 The fundamental principles of humanity and impartiality kind of embed all humanitarian assistance but they are operating principles that guide our work the way we do business, the way we approach and the way we secure access, the way we prioritize and negotiate our approach and those are independence and neutrality and it is that independence and the practice of neutrality that eventually develops the trust, the trust of the communities, the trust of all the parties in a conflict and eventually allows us to have access. Once we have access if we do a good job at identifying in an impartial way the needs then we should really be able to actually deliver effectiveness. Effectiveness I would say is providing the best possible assistance and protection to the most vulnerable people in conflict or in disaster. Now when it comes to efficiency what how can we achieve efficiency and I think it has to do with the use of funds the fact that we ensure that we reach the right people and we are efficient in in delivering the aid and the assistance that is needed, that we reduce the overhead cost for instance, that we operate under an appropriate humanitarian architecture. This firmly neutral and independent approach is what enables the ICRC and its movement partners to be more often than not among the few humanitarian actors present on the modern battlefields in Ukraine, Syria, South Sudan, Yemen or Afghanistan. For the ICRC and for the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement these two operational principles are essential to gain acceptance for all and therefore to get access to populations in need in some of the most adverse circumstances. We the Lebanese at Cross when we talk about effectiveness we have to think about our neutrality when we are accepted in the country, when there's an acceptance by all the community training, the recruitment of the volunteer, the recruitment is very important, the volunteer in the EMS will stay in approbation between nine months and one year to be accepted to move. You know Lebanon is a mosaic, you have from all the regions, from all the parties, from all the community and when you select volunteers with a strict selection to be accepted there's a matter, His Excellency talked about the trust, there's a matter of trust with the community. Because we're in the temple of humanitarianism I want to start by quoting one of the high priests and that is Jean-Piqueter and Jean-Piqueter said one cannot be at the same time a champion of justice and a champion of charity, one must choose and the reason I point this out is because in the range of positions that you find or actors that you find in these very complex contexts that the both speakers have mentioned you have actors that recognize themselves in the principles that the so-called Dunantist actors who try to maintain to put the principles at the forefront of what you do and then you have a range of other players who do useful and interesting work but depending on how close or how far they position themselves from the Dunantist position cannot be really qualified as truly humanitarian in my view and Piqueter's quote about champion of justice versus champion of charity indicates one of these types of actors which are the actors who come to a situation with the objective of transforming the society or the place that they find not limiting themselves to bandaging the woods saving and protecting the lives of civilians who are at immediate risk so if you you know human rights is very important but mixing a human rights agenda or a development agenda or a political agenda with humanitarian work doesn't sometimes leads to messy situations and I think one of the important things for me is clarity on what your objectives are you may have the rhetoric of principles but sometimes the agencies who have this rhetoric on the ground and this also applies to the UN by the way the UN is not always neutral when it intervenes in countries in crisis so transparency and alignment vis-à-vis what they say is crucially important I know you enough to know that you do not have your own jet but you do have six cell phones in your pocket seven cell phones is that part of this effort of being neutral and impartial tell us the connection between the cell phone multiplicity and this when you talk about effectiveness which means you need to have a strong contact with all the parties from the government and non-government for example when we go to the Sabar of Beirut and respond to the Hezbollah in case of need and in parallel the American embassy asked for a post to send ambulance this is a neutrality and independence so yes the contact is to have regular contacts with all the parties to solve the problem in the field not to arrest any ambulance not to kidnap any case so this is a discussion of course with our with ICRC with the movement with our partners this is the communication the communication is very important to the movement to see how we can manage in the field to protect our mission according to the fundamental principles if you don't have this contact and this relation with all these parties in the field you feel that always each party in the field there's a competition they feel that they are more vulnerable than the others and they want to be supported and helped and this is why in according to our mission and according to our mandate and experience that we need to organize and a strong relation with all these parties to define the priority when we talk about vulnerable now principles are principles that's it that's that's the end of the discussion however the reality on the ground is neither black nor white conflicts that require political efforts to be resolved then can hamper neutrality or independence or the other way around neutrality and independence particularly neutrality can hamper a political solution sometimes independence in in terms of of natural disasters can become a burden for efficiency at some point and I go back to the example of of the 1500 different actors operating in in good faith all of them trying to help the filipino authorities to recover from from the hurricane and how much burden they became for the filipino the filipino's government because they have to dedicate and distract resources to coordinate these 1500 actors that were on the ground roaming freely like white animals there are a number of valid criticisms to neutrality and usually I find these criticisms are misplaced because they're directed to the wrong destinataire the ambassador mentioned that neutrality can hamper a political solution well yes but is it the responsibility of humanitarian actors to find political solutions the other criticism that is often levied to principles and particular to neutrality is around root causes you guys you're bandaging wounds you're putting a bandage on a festering sore but you're not addressing the root causes okay but is that the role of humanitarians to address the root causes of a crisis it is true and we don't have an answer to this that there are some crises where we've been around for 30 or 40 years Sudan Afghanistan but the risk there and why I say the destinataire is wrong is that it's not the responsibility of the humanitarians if these crises have been going on for so long and I want to bring this conversation to a close by acknowledging the expertise we had around in the panel this is one in a series our colleagues at the humanitarian will gladly welcome you in further conversations and if we can turn you into champions and we would love if that event has done it at least you didn't say let's throw away the fundamental principles we expect that this conversation will continue this year and in October we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the fundamental principles and we count on all of you to remain the champions of those thank you