 Hefyd everybody, thank You for being here, for our Eminent Speaker. My name is Norown and I chair the Justice in Home Affairs at the Justice in Home Affairs Committee here but I also have a long standing interest in the development issues. This afternoon we're very pleased to have the Neu EU head of the humanitarian sections o gwybod eich bod wedi'u gwybod mewn i'r ffordd i'r morhysgfaeth. Mae'r ffordd o'n amlwag o'r ffordd o'r gwybod eich cefnodol. Mae'n amlwg ei wneud i gyd yn dweud y ddechrau eu fynd o'r ddyddai amser i'ch byddwch honno. Mae'n gwybod eich cyfnodd o'n amlwg i'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddwybl yn ni. Mae'n ddweud i'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, rosa er mwynddwch. Pe fyddiwch byddwch meddwl oherwydd y Uneddaedd Uneddaeth ydw i'w gweld yr uneddaeth eich gwirionedd, i chi'n rydyn ni'nhael ei ddoedd cyntafau i'r bandwg ond o drum ar y pryd. Parfodi, mae'n ddiwylliannogi. Eur i ddweudio'r petodgau ar y peirionedd yn dod i gychwyn eu bod yn chweithio. A yna'r llond yn gofio'r gweithio, wedi gweld sy'n meddwl sydd y masoedd oherwydd a phryd hyn o gymhwyng, It could grow to as much as about a third of our total development spending going through the EU. But it's much more than about money. The EU also gives us access to a huge network of missions. Monique's part of the EU is plugged into all those different parts, trade, security, CSDP. So you've got those links into that huge network dealing with these complex problems. ac mae'r cyfnod yn gweld unrhyw gweithio. Mae'n ddod yn ddod am ymgyrch am ymgyrch monegau. Mae'r gyfnod monegau yn ysgolwyd yn ysgolwyd gyda'r gyfnod gyffredinol i'r eu bod yn ymgyrch yn yma yn 2015. Mae'n gweld ei wneud o'r cyfnod o'r systemu eu gyfnod yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch, mae'n cyfnod ymgyrch yn ymgyrch. Monique's also worked in fisheries and maritime policy and as well as DG justice, freedom and security so huge experience of how the EU works but delighted to hear from you today Monique on the humanitarian aspects. Thank you very much Patrick and then Monique as you see wears several hats and they all feed into the job you're doing and also if I could just say the civil protection side of your portfolio is one that has been getting a lot of interest so I'm sure you're going to talk to us about that. Thank you very much indeed so if you take the floor now and the speeches on the record and then the questions afterwards are we do the Chatham House or Europe House rooms afterwards. Thanks Monique. Well thank you very much, thank you very much for welcoming me here today. I'm very honoured actually to be invited to address you. I'm also happy to be back in Ireland. I haven't been in Ireland for a long time and even if it's only for a couple of hours but it's really a country that is very dear to my heart actually I have a confession to make. My first contact with your beautiful country was 39 years ago and at that time I had fallen in love with a bright and promising young Irish guy who was studying with me at the College of Europe and I was obviously eager to visit his country because I'd never been in Ireland. But when I arrived here I must have fell in love a second time which was for your country because I really find it's a great country and my love story with a brilliant Irish guy didn't last very long but my love for your country has remained. And I have to say that you know on the very top of my bucket list when I will retire in a couple of years in a few years is to tour around Ireland for a second time. My man is not in the audience and he knows you know that was my young life so you know he had a young life too. But I will stop here with my private confessions and focus on what you invited me for today so to take stock of the humanitarian challenges from an EU perspective. Assistance to people affected by disasters and humanitarian crisis is I would say the most concrete and immediate embodiment of the European values of solidarity and humanity. It's a priority for the EU as much as for Ireland. In a security driven environment in an eroding multilateral system in a world where the humanitarian space is shrinking the EU and its member states need more than ever to lead the way. And I would like in that respect to congratulate Ireland and Patrick in particular for taking over the EU from the EU the role of the chair of the donor support group of the International Committee of the Red Cross after having successfully also chaired the Ocha support group. So you can count on us to continue working together on preserving humanitarian international humanitarian law and the humanitarian principles and you can also count on us also when it comes to improving the effectiveness of our collective response. Mark Lowcock is the UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and the Emergency Relief Coordinator. Mark Lowcock is often saying that the world of today is a paradox. On the one hand, transformation achieved over the last 50 years is incommensurate to what ever happened before in terms of improvement of quality of life and expectation. But at the same time we also have to recognize that a significant part of the world population has not benefited at all of those gains or had them destroyed by conflicts. So let me just mention a few headlines that you certainly heard in the last month. Syria enters the ninth year of war. Yemen is one step away from famine. Venezuela food crisis reaches a breaking point. 1,000 Africa was hit by the deadliest cyclones in decades. So these and all the other crisis, the less visible crisis like the Sarawi people or longer crisis like Palestine or many African crisis represent more than 130 million people in humanitarian needs. 70 million possibly displaced, 40 internally as internally displaced people in their own country and 30 as refugees and that in some 50 also countries around the world. The European Union is a major player in humanitarian aid. The EU and its member states, so when I talk about the European Union I would like to extend that to our member states, combine we are the biggest humanitarian donor in the world today, far ahead of the United States. If you combine the aid we provide between the EU budget and the member states. When it comes to the EU alone, so my department, with an average annual budget of some 1.6, 1.5 depending on the years billion, which is increased over the year usually. The EU alone ranks as the world's fourth largest donor after the United States, the United Kingdom and in the meantime Germany, who has increased, which has increased its budget following the refugee crisis. This may seem a large amount of money, it is obviously, but it represents 1% of the EU budget or said differently, not more than the price of two coffees per citizen per year. And when I say coffee it's normal coffee, not Irish coffee. So the role, this role has developed over time as and when crisis occurred. Actually the founding treaties contain no provision on humanitarian aid. It was with the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 that humanitarian aid was enshrined in the EU primary legislation. European humanitarian aid is thus, first and foremost, the fruit of an empirical and pragmatic approach. It has been forged by the necessity of events, the union's strong values of solidarity and humanity, and obviously the awareness of the need. Humanitarian aid is a field where the EU and the member states have what we call a parallel competence. So it is enshrined in the European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid that was signed in December 2007 by the three European institutions to set the frame of this action. EU countries and institutions agree to work in a coordinated and complementary manner and to support the overall coordination role of the United Nations. Actions range from preparedness and disaster risk reduction to emergency response, obviously, and assistance in protracted crisis to early recovery and cooperation with development partners. The consensus also sets out the modalities of the use of civil protection capabilities and military assets in emergency response. It has since served as the reference point on the role of humanitarian aid in the EU's broader external action. So how do we work? My directorate general, which is part of the European Commission departments, counts some 480 people at headquarters. And what makes our specificity is that we have more or less the same number of people in the field, so on the ground in some 45 countries. They are what we call our eyes and ears on the ground and they help us monitor the projects that we finance. And we are these collaborators often in places nobody wants to go or nobody is even other EU civil servants are not allowed to go. So it means we have quite substantial security department in my directorate general also in order to assess security conditions and if people can go there, can stay and under which condition. We work with partner organizations, so we are basically a donor and we work with a large number of partner organizations in the context of partnership agreements. We have some 200 partners, obviously the UN family, the international organization like the International Committee of the Recros, but a large number of NGOs and some of you are present here today. And clearly our most important partners are the UN which represent quite fast half of our budget, the rest being and then the ICRC, which is also around 150 million per year sort of. And then some big NGOs like the Children of Swan and Norwegian Refugee Council concerned, but number also we have some very niche organizations, small niche organizations too. You mentioned that Nora before, since 2009 my department also coordinates the EU response to onset disasters in Europe and outside Europe. So when you are in distress and need immediate assistance, what do you do? You call a number, 112 or 999 and to ask for immediate help. So this system works a little bit like that. So when a country is in distress, when it is confronted with a disaster that overwhelms its capacity, they can call a number in Europe. One single number, which is with us, with me, and they can activate what is called the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism to request assistance from the whole of the EU. So our role is to coordinate the assistance that member states can provide to help a country that request assistance. So we mobilized special teams, specialized teams and equipment from 34 participating countries. So we have the whole of the EU member states plus a number of other countries, Iceland, Norway, Serbia, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Turkey. We can provide forest fire planes, high capacity pumping, water pumps, search and rescue teams, medical teams to be deployed either in the country that can request assistance can be inside the EU or outside the EU. It has functioned well, but however over the last few years we have also seen the limits of this mechanism, particularly when several member states were faced at the same time with the same issue and that was particularly blatant when we had the refugee crisis where most of the countries had to provide shelters assistance to refugees. So when we called for assistance to help Greece, for instance, there was no other capacity to be provided to Greece. It was also very much the case in 2017 when Portugal was hit by deadly forest fires. Other European countries who normally would have helped were also facing the same fires. And we ended up in a situation in October 2017 was also outside of the fire season where we were not able to help Portugal. And at that moment it was clear we need to reinforce, which actually we were saying already for a while, but we had a bit of resistance inside the house. But then it was clear to everybody that we had to reinforce the system. So we proposed to review the mechanism and at the very end of 2018 in a record time of one year we were able to have a new legislation adopted by both the Council and the European Parliament in order to set up what we have called Rescue EU, which is a European reserve capacity of civil protection teams or capacities that is additional to what member states have agreed to pull together. So Rescue EU is a sort of safety net that will be used as a last resort instrument only when national capacities are insufficient or overwhelmed. With Rescue, the existing mechanism by which member states pool their capacity and capabilities is also strengthened with reinforced financial incentives so that they can pool more capacities. So with Rescue, the EU is setting the basis of a better prepared and bigger response to emergencies in the future, not only for forest fires and floods, but also for medical emergencies, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear emergencies. So we are now working on building capacities in those different areas so that together we will be stronger and we will be able to respond better and quicker because in this kind of situation time is of the essence and we need to be extremely fast and quick and to have sufficient capacities. The response is coordinated and monitored in our premises so we have our control tower in my department which is called the Emergency Response Coordination Centre. It is our operational hub. It works 24 hours, 7 days a week to monitor events around the globe to assess needs and the situation on the ground with the help of our local experts to provide satellite imaginary also through the Copernicus satellite mapping system. This centre ensures rapid deployment and coordination of emergency support through direct contact link with civil protection departments of each of our member states. I said before, any country in the world can ask for assistance of the civil protection mechanism. Originally the civil protection mechanism was designed to respond primarily to natural onset disasters inside the EU, but over time I said it has developed more and more outside of our borders. And I would like to give you just a few examples where we have been active lately. For instance, during the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa in 2014, the earthquake in Nepal in 2015, also to give you a flavour of the variety of crises we addressed, the refugee migration crisis I mentioned in 2015. The retaking of Mosul, where we organised an aerial bridge with shelters and medicines and health people also. And the recent Idai cyclones in Mozambique just to mention a few of them. And that in complementarity obviously in those countries with what we do on the humanitarian aid side. So we are proud of what we deliver. The EU flag on our humanitarian aid is a carrier of hope, a demonstration of solidarity and a symbol of the EU global responsibility and values. But that doesn't mean that we have to be complacent. And there are a number of quite important challenges ahead that I would like now to develop a little bit to give you the picture we are working in and also to try to see what could be the solutions that we are looking at. So first of all the humanitarian aid as we have seen or known it some 25, 30 years ago actually doesn't exist anymore. Back then we were an emergency responder, a bit like I usually do the comparison with a hospital. We are the emergency ward. There is a problem, you have people injured, get them, fix them. If they have something was serious they go to the next room or they go back. And that was the case of humanitarian assistance some 25, 30 years ago. We provided basic assistance for a few months and then it was moved to the development colleagues. Over the last 25 years humanitarian crisis have increased in number and severity and conflicts drive 80% of all humanitarian needs and escalate funding requirements. So 80% of the situation we are in are conflict driven. They also result in blatant disrespect of international humanitarian law which has dramatic knock-on effects on access to humanitarian aid and the security of humanitarian workers. Furthermore counter-terrorism measures increasingly affect the work of humanitarian work actors who may face a dilemma between not responding to a humanitarian situation or risking criminal prosecution because they can be considered as supporting terrorism or financing terrorist organizations leading to an even delivery of critical assistance. Protracted crisis are a new normal. More than 90% of humanitarian appeals last longer than three years and the average length of a humanitarian appeal is now seven years. We consider that the average length of a crisis now is about 17 years. Some protracted crisis persists for more than a decade. I can mention Somalia, Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some of them last for 50 or 70 years. This means that you have a growing number of children and adults stranded in those crises that have never experienced peace. Natural disasters caused by weather-related events resulting from climate change affect the lives of millions of people every year now. Many of these disasters recur before communities have time to rebuild and we've seen that this year with the two cyclones that came after each other in Mozambique after only a few months. So there was no time to rebuild. Many humanitarian crises are linked to mega trends obviously such as demographic pressures and urbanization. Already today, 60% of refugees and 80% of internally displaced people have sought refuge in cities, often leading to increased socioeconomic tensions and violence. So again, this image that people are in camps is fading away. Many people on the three, for instance on the 3.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, most of them are in towns, not in camps. People living in urban areas produce significantly more greenhouse gas emissions, increasing global warming that results in weather-related disasters. Greater population density also means a higher number of people affected in case of violence or natural hazards and increases the risk of spread of diseases. Social and economic fragility fuels humanitarian crises. Today, over 250 million people are either already affected by or exposed to humanitarian crises because they live in fragile states where governments are either unable or unwilling to provide either basic services or social equality. A civil war cost a medium-sized developing country the equivalent of 30 years of GDP growth, and it takes 20 years to trade levels to return to pre-war levels. Finally, we have a civil war crisis. A civil war crisis costs a medium-sized developing country the equivalent of 30 years of GDP growth, and it takes 20 years to trade levels to return to pre-war levels. Finally, I'm sorry for this picture, but it's unfortunately the picture we are living with. The nature of risk is also changing and Europe is not spared. We have to be better prepared to respond to emerging risks, not only of protected crises in our neighbourhood, but also internally to emerging risks like the one I mentioned before, the CBRN, the chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. The fact that northern countries witness persistent dry conditions leading to raging forest fires for two, and I would even say three because this year is not much better than the previous two years, is a stark reminder that climate change is transforming risk patterns at an accelerated pace. Even if 85% of displaced people are hosted in developing countries, we see more and more that a growing number of refugees and migrants make their way to the EU and witness that in the last years increasing the migration pressure. So all of that comes finally against the background of a wider questioning of the multilateral system and an eroding international order. So I think we have no choice than to rethink the way we work. It cannot be business as usual. So what is then required? Funding, yes. Funding is part of the solution. We need more resources. It's clear that the current funding levels are not sufficient to meet humanitarian needs even if, tendentially, humanitarian funding has increased quite substantially in the last years. And I was mentioning Germany. Germany has never been a very important humanitarian aid provider, but in the last three years they have reached levels that they never had before. But it's still not enough. And the system has also suffered from an over dependence of a few donors. I mentioned the US, UK, now Germany and us, we are the main donors and this overall system is largely on our shoulders. Non-traditional donors, the private sector, charities, foundations, have in some crisis been quite a game changer, but we still need to find the right way to engage them in the best possible way to unlock their full potential. However, funding is not alone by the solution. Firstly, we must secure the humanitarian space. While it's clear that humanitarian aid is neither a political, military nor a peace building tool, humanitarian actors have to understand and adjust to the political and security environment in which they operate. Conversely, security, anti-terrorism and military constituencies need to acknowledge, preserve and protect the humanitarian space. Sharing field intelligence, ensuring effective civil military coordination, providing dedicated training on international humanitarian law, and supporting actors that engage actively in dialogue and advocacy with parties to conflicts to ensure access, protection and security. All this is part of the response. Secondly, recurrent and protected humanitarian crisis mean that humanitarian aid can no longer carry the burden on its own. Stronger partnership with development efforts to provide more sustainable solutions is a necessity today. The humanitarian development security nexus approach is crucial in this regard, starting from joint analysis, planning, programming and clear exit strategies based on respective strengths. Thirdly, the changing humanitarian landscape requires the humanitarian community to be more efficient than it is today. Effective decision making requires reliable needs assessment, solid data, solid evidence, focus on results, cost efficiency and accountability to affected populations. Both donors and implementers must live up to the grand bargain commitments they've made during the World Humanity Summit in 2016. For those who don't know what the grand bargain is, the grand bargain was a series of commitments made by both the donor community and the humanitarian aid community actors, NGOs and others, to work in a more efficient way with a number of commitments and some of them being to be more transparent, to work on the basis of joint needs assessment, to reduce reporting requirements, to work in a less earmarked way with more long-term planning and multi-year funding, so we're working on that, but we have to, on both sides, to live up to the commitments that we made. Operational effectiveness calls for effective delivery mechanism. Cash assistance, which is also one of the commitments we made during the grand bargain, is a prominent example in this context. Cash assistance is providing relief to population with money that can take the form of a debit card or a system where you use your iPhone or different modalities, but instead of giving food in kind or we give a minimum of money to people. So it provides people in need with greater choice, flexibility and dignity. It also reduces the overheads and transaction costs, and it is also a way to contribute to the acceptance or refugee population in the communities where they are hosted because they contribute in a way also. They buy the products locally, so it contributes also to the local economy. It has proven quite successful already in a number of settings. In particular, we have a huge program in Turkey for the Syrian refugees in Turkey and in Lebanon and all Somalia refugees in the neighboring countries. For health, preventing is always better than fixing, so we also need to modernize the humanitarian financial system with a particular focus on early action that will require more use of the private sector insurance system and contingency financial tools. Digitalizations also offers numerous opportunities to identify and register population, to collect and assess needs, as well as technological assets like satellite imagery. But it also poses a number of challenges such as trust and the privacy of data, so that is also something we need to address. Can imagine collecting data from a population that is extremely vulnerable and that has put its trust in an organization and these data fall in the wrong hands. You can imagine the damage for these populations but also for the overall humanitarian community, so that's something we will need to address definitely and we are working on that already but it's important. So that's only a number of points I wanted to sketch out but to conclude and with a view to the debate that I hope we will have afterwards, I would like to outline a number of considerations and questions that are actually sustaining our reflections for the forthcoming commission agenda. You know we will have a new commission very soon, hopefully. So one thing I believe that we need to work together, means the EU and its member states to maximize our overall EU capacity to adapt, prepare and prevent disasters. Natural hazards, hazards are often predictable and recurrent. So how can we collectively invest more in managing risks, including through resilience building, disaster risk reduction and preparedness for early action? Shouldn't we aim also for better coordination of the whole spectrum of European financial instruments, humanitarian, development, enlargement, neighborhood instrument but also structural funds and even if it may sound strange, rural development funds? What can we do more to poor resources and ensure active solidarity when disaster strikes? I also believe that we have to continue to improve our effectiveness and efficiency in crisis response and disaster management. How can we lead on effective and innovative ways to better understand and address the real needs of those who rely on our support? It may sound strange, but in many occasions we address the needs, many organizations address the needs of the people on the basis of their own mandate and not necessarily on the basis of the need of the people. And if you would ask today a refugee, I will put that to you. Do you know what is the first thing a refugee asks when they arrive in a camp or wherever? Yes, the first thing they ask is for connectivity. So how can I get electricity or plug to call my family? So these are new needs that we have to review rethink the way we address the needs of the people. Another thing is how we can better integrate and mitigate climate-related hazards. I mean, we know climate change is changing the weather patterns. So how can we better integrate that, work more on the basis of data, of the knowledge we have on the tools we have and here again digitalization can provide a lot of support for that. How can we include that so that we better anticipate that and mitigate the impact? Lastly, I believe that we need to strengthen the EU role as a principled and global donor by leveraging its political capital. We are in Europe maybe the last place where we are still very principled and when I say principled donor which means that we apply the humanitarian principles of humanity, integrity, impartiality, neutrality and independence. And we are one of the biggest donors. So how can we become more engaged in humanitarian diplomacy and advocacy in particular as regards a respect of international humanitarian law? How can we provide greater visibility for the EU crisis response as it is often the only EU instrument able to act in a highly political and dangerous context? So these are many questions, maybe more questions than answers, but I am confident that we can collectively take up all these challenges and I know that I can count on Ireland to be not only a trusted partner, but also a major player. Thank you very much.