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Typically a pandemic, as we saw, has impact on the economic development of the world.

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Does it mean that you react the same way? But 911 is We all have seen it.

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You know, so it's synchronised that moment because they might defer the shocks that were considered real shocks internally for the organisation.

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Then what might be the global shocks? Welcome to Global Shocks.

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The podcast of the Oxford Mountain Program on Changing global Borders.

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My name is John King and I'm a research fellow in international relations.

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And in this podcast, we're going to explore how international organisations deal with global shocks.

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Global shocks are all around us, from humanitarian emergencies to war, financial crises to pandemics.

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So how can international organisations respond to them, adapt to them and survive such turbulent times?

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To find out, we are entering the conversation with leading figures from these organisations,

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to find out how they're affected by crisis and turbulence, what lessons they draw from the past, and what future prospects they have.

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Today, we're going to talk about the International Committee of the Red Cross.

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Short. ICRC. The ICRC was founded in 1863 in Geneva, Switzerland, to organise voluntary relief for the wounded during times of armed conflict.

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Over the years, the ICRC mandate has expanded to include broader humanitarian missions,

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encompassing disaster response and support for civilian populations.

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Today, it's known as perhaps the most central pillar for how the international community responds to humanitarian crises.

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I spoke to its former director general, Eve Dakar, to find out more about how the ICRC deals with global shocks,

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how the organisation has adapted to turbulent times in the past, and how it might do so in the future.

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Welcome Eve. The former director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross between 2010 and 2020,

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with around 20,000 staff, mostly in war zones all around the globe.

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A leading senior figure in the humanitarian aid sector with over 20 years of experience with emergency relief operations across the world,

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from Yemen to Chechnya and from Congo to Palestine.

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So hello and welcome to Global Shock Save. Thank you.

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Very happy to be with you. All right. Could you very briefly summarise what you do in your own words?

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Tell us why thinking about global shocks, crises, emergencies, matters to you personally.

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So I'm eve the core. I'm a I'm a Swiss citizen of the father of three daughter.

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And I should maybe start with that because it was, you know, as a father that when I looked at my daughter,

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I always thought that their life would be more complex than mine, especially related to climate change, but also to, I would say, the polarisation.

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I was looking at that scene in the early 2000.

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And what I realised over the last ten years and it was Africa, East Africa that really told me that that climate change to start with,

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that that migration would be shock, that I would live in my generation still together with my daughters.

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So and I do believe we've seen only the beginning of that kind of.

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So I've worked in the humanitarian and that has been extremely rewarding, tough.

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That was a rewarding area and I've decided to move outside in now to to look to anything that someone to help us to live together.

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I'm intrigued by how our social fabric in our society are very fragile.

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So I'm looking at information that we need to live together.

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So I'm the chair of a media group. I'm looking at our social contract and how our social contract, somewhat informal,

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informal, can evolve due to the digitalisation of our world, especially to the US.

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Digitalisation, security. So I'm leading a Harvard pop up research institute about it and looking at how do

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you create systemic conditions to improve peace treaty and peace negotiations.

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I'm a lead in one organisation called The Principles for Peace is working on that and I'm also looking at all the question related to climate to end.

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I'm interested about the people that feel that and and see that there's a climate crisis or disaster,

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but feel somewhat alienated by the one We're proposing solutions they feel alienated by by urban people.

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They feel alienated maybe by the activist, by the green.

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And I feel it's important to create an organisation that's somewhat reaching out to them.

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So reaching out to the farmer in Brazil, reaching out maybe to the Catholic Church in Poland,

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to reaching out to a different kind of what people could say conservative society and hear

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all all that is a different way to try to help and try to understand how do you manage,

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in fact, live together in a time of shock.

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And I think we will see a solution that are coming closer and closer to us, possibly meaning our Western society, if we think about global shocks.

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And you mentioned climate change as one example during your time working for the International Committee of the Red Cross,

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what was the most challenging, maybe one of the most challenging global shocks, if we will, that you had to manage, that the Red Cross had to manage?

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You mentioned climate change, and that's true.

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I've worked in the nineties already and I think we started to see behaviour of the Nomads and of the farmer in part of Africa.

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They were changing, but we were not aware that the change will be so radical and it would really dramatically change the way they operate,

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the way they are connected with other parts of society and the level of violence.

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So I never thought in the nineties that climate change would propel in fact millions of people

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to migrate and to put a lot of pressure to other societies where they have to migrate.

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But this is I don't I'm not sure we should call it a shock. This is maybe a long term shock.

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Now, the real shock to me is the 911 attack against the two twin tower and not so much the attack.

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The attack was absolutely a shock.

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But the fact that there was really a before and after it and what it meant to me, this is a moment that has really created an amazing polarisation.

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And that was, by the way, the purpose of the people who did the attack.

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It created polarisation between somewhat the U.S. and countries that are connected to

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the US and our society that connected to us versus suddenly the rest of the world,

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especially the Muslim world. And we all know that things have been much more complex than that, but that has been a shock that imagine,

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as a leader of the Red Cross, suddenly you realise what the Red Cross means.

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It means an organisation, but it means also a very powerful symbol and it's a symbol of help and Kerry in the 20 and 21st century.

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But at the time it was also a symbol of crusader.

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You know, suddenly when you talk about, you know, the Red Cross in the Muslim world and especially with extreme people that are playing with it,

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we had to immediately rethink the way we were projecting ourselves, the way we were conducting ourselves.

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And I do remember ten years later when I became Doctor General, already 70% of the context where we are operating, where Muslim context.

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So tells you also clearly that the 911 really puts fire in places like Afghanistan, Iraq,

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but certainly much more if you look also East Africa and down, you know, Central African Republic, Sahel,

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the ties somehow the channel that so that that has really changed dramatically the way a lot of people were perceiving each other,

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the way they were relating to an organisation like the Red Cross and the way they were related to international.

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You know, because one thing when you were the lead of the International Red Cross, International Red Cross,

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you also have the responsibility to somewhat develop, but also promotes the international humanitarian law.

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So you don't only operate, but you also have that diplomatic, legal role and responsibility and internationally making law regulate war.

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And what 911 came to us, and not just the US.

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The US suddenly used a different set of thinking about what international law when, for example,

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one thing that is known today is Guantanamo and the prisoner of Guantanamo that the US decided at the time to hold outside of international law,

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which was, What are you talking about? So back to nine years.

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And that was certainly during my time the biggest shock that changed really the line,

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if you want, of conscience in the world, but also in the diplomatic world, In the legal world.

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Right. So it's fascinating that you mentioned 911 as something that affected not only the action capacity of the Red Cross,

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but also the image of the Red Cross and how people relate to the Red Cross.

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Yeah, and someone brought back to game the religious factor as identity factor at the global level.

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The religious factor has always been there, but certainly not at that same level.

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And it created this kind of the Muslim against the rest.

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And of course, we know if you're a muslim, you know that there's nothing like the Muslim.

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There's a lot of differences between the Sunni and the Shia, for example, and the way they would look at that as an example.

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There's, of course, moderate and extreme and whatever. And so it was all that in the same bucket or mosque.

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And it has become over the last 20 years a crucial factors to define with us or less to define who is not us.

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And if you look at the numbers of relationship between religious factors and migration,

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for example, in the West as well, that has increased dramatically.

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And my point, too, is exactly what you mentioned.

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I would make a difference between a shock, which is something that happen and sometimes really shaken and synchronised.

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That's what I find interesting with the shock.

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The shock synchronised because it creates an experience that is similar doesn't mean that you react the same way.

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But 911 is. We all have seen it, you know, so it's synchronised.

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That moment conveyed. By the way COVID has been very similar in that sense.

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So COVID happens so suddenly we have a synchronisation, whatever the functions, whatever is your responsibility,

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wherever you are in the society, somewhat, you experience that moment and then of course you will then live through very differently.

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But this what I consider a shock versus phases where you see phases that will that will have an influence.

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I mean, I would say when Russia decide to invade Ukraine, that is the shock that defined dramatically all of us.

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The way that this plays out are, I would consider much more phase on the consequence of the shock.

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Just briefly on 911, still,

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what specifically had to change for the Red Cross or how did the shock in this case challenge the Red Cross and its operations?

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And what did it do specifically in response? How did you deal with this?

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So I think it made several changes.

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The first one was to see the US as a major nation, one of the five being at war, but not at war in a classical way.

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So it was when they were not going officially after a state,

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they were going after a non-state armed groups, Al Qaida, and they didn't know exactly how to do it.

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So they used the theory of war on terror around the world, and they somewhat attacked state and territory because they had to do it.

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But they use the fact that Afghanistan for them was a place that hosted al-Qaida.

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Right. So it was interesting to see a big a major state knows how to do inter-state war moving to themselves,

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a war that was somewhat much more complicated to describe and to explain to the public opinion, to their public opinion.

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And by the way, the way you start to announce war on terror.

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I mean, this is an endless war. I mean, where do you start? You are the warrior.

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And of course, that has that has certain impact for us for that, the International Red Cross was how do you define then a combatant?

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Because, as you know, international criminal law, the law of war are low.

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In fact, to target military objective and ask to make a very big difference between military and civilian objective.

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And it comes to the same, of course, about people. So suddenly that came blurred.

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And to see a country as important as the US and then bringing into the equation also NATO's starting to play with a different role,

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that that was a major change, major shock in a way, and had a huge consequences for our legal team, for our diplomatic moral communication.

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And it put us sometimes in tensions with with the US and the people that push in that direction.

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At the same time. As for the ICC,

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we had to learn and understand quickly how to deal with an organisation like al-Qaida that doesn't own a territory that is going for a global Ummah.

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So how do you deal with them and who are the ones who can influence these people?

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We are not interested about Osama bin Laden as such, but we were interested about much more.

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The people that would feel what he represents needs to be continued.

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And what does that mean? How does that work? So we had to apply and learn what we've learned in Afghanistan.

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We had to apply that and understand that throughout our entire operation.

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We had, for example, to know how do you engage with it very quickly and at the highest level with, in fact,

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religious leaders across the board to understand what could happen and how to deal with that and make sure that they would understand our position,

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making sure that they understand the impartiality. Neutrality that they could translate that if they necessary in the language.

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So we it's radically changed the way we were connected and our network operation around the world.

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And then at least you change also over time the people that are International Red Cross delegates.

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Because what happens is over time, we started to realise that it was more and more difficult to have people coming from some Western country because

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this Western country where challenge and perceive as being part of that war against the Muslims again into brackets,

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we really had to thought how do we with us and represent the International Red Cross?

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What kind of nationality can we have knowing maybe you know that that when we intervene, we intervene without bodyguards and without protection.

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So I think we use, if you want, our vulnerability,

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the fact that we are vulnerable as a strength compared to other organisation like the U.N., all that that will go in bunkers themselves.

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We did the country, but it was it was a complicated one. So yeah, it changed quite, quite a bit the way the organisation was projecting its,

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its identity and the way we were related to a lot of people does sound like it's

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a very challenging kind of shock that goes runs across so many different levels,

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so many different layers. Your legal team, your diplomatic team, everyone has to get involved in many different ways.

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Respond to it, think,

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think about that position and possible institutional reforms that might need in order to deal with with a very different kind of threat,

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in this case, Al Qaeda as a non-state actor.

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Yeah, and not just al-Qaida, I would say, because I think what is interesting is it's an entire paradigm shift, right?

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Yeah.

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You know, from the U.S., from different sectors that oblige you as an organisation to engage in this shift and to accept that you will it will last.

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Can you give us an example of field experience from your time working at the ICRC around those years

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after 911 where something practically in the response of the ICRC changed in terms of before 911?

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Things were done in this particular way.

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After 911, we suddenly saw this as a new priority or we suddenly got these particular kinds of actors involved.

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I can give you a surprising example which is related to social media,

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because it was a time also where social media start to came in and we as an

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organisation that also make some choices sometimes to be very confidential.

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We do understand the importance of silence at critical moment when we have to negotiate all that.

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So the need we were confronted with the groups and government that we're using and he had talked about early 2000.

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So really the beginning of the social media really where using very aggressively social media to put the position but to challenge us.

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I do remember, for example, in Somalia being challenged by by one specific group, al-Shabab suddenly on Twitter,

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just sent an image of a lorry and says this rotating grain ISIS is bringing to Somalia to to kill the Somalia.

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The book like that, which normally in a normal situation, you would have a river and then you would started to engage with the local leaders,

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try to understand what happens, was their mistake, you know, and engage with other and and then ask the leaders maybe to say, okay, not all.

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It was a mistake. Whatever.

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He all that was gone in one minute, you know, and then you have to learn really quickly how do you engage on Twitter or on other places,

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let's say another platform in order to somewhat deflate the pressure and at the same times manage the discussions that you will have with elderly,

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the leaders and the important people. So that was interesting to observe.

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And that change was not related only to 911, but it was related to the fact that you had the American being involved for sure.

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And you had also very smart groups that were using communication.

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Communication means to put pressure. So that's a good, interesting example that changed hockey the way we had to relate with communication.

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Right. And social media. Very interesting. I mean, you're just saying it changed totally how you had to engage with this.

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I'm curious, was it a kind of experience of making things up on the spot?

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Was it improvisation or was there any kind of past experience that he could draw back on in order to come up with a good response?

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It's interesting, You know, we decided to maintain discipline, not just all over the place.

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We decided to also have one golden rule.

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That was what ever communication, public communication we would do, including a fast one, because sometimes you have to be fast, right?

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We would always informed or try to engage bilaterally before the communication.

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Yeah. So even if we would respond to this tweet very rather quickly, we would make sure that one of our message would go beforehand to the people.

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So we would try always to use communication public only to back up if you want, I would say private communication.

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So I think so we maintained that and then we had to take some decision all the time because we had to learn.

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So one thing we decided was that we would allo. Our stand for.

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So to have social media presence because we decided that's also an interesting way.

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You can't imagine if you you would represent the ICRC in Yemen, for example,

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or exile somewhat if you don't have yourself a presence that is known not just as the ICAC, but also as the head of the ICAC in Yemen.

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You would lose so much authority because this is the world in which you operate. So it's interesting, we had to learn that.

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So it means that we allow you to do that and at the same times we have to do that smartly accompany our staff to be able to do that,

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because we also knew if you would, things, if you would react badly or you made a mistake, the cost would be enormous for the organisation.

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No, It's a fascinating example about social media and and how the organisation needs to find some kind of response.

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And then that response creates new conditions and in this case creates the question of are we

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going to let our staff have social media presences online or not in their official capacity?

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And I can imagine that it creates new vulnerabilities to have staff, have social media presences.

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They can be sort of attacked on social media. They face the question of how do we communicate whatever we're doing, How did you experience that?

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So maybe I should say three or four things.

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The first one is let's recognise and I've seen that myself during my time as a CEO of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

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Trust is becoming a rarer commodities, you know, and of course then you work for the Red Cross.

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Trust is at the core of what you do.

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You know, you have to somewhat manage if it's not acceptance, at least to be tolerated by the government to work in the very complex environment.

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Right. And you need to be somewhat trusted by the people that you try to help.

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So we've seen over time a whole bunch trust has become more difficult to gain.

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Point to is if you don't communicate to set, somebody else will communicate about you.

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That's the problem. Not anymore. In the world where you can say, Oh, I don't communicate, that's okay.

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Oh, no problem. You have constantly, especially these days, people that are communicate about you and then nobody knows if it's you or not anymore.

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So controlling the message becomes much more important.

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So how do you pass the message? That has been very central and last but not least, create predictability.

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As an organisation, you can't even if the situation is very unpredictable.

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That's one of the reason why you need to be predictable and you are predictable by you methodology.

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And it's not because it's Yan or Eve or Louise or whoever it is about a delegate,

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a person working for the International Red Cross and this person with the personality has a

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certain methodology and follow the same mythology and we can connect that super important.

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So you should allow, of course, the people to be personally engaged.

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It's important. And then the same times follow a specific methodology.

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And why do we do that?

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Is because centralisation of communication can be useful from time to time, but in a given context also, you need to be able to be fast.

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You need to centralise everything in Geneva.

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You can't be fast enough when all may be contextual enough, when you need to respond to something specific in a given place or in a given situation.

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Otherwise, the message coming from Geneva and talk to the so many people or to to talk to Washington, to example, that doesn't really work anymore.

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Right. So you mentioned the necessity, the need for speedy reactions.

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And we we talked about shocks and moments in which there was a lot of stress on the organisation, of course, also on the humanitarian situation.

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One interesting aspect of this is that there's debates as to what counts as a crisis and when something

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counts as a crisis and why we suddenly label something as a crisis so we can think of relief operations,

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of course, in the context of your work.

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Aid organisations such as the Red Cross often refer to crises that they tackle, solutions that they have on offer.

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Whereas on the receiving end of these operations, critics, other actors,

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actors in the field might speak instead of humanitarian interventions or even intrusions, and the language can be completely different.

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So I'm curious to hear how on the one hand you experience this kind of tension and on the other hand,

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second point, how did your organisation go about the Red Cross, go about interpreting what the crisis was about?

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So firstly, whatever the language you use, you need to reflect about for whom and by whom is it used?

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Always very useful to know because you can talk about the crisis.

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Absolutely. And and say, Oh my God, there is a crisis.

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But then for the very same people where it's happening, it's not a crisis.

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If you think, for example, there was this terrible disaster in Turkey and in Syria, right where the house is a major shake of the hearth.

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And what is interesting, if you look at specifically Syria, that's a disaster.

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Absolutely crisis. The problem is this is an emergency that is just being over the other emergency of the situation.

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So you have to somewhat be very careful to talk about, yes, it's a crisis.

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It's an emergency in Syria in that specific place where, of course,

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you immediately understand that the crisis will not be dealt with and will not start and finish the same way that this was in Turkey.

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So when I'm thinking crisis or shock, I'm always thinking who has defined the crisis in the short?

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Who called for it, and what does that mean for the people? And that helps you then to manage.

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For example, it's true when you think about humanitarian still, I would say the large public things, humanitarian are about the crisis.

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And for the people, a crisis is a shock, is a moment where you have a natural disaster,

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for example, or you have a bomb or, you know, there is a moment.

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Something happened. A lot of people are hurt. Then the Red Cross comes in almost as a fire brigade, comes in, brings bodies and leave.

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You know, that's a little bit the vision.

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And what is interesting in the world where I've operated and where my politics operate is the world where emergency last crisis,

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last thing about Afghanistan. When was when was the crisis started, when disease ended, when, you know they emerged.

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Think about Myanmar. Think about Ukraine. Take three very different example.

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So I think what has what has been used is also to understand the importance of crisis and emergency building to mobilise people interest,

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but to know what it means for the people needs. And that leads me nicely to the second questions.

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You said how, you know, how do we deal with it?

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What does it mean for us at the Red Cross, at the core of all crises, what you start as, what are the needs of the people, really?

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And it's very helpful. What what do they request? What is important for them?

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And you don't start with you or with, you know, the feeling that, wow, these are great number.

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You really start it. What does that mean for them?

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And if you're able to assess the need of the people, really, and to and listen to them, not just assess, but listen to them,

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what are they telling you that allows you to understand possibly what could be the response and what could be relevant for that.

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And I think there has been too many tendency when there's a crisis to try to rush and to

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bring your own services that you've deployed and defined in London maybe or in Geneva,

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versus trying to understand what really people are really I give you a two or three example that's really struck me.

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I do remember, for example, we were able to to rush and to come to Syria, to a places that was besieged for months.

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And we were able then to come in to that and we were really expecting the people to ask us, of course, for water, medicines, maybe food.

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And interestingly enough, the first request absolutely was Wi-Fi and electricity.

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Really you have nothing at no for them site.

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It was much more important than anything. Water was there and I do remember also they were asking please help us to deal with our people that died.

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So the way you are managing dead people is very crucial.

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And that was a absolutely priority for them because they were stuck for three months, completely besieged.

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So you would never ever define by the London or Geneva.

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But if you listen to the people, that helps you then. Define what the crisis is and how it works.

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I'm very interested and we as a project are generally very interested in the question of how international organisations not only experience shocks,

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crises, turbulence, protracted complexity,

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but also how they then adapt their responses and possibly do that in coordination with other international organisations and agencies.

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And I know that from 2014 to 2019 you were chair of the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response,

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and in 2015 you were appointed by the World Health Organisation as member of the

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Advisory Group on Reform of the World Health Organisation's work in emergencies.

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And these are different examples of how the Red Cross interacts and coordinates its action with other agencies, other international organisations.

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So can you tell us a little bit about your experience with that and how that might have changed over the time that you worked as a director general?

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Several examples.

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The first one, and it's the obvious example is there's no way that you were able to respond as an organisation to all the needs of the people.

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No way, No way, No way.

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So I think there is a responsibility to you as an organisation to create again, the condition to partner, and you can't just comment in high impact.

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That needs to be prepared. They need to be trust, that needs to be understood about that.

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And it's two level one. Partnering locally is absolutely central and to bartering internationally most of the time is about a assessing the situation.

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Very important how you read the situation, what's important, what's not be influencing the outcome, and not just the actors on the ground.

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So we, the ICRC, we're doing that well, was influencing the donors the way the donors would look at us,

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the way they would request us to do something or not, the level of risk they were ready to go.

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One thing we've seen over the last ten years is a trend for donors to somewhat being very

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risk averse and and want to transfer risk to the Humanitarian Response organisation.

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So how do we deal with that? So that was very useful.

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So that's, I would say, the first bucket of partnering with your peers internationally and locally and trying to make your response more relevant,

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both internationally and locally. The second level is partnering with people that have much more capability than you in a specific domain,

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both intellectually or sometimes concretely in terms of production.

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One example is I've been the director general of an organisation that had to go through the transformation of data.

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You know, when I started in 2010, data were important,

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but there was nothing close to a lead protection data strategy office where we had to completely rethink how do you manage data?

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Whereas as an organisation like the ICRC, data are central to a work of protection because we follow the people through the data of their data.

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But we have to realise, oh my God, yes, we want to protect their data and we don't want them to be hacked.

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How do we do that? How do we reflect about that? And here we work with top level university, for example.

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We also worked with policymaker. We work with the European Union, for example, to really influence the GDR policy.

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Another backdrop that's been talking a lot about the pluralisation of global governance.

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Many more actors are sort of becoming visible as being relevant, mattering to international responses.

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And I'm curious to hear how how that has played out at the ICAC.

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Has that changed? Has the perception of the ICAC vis a vis global governance issues changed?

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That's just make things much more complicated. Today, you have a very complicated set of actors,

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and we're living in a time where power and organisation are slightly more complex and more diffuse that it was to do even everything on the map.

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It looks very controlled and much more complicated than we think.

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I mean, we all know, for example,

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that when you want right now to sit down with Russia and discuss the peace with Ukraine, it's not just about Mr. Putin.

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It's much more complicated. So faced with all that complexity, all these different actors who matter, all these different demands.

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Would you say that the Red Cross, the ICRC, has a bigger role to play in the future,

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or does it need to give away some of its tasks to other organisations, to other actors?

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Or where do you see that going? I don't know if it would call a bigger role or not.

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I think the question is about what is what what will be relevance tomorrow.

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And I think what is great with the Red Cross is that the relevance of this organisation has evolved.

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And I think the question is how are you allowing possibility to your relevance to evolve?

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I think there will be a lot of ethical questions. My sense, if I look at the world of tomorrow so well,

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certainly the Red Cross could also be a very relevant actors and maybe less into concretely providing aid to people.

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They will still do that, maybe less so, because maybe the local actors will be stronger, though, with one thing that will make the Red Cross,

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I think still relevant is a set of principles that are what we call the United Visible and that are really related to humanity,

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related to impartiality, related to neutrality, independence, a series of principle that guide you,

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whatever the service, whatever your your endeavour is, and that that will remain.

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So, yes, I think both the ICC would remain in and the Red Cross will remain an important actor as long as

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they have the ability to adapt and to understand that the relevance they are providing much.

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Just how would you say the Red Cross can learn from past shocks,

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past experiences with crises and emergency to improve its preparedness for the future?

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Where are the limits to learning from the past? How can the Red Cross learn from the past?

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It's an important question. I think it's a recognise it sounds basic, but in a lot of context where you operate,

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the people that operate with you have memory, the people affected.

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They've been there sometimes for decades.

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The people that you deal with, the non-state armed groups, the government, some people have been there for decades.

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So first there is an element of respect where you need to have memory, just also a minimum of respect.

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You don't come into a country or situation without trying to understand what you did before, what your colleague did before, what was happening.

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So that's a that's an important element for me, a must that is very valid to the present time.

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So past allows you to be present. I think the main element, if you want to learn from the past, you need to make it very relevant to the present.

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Otherwise, organisation don't spend the time to learn. It's been a fascinating conversation.

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We've talked about social media, about data,

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about your experiences with relief operations in Yemen and Afghanistan have certainly learnt a lot from it.

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I hope you enjoyed it too. I did. Thank you. Thank you.

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You've been listening to Global Shots, the podcast of the Oxford Martin Programme on Changing global Borders.

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My name is Young 80. I'm a postdoctoral research fellow in international relations and I'm the host and producer of this podcast.

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If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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Do have a look at the show notes for further reading on today's topic, as well as links to our website and social media channel.

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We'll be back again next month with another episode.

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Thank you.