Africa it took less than 48 hours to reach Europe. So even for a virus like that we forgot the importance of creating equity and basically serving everybody and reaching out to the people who need the most. So I think the COVID-19 of course it had a direct impact, the health impact, the socioeconomic impact, the organizational impact but also it created that inequity or it made the inequity even worse and of course the third sea I talk about is conflict and right now of course being in Europe the conflict in Ukraine of course is very much in the forefront of everybody but of course there are conflicts happening until 23rd of February all the news was about Afghanistan and after 24th I think as if like the situation of Afghanistan is over unfortunately it's not, it's getting worse. Of course the Syria, Yemen part of Sahel and of course other many part of the world, the conflict is still very much there and it's affecting millions of people domestically and millions of people are actually living living in the countries. So the combined impact of climate crisis COVID-19 and conflict is creating more disasters it's creating more diseases I think it's not only COVID-19 but you know the Ebola we saw right now we are just hearing about monkey parks you know Chikungunia in Africa number of other diseases are coming there and of course the non-communicable diseases are actually now affecting hundreds of millions of people almost as much as the communicable diseases are affecting if we take the pandemic pandemic out code they are creating displacement the climate is creating displacement conflict is creating displacement now the COVID-19 is also creating displacement because people are looking for opportunities the economic opportunities the health facilities opportunities they are also creating disparity as you as you saw during the COVID-19 certain group of people became richer much much richer the billionaires became multi-billionaires why I think the poorest became much much poorer so it has created that gap even bigger and we also saw a discrimination and growing discrimination so the collective impact of three C's climate COVID and conflict is exasperating what I call high D's the disasters diseases displacement disparity and discrimination and this is not a very pretty situation to be if this continues if this trend continues and people feel discriminated people feel excluded the disparity continues to grow and there is not a sufficient global solidarity at one point it starts impacting the global security and the and the and the global peace so these are not only for our individual well-being or the community well-being these are also important for the global peace and global security now how can we of course tackle these things and of course there could be many many ideas but as a as a humanitarian I would just like to share with you a three simple basic basic ideas I feel are very important as a as a as a humanitarian the first one the first one I feel is I think we need to have a bigger ability to listen and learn listen to the communities listen to the people you know who are actually living on this on sometimes some of these terrible conditions of conflict and as David mentioned Ambassador David just mentioned I was recently in Horn of Africa I visited the town called Ileret 21,000 people live there and because of the failing crops but last two years in a row and because these are agro-pastoralist communities and many of the animals also died because of no rain I witnessed the global acute malnutrition rate of 53.6 percent in that time and for your reference 15 percent of malnutrition rate is considered emergency 15 one five percent is considered emergency and in that town the rate was 53.6 percent now as we have seen in Africa the cycle of drought of course those of us older ones would remember the TV pictures from 84 and 85 but we don't have to go that back just in 2012 1112 we had 270,000 people who died because of hunger in Somalia that was just 10 years ago so that means we have seen this cycle of drought happening every few years but somehow despite all the richness all the progress I described in the beginning we seem to be able to unable to find a more sustainable solutions and this is why the importance of listening and learning comes into play we got to listen to the communities the people living in these areas on what they are seeing and what they are feeling and what they are experiencing and learning from that to adapt our humanitarian and development action working with community listening with communities and not imposing solutions but working together to find solutions so this listening and learning becomes a very important element putting the communities and people at the center of what we do a lot of times the focus is not the communities a lot of time focus is not the people but the focus becomes the politics focus becomes multiple other things focus becomes how the rich people can become richer and that's not helping us to find the solutions that's throwing millions of people into poverty and right now in Harno Paprika just three countries Kenya Ethiopia and Somalia 14 million people are on the verge of starvation that was the word used when I visited there on the verge of starvation and the inequity we see in many part of the world and also in equity we see and how we respond to also the crisis and and I did have a very challenging conversation with some of the journalists when I was when I was in Africa I was heavily challenged for in their eyes not being balanced and responding to their needs and they were comparing with how we have responded to the conflict in Ukraine and how we are responding to the food insecurity situation in Africa so right now as we are of course the Ukraine needs to be helped and the Ukrainian populations particularly the civilian population need to be supported but at the same time what they feel is that their suffering is somehow classified as second class or third class because most of our humanitarian response plans for Africa are very very poorly funded they are 10 percent 15 percent funded so how do we address this this this inequity on how we respond to human suffering so I think really listening and listening to the people putting people at the center putting community at the center and learning from them and learning from the experience becomes a very important element of principle humanitarian action moving forward major principle put the people and the community at the center the second aspect I want I want to say it with you is and with sort of links to the first point I was making earlier is how do we get more fair and smart financing what is happening now is a lot of the financing for last 50 60 years is coming from 20 to 30 same donors and and and I know sometimes these donors get criticized but not doing enough but on the other hand they have been the donors really embracing the burden if I can use that word of humanitarian and development support to the world at every crisis count these are the same donors who are putting the sources all the time this cannot be sustainable but also there are other countries who are now capable of sharing that responsibility so spreading that responsibility to more contributors more governments more donors becomes extremely extremely important but I also want to emphasize that we have to go beyond the donors are the traditional government donors I think the private sector has a very very important role to play and as we saw during the COVID-19 in our response the response of the international cross-sanded Christian societies we got a massive support from the private sector at one point actually this support was bigger than the support we got from the from the government we are also seeing a very similar level of support from the private sector towards the grand crisis but one important thing one important lessons we learned out of this is the private sector just doesn't want to be the people who write the check but they also want to be part of the process so it's extremely important that we stop seeing the private sector it's just the provider of the funding but also provided of the ideas and provided are being a true partner on developing the ideas and developing those shared ideas and the co-creation so that they become part of the solutions rather than just writing the checks and this is an important element of how we can engage the private sector in our humanitarian development and climate initiative and then the third element of this is we also have to be much more innovative on financing how can we create innovative financing mechanism that exists or that can exist around the world engaging the insurance companies and a lot of the other mechanism that can come from the you know multinational development banks or the Islamic financing for example uh you know there are billions of dollars available as part of the Islamic financing mechanism of jakat and shukuks and all those type of things so how do we have a broader share of the contributors the donors and not focusing on the same 20 or 30 who have been playing that responsibility for too long but secondly how do we get private sector into into the process and they become the part of the co-creation and part of the shared leadership and how would we actually embrace the innovative financing I think would be extremely important to have that smart financing the second aspect of the financing is how do we get humanitarian financing development financing and climate financing working in sync rather than in silos at the moment there is a humanitarian financing that goes separately there's a development financing that goes separately and then of course there is a huge climate finance and they are not working in integrated manner so we got to break that cycle if you look at the communities you know the communities don't differentiate their needs there's a humanitarian needs a development needs or a climate needs that you know the communities have needs they have aspirations they have rights so it's very important that we actually respond to their needs aspiration and rights rather than you know putting them inside so this would be a very important element of the smart financing moving forward another element of the of the smart financing is how do we actually do our development on humanitarian work that is climate lot of the development if we consider the climate consideration as part of our development we don't need to then have a separate investment as a climate investment because this is already made part of the development processes so basically making our humanitarian and development or climate is smart would actually save us a lot of resources and will save lives and livelihoods because they will be more disaster resistant development basically saving lives and livelihoods and economy moving forward so I think these are the elements of you know the smart financing now the smart financing also have to be fair fair in the sense more equitable and and this is one thing what we are seeing right now as we saw in the COVID-19 response I think it was not a very equitable response and which I thought was not very smart not to not to invest on some of the countries in a very timely manner the vaccination was not equitably done and I think that definitely prolonged the the virus and still the new variants are coming I hope touch food you know they will not be as bad as the previous variants have been but the but the fact that new variants of COVID-19 are emerging continues to demonstrate that it is still a threat so it's very important that equitable distribution of resources to the countries that need the most is very important part of smart financing and the third element I want to share with you is about the leaders and I think as we have seen now with all the challenges we are seeing in the world of course the the the Ukrainian conflict being the closest here in in in Europe but the food insecurity crisis the climate crisis we are seeing all the development crisis we are seeing the energy crisis we are seeing the food prices going up now you know the millions of people having to move every year demonstrated that globally we haven't been able to exercise the leadership that is needed to address some of these challenges or hopefully prevent some of these challenges and manage some of these challenges better and my contention is that in today's globalized world today's interconnected world I think the definition of the leadership needs to change I think this is a time for more humble leadership more inclusive leadership the strength of new leadership is about their humility the the strong leader I think traditionally the image of strong leaders the macho leaders I think that's not what will be effective in today's world I think that's the type of leadership actually that contributes to the type of challenges we are facing in today's world so we need a more humble leadership who are willing to lead with humility in a more inclusive manner we also need the leadership that value the traditions as I mentioned in the beginning the world has made huge progress that means we have done some good things along the line in the history it's very important that we learn from the good things we have done in the history and value that tradition but at the same time we do need the leadership which embraces innovation who is not afraid to experiment and innovate and actually adapt the approaches to today's to today's world today's globalized world today's digitalized world today's network world and it's a very different world we live than the world we lived say 40 years ago so in summary we have been living the best time in the history but still the world has been facing terrible statistics millions and millions hundreds and hundreds of millions of people suffer and this must not be accepted the combined effect of three seeds the climate COVID-19 and conflict is actually creating a major challenges for this world and in summary I describe that as disasters diseases displacement disparity and discrimination and to try to address this I believe that we must listen and learn from the communities and from others we must have more fair equitable and smart financing and investment and we need the new type of leadership which values tradition which embraces innovation which leads with inclusive approach and needs leads with humility these are the few things I want to share with you and let me stop it here over to your master Jack and thank you very very much it was a real tour de force you make a number of very powerful points about the world we find ourselves in at the moment the three C sums up the key challenges but I was particularly struck by what you said towards the end there about the need for a different kind of leadership more more humble and and and inclusive I mean that that brings me perhaps to the the first question we have which is from Pat Gibbons of University College Dublin and perhaps thanks you for your for your excellent talk and he just wanted to follow up on this idea of global leadership and he's wondering really his question came in before you made the point about the humble leadership but he's asking about the capacity of the UN system in general to provide leadership in relation to the three Cs but perhaps if you could respond if you were good enough to respond to Pat's question but also then develop a little bit more the idea of of humble leadership I'm you know I'm to be a little bit provocative I'm struck by the fact that in the Ukraine crisis the UN secretary general has been to be honest struggling to find a way for the UN to connect and some people would argue that in a way the UN needs to be more assertive I feel you're right actually I'd prefer your approach but you know there are there are different ways of looking at it the risk is that the UN might appear to be almost removed from the equation if it is not assertive enough but perhaps you would address some of those points in relation to leadership No very very very happy too I think the maybe let me start from humility doesn't mean weakness humility doesn't mean not being persistent I think the you can still be humble and be very persistent but you do it in an inclusive manner I think the one of the challenge of the leadership you see many times is it becomes an exclusive approach and when you need to when we have to you know I remember a quote from I think it was from JFK he says that actually you negotiate with your enemies or your adversaries you know you don't negotiate with your friends so that means the humble leadership has the strength and courage to go and talk to the people you may not necessarily agree with them people may have different philosophies than yours and that's the type of leadership who is not afraid to go and talk to the people and for me that's that's the type of leadership that is missing now a lot of times we hear the language of threat and intimidation and if you don't agree with me we will do this and we will do that when that's the top that comes from the leadership is very very difficult to find solutions now coming to the UN and I think although I don't represent the UN here but we are also a membership organization you know we also have 192 members the UN has 193 but I think what happens we with the membership organization for the membership organization to be effective the members have to come together and I think the one of the challenge the UN has at the moment is the members are not coming together so we can criticize Antonin Guterres for not being very effective but he doesn't vote on the Security Council it's the members who vote on the Security Council it's the members who have the vetoes in the Security Council so if the members don't come together with that approach of humility and inclusivity it will be extremely difficult for the UN to exercise that leadership that we all expect from the UN in the in the in the in the Ukraine crisis now of course it's very difficult to see how the Ukraine crisis will evolve but I think the people who are part of the conflict all of them have said that at the end of the day the solution will be on the negotiating table all of them are saying that so to come to the negotiating table I don't think the language of threat and intimidation will bring people on the table so I even in the Ukraine conflict situation I do hope that we will have leaders hopefully from the member states who will have that inclusive approach and that courage to be able to talk to all sides including the sides with whom they don't agree with would be extremely extremely important moving forward thank you very much again another question from Suzanne Keating who is with Irish Aid and Suzanne in a way she builds on what you were saying about listening and learning but she asks you know how on the one hand we need to listen and learn but on the other hand at the same time we have to work quickly and and to to scale up to to save lives or are these two things contradictory that if you know listening and learning implies a certain patient process but often we don't have the luxury this is my own take on it we don't have the luxury to to have that reflection we need to act quickly in practical terms is there a sort of a tension between those two another can you give a practical example of where it might work ideally in the Horn of Africa context actually they are not contradictory at all actually they are actually by not doing that I have seen the organizations creating more problem than shelving I have seen humanitarian parachuting I mean including in my own country in 2015 earthquake I used to be the regional director at that time for a specific an earthquake hit my own country and if the country was welcoming within first week we have hundreds and hundreds of people parachuting to the country they love Nepal so they all came there but they would not spend few hours to listen to what is actually going on in the country what is actually happening what is a national plan or is there a national plan or not what others are doing not spending few hours not talking to the local partners actually created a much bigger mess much bigger mess lot of duplication of the efforts lot of actually wastage of time and a lot of frustration because people want to move very fast and they find out that actually somebody else is already there doing something which they wanted to do or people bringing his top which was actually not needed people were people were actually needing medicines but then people are coming with food for example and and people are bringing and this was in another situation another crisis actually the tsunami that hit you know Indonesia and Sri Lanka people actually sending winter clothes for Bandache because it was December so people thought that actually it must be called if people had just listened to the local communities that actually you don't need winter clothes even if it is December in Bandache you know people can still go in t-shirts and shirts so actually spending few hours to listen actually makes your response faster not slower and as I have done many many operations myself on the field actually these are not contradicting at all. Thank you very much Aghan a question from Keelan O'Sullivan who is with the IIA Secretary General you touched on the shift in global attention from for example Afghanistan to Ukraine how do you foresee the war in Ukraine impacting humanitarian crises in in you know in particular those in Africa in the longer term and what is going to be the the longer term effect of the Ukraine crisis and what the IFRC has to do there? I think you know of course the immediate concerns are very very high just this morning I was reading that the food prices have gone by around 45 percent in Africa because Africa has been importing huge amount of wheat from Russia and Ukraine and that of course supply has been disrupted right now so already 14 million people just hard in Africa on the verge of starvation with 45 percent increase in the food prices the increase in the energy prices of course a massive massive impact that will be immediately and as we see of course the resources are limited they are not infinity sources that means the enough resources not going to Afghanistan enough resources not going to places like Syria and Yemen of course meaning there is a humanitarian suffering of course I think the event of suffering is going to get worse but there could also be the implications for the stability of some of those those authorities in those countries and you know once the instability comes you don't know whether the new people coming to power would be better than the people who are in power right now I mean you don't know that so I think that my sense is there is a real immediate humanitarian concern in many of the countries particularly in Africa Afghanistan and some of the Middle Eastern countries now in the in the mid term and the long term impact of course I mean at this stage it's difficult to assess I mean we still don't know how the how the conflict would unfold you know how it will end a lot of a lot of it will also depend on how the conflict will end or will it end I think this will impact this will have a a major impact on how my things might develop in the medium and long term but right now I think we are seriously concerned with the with with its immediate impact on on humanitarian issues I think from our side we are trying to do a couple of things first is joining forces with others just a few weeks ago actually we had David of course you would know the the IASA intelligence steering committee mechanism all the principles we came together in Geneva we shared out notes and we agreed to work together to actually highlight all the issues on the world and try to keep the attention on some of this crisis and we are doing this in a systematic manner now the second thing is of course we mobilize our local resources and local network luckily for us you know we are present in almost every country in almost all major communities and with our volunteer workforce working with other partners to try to bring immediate immediate relief to the extent we can but we do depend on a generosity of the donors to be able to do that the third thing is really advocating the few of the points I was making before and also bringing some of our knowledge and learning especially the food crisis situation in Africa maybe I think so simplistically I don't know but Africa has a massive arable land the agriculture can be built in Africa and somehow you know introducing innovations on some of the agriculture techniques I think investing or encouraging the governments and the partners to invest are a different way of doing the agriculture and maybe also have a relook on the agro-bacterial communities is it still a sustainable model for the for the future I know there have been some discussion for the last number of years so we are also advocating and supporting some of the some of these works in the in the region of course you know our contribution would be quite small compared to what is needed but if all of us contribute in a coordinated manner hopefully we can make a reasonable reasonable difference in in in people's life but to be very honest with you the medium and long term impact of the the Ukraine conflict we are still analyzing we are still analyzing yeah thank you very much I just threw in a question of my own I mean how do you think the localization agenda which was agreed at the world humanitarian summit a few years ago how do you think that is progressing is it moving quickly enough I mean how does the IFRC feel about that in totality it hasn't moved the way it should I think it's become probably a lot of talk and not enough action I think the the and my first point about listening and learning from the communities is all about really localization yeah and and it hasn't sufficiently happened per number of reasons one is I think there hasn't been enough incentives if I can use the word for localization and and and I have challenged that what I call the intermediate organizations so of course we have the donors putting the resources and we have the local communities and the organization actually delivering on the ground and we have the UN system and the international organizations and I enjoy including my organization is the intermediate organization and I believe that we as an intermediate organizations have to push ourselves consciously to actually listen learn from the communities and invest on the communities for localization to succeed and this hasn't happened sufficiently and I haven't actually the one asking for a more challenge to us now within the within my organization during COVID-19 we push the localization agenda very very hard and just to give you any statistics that out of 2.5 billion roughly globally we mobilized for COVID-19 response more than 2 billion was mobilized locally nationally and only less than half billion was mobilized internationally and for me if we consciously try and work with 192 members society you could see around 80 percent of the resources and capacity was mobilized domestically and that's sort of the direction we want to push collectively together but there is not there hasn't been enough incentive I know that happened some good effort so I don't I don't want to be just critical also I know number of organizations have tried but if we don't commit to change ourselves more drastically I don't think we will achieve the local the aim of the localization agenda so we as an intermediate organization have to change more drastically we need to have a much harder look on ourselves and be able and be challenged ourselves to be are we lean enough are we cost efficient enough and have that courage but at the same time David and sometimes this becomes a bit controversial but I will say it what we also invest we also have to invest on capacity building of the local actors the community actors and one of the capacity that we have to build to assure the donors is around what is called the accountability there are clearly much bigger demands from the taxpayers on how the humanitarian and development assistance being used so that means the every organization both the international and the local organization must be able to have a transparent risk management capacity accountability capacity so that the resources that are provided are spent properly recorded properly and reported properly so I think there is a I think the donors have to continue to push this agenda and not get disillusioned because the reach of here of disillusionment the intermediate organizations like mine will have to look much more harder ourselves and my organization is doing that right now and the local actors will have to have that you know the ambition to learn and strengthen their capacity so that they can become even more transparent and even more accountable organization if we put all these things together I think the real localization will be a success great job and thank you very much for that a question a more specific question from Kean Fitzgerald of the IAEA in any humanitarian operation access to water is a very important dimension so Kean asks really for your comment on what's called strategic damming you know where you where water supplies are exploited politically or are instrumentalized by one or other player and he gives a couple of examples of that do you think that there is something that the IAEA can do to mitigate the damage done to civilians by the instrumentalization of water access I have to be humble here I think you know some of the big examples you have given I don't know how much we can influence except to advocate for the impact it's having on people I think that's probably our main contribution but on our day-to-day work you know on our emergency response in also in our long term community best work water and sanitation becomes a very important important part of hard work we have defined what we call the flagship program and one of our flagships is water and sanitation actually the sanitation is the most neglected area of the work in humanitarian development work actually and of course you know with the poor sanitation its impact particularly on health becomes very very very severe so on humanitarian settings actually you know when you have to respond to an immediate crisis a certain impact crisis we do have actually quite well established capacity what we call the water units and sanitation units these are called the emergency response units we can deploy them actually quite rapidly and these units can purify water and distribute very very quickly you know they can just get any source of water they can purify and distribute in different ways put in the jerrycans, truck it or have a water points in the areas affected and we do have these units placed in a number of countries mostly in Europe but they can be sipped very very very quickly and in the in the more normal community best resilience building programs you know we have joined forces with other organisms like the WHO the UNICEF and others Bill and Melinda Gates foundations around how do we eradicate cholera and one of the element of the eradication of cholera is of course investing in water and sanitation and there are roughly 30 endemic countries with cholera that's where we are we are putting our attention so I think our contribution is much more around around you know reducing the suffering of the communities from the impact of some of the water shortages and maybe more humble contributions towards some of the major you know the issues and that's creating a good water shortages thank you John we probably have time for about two or three final questions if you're good enough to to to stay for them one is there's a another one from Pat Gibbons of UCD who makes an interesting point about I mean let's say a possible tension between involving the private sector more in humanitarian action given the more ownership of the process at the same time you want to allow for principled humanitarian action so is there a potential this is my own take is there a potential contradiction between giving the private sector a greater involvement and on the other hand trying to stick to the fundamental principles of humanitarian action it's a very it's a very very important point and I think you know one of the things that's extremely important for us in our partnership with the private sector has been non-negotiate non-negotiable conditions and that's our seven fundamental principles and that is something is not negotiable but where they can actually contribute is much more than the program design program development you know use of data and the decision making and I found that we can actually learn a lot from them they already have very well tested systems and mechanism so actually there is so much learning that can happen from them on that aspect and even on the policy development and things like that you know a lot of private sector seems very very good on using the data and inform their policy and aesthetic decision based on data and those are the type of things we can learn so I think you raised a very very important point I think the next time I talk I will differentiate it more specifically in the very beginning that the seven fundamental principles we have that are non-negotiable also in our relations with the governments this is not only the private sector also in our discussion with the government you know we don't really compromise on those principles yeah great angle thank you very much for that and then two questions finally Andrew Gilmore who who makes the point that you know you you talk about listening to people who are most affected by humanitarian crisis is there some way in which the IFRC itself can give voice to those people I mean Andrew uses the word platform I mean it makes a lot of sense that you would some way try to enable them to to express their views on the predicaments they find themselves in and then a question from Dara Lawler about debt sustainability I mean obviously after COVID-19 this has become a bigger topic again debt sustainability in emerging markets and developing economies and now there are risks posed by high levels of global inflation and possibly there'll be these risks would be exacerbated by monetary tightening in developed economies so all in all we have challenges in relation to debt and if you were good enough just to offer your own perspective on that as our final question thank you thank you so much I think on the on the post questions yes we have developed this I mean we developed this concept actually in a systematic manner after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 that's when I think the the big emphasis came around having to listen to the to the to the affected populations and of course over the years those concepts have now developed much more and I think they have become much more sophisticated and right now what we we call it a community engagement and accountability as CEA that's what we call and and I and actually we use that during the Ebola crisis in in in DRC and that was extremely important as you know you know all the stigma attached and all the rumors around the around the Ebola and as you know this was this is one of the crisis where you don't have a problem of everybody flooding in because generally people are running away but of course for us as a Red Cross in our volunteers come from the communities but they don't have anywhere to run to so we have to adapt ourselves in in working in the communities and one thing that came very clear during the Ebola crisis was that you know the dead bodies were much more contagious with the with the Ebola virus so how do you manage the dead body was a critical element of breaking the chain of infection so we took the responsibility because you know the families don't hand over the deceased body of their family members very easily so the organization they could trust were the Red Cross so we accepted that responsibility having no prior experience on how to actually do and and we call it you know a dignified burial of the of the of the of the deceased but soon there was of course the rumors going around all these people are stealing the levers and the heart or whatever whatever of our family members and and that's when we had to listen to the communities very very quickly where these rumors are coming how can what can we do to to address those so first is by listening we figured out that there were rumors and then we found out where the rumors are coming was as you know the body bags are generally black non-transparent body bags so we immediately disposed those body bags and we bought the transparent body bags and we invited the families and offered them you know this protective gear so they could actually see the safe and dignified burials of their family members and I'm just giving one example of by just listening and very quickly learning and adapting and it became you know a very successful program and contributed massively in actually stopping the Ebola virus in in DRC and of course in some other countries so we do have this and now we are working with UNICEF and others and this was one of the big part of hard work in COVID-19 was listening to people and and trying to understand what is what is affecting them and adapting our approaches and actually within the first couple of months we identified that the mental health was going to be one of the biggest issues of the COVID-19 and we identified that not through scientific research just by listening to people you know our ordinary volunteers listening to ordinary people so in March already we identified that the mental health was going to be a major problem so we do have this we do have this platform but of course these are focused primarily around the humanitarian issues and the and the challenges they are facing but also issue around the protection you know the sexual expertise and abuse and all those type of things these platforms can be can be used and now because of COVID-19 we have met them really broad now globally on the final topic I have to be a bit careful because I'm not an expert on some of these topics but as we are currently seeing in Sri Lanka so I think that your question is a very varied question that will we see more countries going through the challenges which Sri Lanka is currently going and you know massive debt not being able to service the debt and you know a flourishing country has suddenly gotten into a situation where they cannot buy medicines and they cannot buy fuel in the in the span of just a few months so clearly I believe that this is an issue this is going to be a much bigger issue and that means of course as you rightly said the monetary policies will be tightened that means the most vulnerable are the ones who will suffer the most generally the ones with the resources they may suffer a little bit but they don't they don't suffer as much and that means further increase on the humanitarian needs and assistance that means the same donors will have having to come up with additional resources I think we will be getting into a vicious circle which hopefully we can avoid but I agree with the question that this may become a real issue for many many countries in the in the months to come unfortunately yeah indeed well sector general thank you very very much for a wonderful talk and a Q&A session thank you for being so generous and in responding to the various comments and questions we have all been hugely impressed by what you've told us about and the insights you've given us so on behalf of everybody who's been listening in I'd like to thank you warmly I take away many particularly important observations and I have to say that example you gave about Ebola I think that's a very powerful one about listening to the people I remember reading about that at the time and that's a very concrete example of understanding local sensitivities local needs and transitioning them immediately into giving practical effect to them so thank you very very much for coming we hope that we'll see you again in person in Dublin and in the meantime we wish you every success with your ongoing work thank you thank you so much and thank you for this opportunity I feel really humble and honored thank you