 Any questions you want to ask him in the next 30 minutes, we're going to try to answer as many as possible. So feel free to just comment either on Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube in the comments. So yeah, we're going to start in a few more seconds. So thank you very much. Meanwhile, thank you very much for joining us. We're just waiting just to inform a few more people to join us for the live call today. Perfect. Great. So Mr. Peter Maurer, thank you very much for joining us today. In the next 30 minutes, what we're going to do, I just try to answer as many questions as possible, following Peter's visit to Afghanistan the last few days. And I want to start, Peter, by just generally getting just to understand from you, after four days of spending in Afghanistan, what was your impression from the country? Well, unsurprisingly, I come back with a lot of different impressions, sometimes contradictory. On the one side, you see the remnants of war to destruction in some of the urban areas which I have visited. You see from the account of colleagues, of families, of people working in our projects and program, you see how much the horrific toll of 40 years of conflict has torn apart. Families have made people suffer physically, of course. Visiting physical rehabilitation center, you see all the people maimed and having suffered from the impact of war from other disabilities during the last couple of decades. And then you see the psychological toll that the war has taken. So you see all these remnants of war. You see graveyards along the highway which are pretty fresh and which point to the recent escalation of warfare, the end phase of the conflict in the last couple of months. And then you see normalcy of life. You see markets, people go to shop, centers are busy as they have been before. If you look closer, you see long lines in front of banks and this draws your attention to the broader social economic problems. Banks are closed. The country has difficulties refinancing it and kick-starting its economy again after the military event and the political takeover of the Taliban as a government. So you see a lot of these things at the same time. You see small demonstrations here and there, mostly women expressing their fears and the prehensions about what has happened. Very multifaceted and complex impressions come to you when you visit for a couple of days. It's actually an interesting segue to the question we get to ask a lot in our social media accounts. And a lot of the concerns people are making is really about what's going to happen with women, the women's status in Afghanistan in the next few weeks, months, years. What was your impression of the situation here? Well, first let me just highlight that the issue of women in the Afghani society is not something which is new. It has been an issue for many decades and many who have worked in Afghanistan know how difficult it is to reconcile traditional values, behaviors, attitudes in the relationship between men and women in that society with international rights-based approaches that we bring as outsiders into this society. And reconciling these elements is extremely difficult, has always been difficult, and is just highlighted because of the military strategic takeover that we have witnessed is now highlighted into the international media, but it's as such nothing new. We know it as ICRC, as an organization having worked for more than 30 years. We know in our programs how much we had to fight to serve for a more inclusive representation of women of minorities, of people from different origins in our program. This is not coming naturally in the reflexes of the society and therefore I think it's just a new phase where this issue will be rediscussed, renegotiated, fought for by the respective social and political trends in the country. And so we need to be clear what we want as an organization and I made it very clear during my trip in order to have impactful humanitarian work, we have to rely on a diversity of inputs, men and women, but also minorities, old and young, social representations have to be brought in order to have the best possible humanitarian work done and the best possible humanitarian work is so important to do at the present moment because the crisis is deep. For the years of poverty and conflict have left the country weakened, the society weakened. Many people traumatized by what they have experienced from civilians having gone through warfare, from detainees coming out of prison after having been tortured and ill-treated. So this is a deeply wounded and scarred society. Yeah, definitely. I want to remind you all, if you have any questions from Mr. Peter Maurer, feel free just to comment on YouTube or Facebook or Twitter posts around the live right now. And I wanted to ask you specifically about that. What were you doing for the four days where you've been in Afghanistan? Well, I have visited many places in which ICRC has activities. I started in Kabul with the more political talks with the new leadership. I met Mullab Radar and some of his closest advisors and representatives had good conversations on what the environment of good humanitarian work would look like of neutral and impartial humanitarian work in the future of diverse and inclusive work in the future. I think it's important to continue this conversation. As everybody knows, it's not the first conversation between an ICRC president and the Taliban movement taking place. We have engaged in those parts of Afghanistan under Taliban control in the past. We have found and tried to find in many places sometimes difficult compromises on how exactly we find adequate modalities. So this has been, again, at the core and at the center of our conversation. And there is no question at the present moment that the Taliban government has a great interest at an organization like ICRC not only continues, but increases, speeds, scales what we have done in the past, in particular the health sector, but also in the waters, sanitation, in some economic livelihood sectors, and then, of course, in our protection work. We need to continue and to be able to continue the work with civilians affected by violence, with detainees, with internally displaced, with those in the society who are disadvantaged, who are vulnerable women children. So these all have been important elements of the conversation. And it's a conversation which is not, again, new as such, but happens in a new context where the Taliban now do not control only a part of the territory, but the whole territory of Afghanistan. I imagine that during your four days trip, you actually met a lot of ICRC staff, the International Red Cross staff. We have about 1,800 also local, but also international staff members working today in Afghanistan. What did you hear from them? It was particularly touching to see that there is almost no staff member who has not been deeply affected by this war, who has not a family member, a friend, a brother, a sister, a father, a mother, which hasn't been either killed, displaced, wounded, maimed during that conflict. And therefore, I have been really shaken by the real-time accounts of what has happened in particular over the last couple of years and in the last phase of the conflict, because this conflict has developed and has unfolded for decades, but it has been particularly intense in the last years. ICRC, by the way, has drawn the attention of the international community to this fact. We have talked to NATO, to the international troops, about the rising number of civilians. So this time, visiting Afghanistan, you see what this means in concrete accounts from our staff. And then, of course, there are the particularly impressive accounts from our women's staff who struggle with this new reality, which recasts and reshapes the debate as we have discussed before between men and women in the society. They ask themselves a question whether they will be able to continue to come to work, whether they will be safe to come to work, how they have to dress in order to be safe to come to work and not be harassed in the society. So these are very serious issues, which challenge us also as an employer, because when I think what duty of care means in a context like Afghanistan, we certainly need to take these signals seriously and give the best possible protection also to women working in our programs. I'm trying to follow the sound of questions people are asking us right now, but just before that, just because it touched the role of the international community around that. And if I'm thinking about the strong footage that came in the last few weeks from the airport in Kabul, we could see a lot of international representatives, the embassies actually leading the country, getting on planes to leave the countries. And I'm trying to figure out from you exactly what do you think the role of the international community right now? Well, it's difficult. I think each and everybody is kind of recasting and reshuffling his carts and assessing what the situation and the possibility and the necessities are. And I think that's not only true for what has been the past stronghold of the international community, Western countries, but also neighboring countries, other important actors who position themselves in a new way to this new situation. What struck me most maybe also coming back to your question on listening to colleagues and people and those who are involved in our programs is a kind of relief on the security but an anxiety on the insecurity to come is maybe also a sort of apprehension about this international community who left, who focused exclusively on getting their citizens out when they listened to the messages of ministers in Europe and in the United States, they hear fears about Afghan migration outside. And so these are apprehensions which we should also take very seriously. As I mentioned before, the signals we get out of Afghanistan today are not necessarily linear. They are contradictory. And people may fear the new government or have concerns about how life will be under a Taliban government. And at the same time, they resent a lot the previous government and those associated with it and which is translating then in this sense of being abandoned by many who have been there for 20 years and just left with the foreign troops. I have a couple more questions for you, but I think I want to jump right into some questions we got from people online right now. So Paul, asking us on YouTube, what does Mr. Maurer think the overall human rights situation in Afghanistan is going to improve? Sorry, when? Does Mr. Maurer think the overall human rights situation in Afghanistan is going to improve? Look, our mandate is not human rights because it's the respect of international humanitarian law and trying to find conditions which allows us to develop effective and impactful humanitarian programs. So I won't pronounce myself to the overall human rights situation and what I expect to be the sort of thrust of developments of human rights in Afghanistan. That's a complex issue to respond in a Twitter conversation. What I can say is that we will do the best we can to create conditions around our programs which are respectful of humanity. We are, after all, a humanitarian organization which reflects principled humanitarianism, impartiality, neutrality, independence, and which at the same time are inclusive and try to be as broadly based in the Afghan society as ever possible in political conditions which we encounter. Thank you very much for that. Also on YouTube, we have David is asking, are any US or Western organizations besides ICRC, besides the International Red Cross, delivering assistance to Afghanistan these days? Well, at the present moment, the aid system as such has broken down. And besides ICRC, I have seen MSF, which is no surprise because MSF and ICRC are always kind of frontline organizations. We see certainly remnants of former support structures still active. But I think it is a big issue on when and how some of the big international institutions will go back full power in order to address the deep humanitarian, economic, and political crisis in Afghanistan. Our sort of responsibility is to see that more actors come to the country again, engage, involve, support the activities, certainly humanitarian first, but there is a broader agenda here to follow. And I appreciate that next Monday we will see a donor conference on Afghanistan convened by the United Nations, coming together here in Geneva and I think, and I hope that this will be an occasion for many organizations to reposition themselves and recommit to Afghan populations and to relieve the suffering which is going on at the present moment. Thank you. If there's one thing that repeats itself in our comments is asking us about our conversation with the Taliban. And one particular question I want to refer to you is coming on Facebook, how could you approach Taliban to respect IHL? Any talks so far or any plans around that? And yes, of course, I seriously is a mandate and the way we work with different officials and governments is the meetings and themselves are confidential, but is there anything you can say around that? Well, first let me just highlight that we have engaged on international humanitarian law with the Taliban as an armed group over the last 30 years. And we have engaged with the Taliban to the extent that many of their leadership have been detained. And we have visited them in detention. So the most credible sort of litmus test for international humanitarian law is to demonstrate also to the Taliban that ICRC is an impartial organization that it engages for humane treatment of detainees, that it engages on the conduct of hostilities not only on the one side, but on all sides of a conflict. And I think we have had reasonable engagement from the Taliban on those crucial elements of international humanitarian law. Look, you can look at this present situation as a real drama and as a deep humanitarian crisis, but it could be worse when you look at some of the level of destruction that we see in other conflicts of the world. And the fact that the takeover has taken place in that way and with a relatively little direct impact on civilians, not comparable in urban warfare to what we see in other places in the level of destruction. This is also a result of long-term engagement with NATO, with NATO countries, with the Taliban, and with, in that sense, both sides or all sides in that conflict in Afghanistan. Continuing this and adapting it to new contexts and new situation will be a critical challenge also for our organization. It was part of the discussion I had with Mullah Bratah. Thank you very much for that. Yeah, I'm just a few more questions from our audience. Can you talk more about the ICRC work is doing right now these days in Afghanistan? You mentioned a few about what are working clinics and can you just elaborate a bit more about that? Well, our focus at the present moment is clearly on our health programs, scaling our health program, which is we have increased over the last couple of months, our involvement in health clinic. We were at roughly 46, 47 hospitals and health clinics. We are at almost 90 health clinics supported by the ICRC. We are, of course, looking at the protection of civilians in particular those displaced. The movement that we have seen around Kabul Airport has had its ripple effect, not internationally but also nationally. Miners have been separated from their families. Families have been separated amongst themselves between those who stayed, those who left. And ICRC is engaged with a recross and recrescent movement overall in a big operation, bringing families again together, identifying unaccompanied minors, trying to find their parents who have lost and left their children in the dramatic situation of the last days of the previous government in Afghanistan. Yeah, I think in that it's a good opportunity to also mention the ICRC website called Trace the Face. I'll ask our team to post and tweet right after this call a link to the website. We can actually, if you are looking for someone, if you're looking to identify a family member, loved one you've lost, you can actually go on the website and explore it there. Just a couple more questions. So we have from someone on Twitter, how can we, this is actually an interesting one, as a member of the international community, concretely support and contribute to ICRC's work in Afghanistan? What can the average person do today to support a work in Afghanistan? Well, the average person can only donate or engage and become a member of a good organization who does good work in Afghanistan and help in some of the good projects which are still there. If you are a nurse or a doctor, I'm sure ICRC or MSF will badly need you. The Afghan Red Crescent will badly need you. We will come out with an appeal and then an additional appeal. Other organizations will come out with appeals and getting either a job in one of these organizations or if you have some money left, getting to support a good program of one of these organizations is probably the best you can do. And then I think in a broader sense, as a citizen of a European country or a country other than Afghanistan, I think you can engage and try to have a more granular vision on what the problems in Afghanistan are. That's more of a political statement and task you can do. Many of the statements that I read today in the international press do not necessarily reflect the complexity of the situation in Afghanistan. And I do believe that if you really want to help, you'll have to get your head around some of the complex contradictory and difficult issues in the country. And in doing so, we will find out ways to engage. But expressing yourself maybe in a less polarized way on things happening in Afghanistan is an important contribution to having a more differentiated view on how to help and what to do. I have another question that someone just asked and I kind of repeat what we already answered before, but I think it's interesting. I mean, are you optimistic about the near future? Well, of course, I'm always optimistic because that's what we are here for. We have always to work towards a situation where we can cope with difficult issues and make progress for people affected. And if I look on what we have done in the past, what we are doing today in a very difficult environment, I'm very optimistic because it shows and tells me that there is an ability to improve even if those improvements are maybe slow or too slow. And even if they are not always exactly fitting our mindset, but I'm overall optimistic. I thought a lot of Afghans have a great engagement in their country. They want to stay. They want to construct the country. They see the present situation as a challenge, but also as an opportunity to eventually end 40 years of warfare and to construct a new society, even if under difficult circumstances. So I come rather optimistic home from a trip which has shown me that Afghans have an enormous strength and the society is enormously strong to resist difficult circumstances. Interesting. Maybe one last question from Kate is, she's asking, are you concerned U.S. and U.N. sanctions will make it impossible for human internal organizations to work in Afghanistan and for financial institutions to provide necessary services to support them? Well, I'm cautiously optimistic given the declarations and actions of Western countries over the last couple of days, making clear that humanitarian assistance is definitely acceptable. Some of them have taken decisions to exempt humanitarian organizations and humanitarian activities from sanctions. So important decisions and statements have been made over the last couple of days. This is good. I will certainly suspect that we will have to further negotiate because the needs are so broad and so big that they often go beyond humanitarianism. And therefore, this will be an issue of discussion. I do believe that there is a political conundrum at the present moment, which goes beyond my pay grade of being a president of a humanitarian organization of recognition and allowing international institutions to use their tools and instruments and financial possibilities to support the new Afghan government, which needs international recognition. I think this is a political issue to which I can't pronounce myself, but which will certainly be important to see the ramification of humanitarian work in Afghanistan in the future. Maybe one last question, actually. Are you going to continue with the detention visits in the country? Is the ICRC visit detention centers across the globe where we actually work? Are we going to continue this in the country? I'm optimistic that we will be able to do so. We will have to adapt to the new situation and see who is still a detainee, how big the issue is. A lot of detainees have left prison. Some of them are in important government positions at the present moment, but given my talks in Kabul, I'm relatively optimistic that ICRC will continue to play a role with regard to the detention in Afghanistan in the future. Thank you very much. Yes, we have to finish now. I want to remind you the website TraceTheFace that I mentioned before. So if you are looking for a family member or loved one, you've lost contact with TraceTheFace.org. We're also going to put it on our Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube links there so you can actually go and check this website out. Thank you very much, Peter, for being with us. And if you have any more questions you want to ask the ICRC, feel free to just go on our social media accounts and comment there. We'll try to answer as many as possible. Thank you very, very much. Thanks a lot. Thanks.