Typically a pandemic, as we saw, has impact on the economic development of the world.
Does it mean that you react the same way? But 911 is We all have seen it.
You know, so it's synchronised that moment because they might defer the shocks that were considered real shocks internally for the organisation.
Then what might be the global shocks? Welcome to Global Shocks.
The podcast of the Oxford Mountain Program on Changing global Borders.
My name is John King and I'm a research fellow in international relations.
And in this podcast, we're going to explore how international organisations deal with global shocks.
Global shocks are all around us, from humanitarian emergencies to war, financial crises to pandemics.
So how can international organisations respond to them, adapt to them and survive such turbulent times?
To find out, we are entering the conversation with leading figures from these organisations,
to find out how they're affected by crisis and turbulence, what lessons they draw from the past, and what future prospects they have.
Today, we're going to talk about the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Short. ICRC. The ICRC was founded in 1863 in Geneva, Switzerland, to organise voluntary relief for the wounded during times of armed conflict.
Over the years, the ICRC mandate has expanded to include broader humanitarian missions,
encompassing disaster response and support for civilian populations.
Today, it's known as perhaps the most central pillar for how the international community responds to humanitarian crises.
I spoke to its former director general, Eve Dakar, to find out more about how the ICRC deals with global shocks,
how the organisation has adapted to turbulent times in the past, and how it might do so in the future.
Welcome Eve. The former director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross between 2010 and 2020,
with around 20,000 staff, mostly in war zones all around the globe.
A leading senior figure in the humanitarian aid sector with over 20 years of experience with emergency relief operations across the world,
from Yemen to Chechnya and from Congo to Palestine.
So hello and welcome to Global Shock Save. Thank you.
Very happy to be with you. All right. Could you very briefly summarise what you do in your own words?
Tell us why thinking about global shocks, crises, emergencies, matters to you personally.
So I'm eve the core. I'm a I'm a Swiss citizen of the father of three daughter.
And I should maybe start with that because it was, you know, as a father that when I looked at my daughter,
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.
I was looking at that scene in the early 2000.
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,
that that migration would be shock, that I would live in my generation still together with my daughters.
So and I do believe we've seen only the beginning of that kind of.
So I've worked in the humanitarian and that has been extremely rewarding, tough.
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.
I'm intrigued by how our social fabric in our society are very fragile.
So I'm looking at information that we need to live together.
So I'm the chair of a media group. I'm looking at our social contract and how our social contract, somewhat informal,
informal, can evolve due to the digitalisation of our world, especially to the US.
Digitalisation, security. So I'm leading a Harvard pop up research institute about it and looking at how do
you create systemic conditions to improve peace treaty and peace negotiations.
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.
I'm interested about the people that feel that and and see that there's a climate crisis or disaster,
but feel somewhat alienated by the one We're proposing solutions they feel alienated by by urban people.
They feel alienated maybe by the activist, by the green.
And I feel it's important to create an organisation that's somewhat reaching out to them.
So reaching out to the farmer in Brazil, reaching out maybe to the Catholic Church in Poland,
to reaching out to a different kind of what people could say conservative society and hear
all all that is a different way to try to help and try to understand how do you manage,
in fact, live together in a time of shock.
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.
And you mentioned climate change as one example during your time working for the International Committee of the Red Cross,
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?
You mentioned climate change, and that's true.
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.
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,
the way they are connected with other parts of society and the level of violence.
So I never thought in the nineties that climate change would propel in fact millions of people
to migrate and to put a lot of pressure to other societies where they have to migrate.
But this is I don't I'm not sure we should call it a shock. This is maybe a long term shock.
Now, the real shock to me is the 911 attack against the two twin tower and not so much the attack.
The attack was absolutely a shock.
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.
And that was, by the way, the purpose of the people who did the attack.
It created polarisation between somewhat the U.S. and countries that are connected to
the US and our society that connected to us versus suddenly the rest of the world,
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,
as a leader of the Red Cross, suddenly you realise what the Red Cross means.
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.
But at the time it was also a symbol of crusader.
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,
we had to immediately rethink the way we were projecting ourselves, the way we were conducting ourselves.
And I do remember ten years later when I became Doctor General, already 70% of the context where we are operating, where Muslim context.
So tells you also clearly that the 911 really puts fire in places like Afghanistan, Iraq,
but certainly much more if you look also East Africa and down, you know, Central African Republic, Sahel,
the ties somehow the channel that so that that has really changed dramatically the way a lot of people were perceiving each other,
the way they were relating to an organisation like the Red Cross and the way they were related to international.
You know, because one thing when you were the lead of the International Red Cross, International Red Cross,
you also have the responsibility to somewhat develop, but also promotes the international humanitarian law.
So you don't only operate, but you also have that diplomatic, legal role and responsibility and internationally making law regulate war.
And what 911 came to us, and not just the US.
The US suddenly used a different set of thinking about what international law when, for example,
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,
which was, What are you talking about? So back to nine years.
And that was certainly during my time the biggest shock that changed really the line,
if you want, of conscience in the world, but also in the diplomatic world, In the legal world.
Right. So it's fascinating that you mentioned 911 as something that affected not only the action capacity of the Red Cross,
but also the image of the Red Cross and how people relate to the Red Cross.
Yeah, and someone brought back to game the religious factor as identity factor at the global level.
The religious factor has always been there, but certainly not at that same level.
And it created this kind of the Muslim against the rest.
And of course, we know if you're a muslim, you know that there's nothing like the Muslim.
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.
There's, of course, moderate and extreme and whatever. And so it was all that in the same bucket or mosque.
And it has become over the last 20 years a crucial factors to define with us or less to define who is not us.
And if you look at the numbers of relationship between religious factors and migration,
for example, in the West as well, that has increased dramatically.
And my point, too, is exactly what you mentioned.
I would make a difference between a shock, which is something that happen and sometimes really shaken and synchronised.
That's what I find interesting with the shock.
The shock synchronised because it creates an experience that is similar doesn't mean that you react the same way.
But 911 is. We all have seen it, you know, so it's synchronised.
That moment conveyed. By the way COVID has been very similar in that sense.
So COVID happens so suddenly we have a synchronisation, whatever the functions, whatever is your responsibility,
wherever you are in the society, somewhat, you experience that moment and then of course you will then live through very differently.
But this what I consider a shock versus phases where you see phases that will that will have an influence.
I mean, I would say when Russia decide to invade Ukraine, that is the shock that defined dramatically all of us.
The way that this plays out are, I would consider much more phase on the consequence of the shock.
Just briefly on 911, still,
what specifically had to change for the Red Cross or how did the shock in this case challenge the Red Cross and its operations?
And what did it do specifically in response? How did you deal with this?
So I think it made several changes.
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.
So it was when they were not going officially after a state,
they were going after a non-state armed groups, Al Qaida, and they didn't know exactly how to do it.
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.
But they use the fact that Afghanistan for them was a place that hosted al-Qaida.
Right. So it was interesting to see a big a major state knows how to do inter-state war moving to themselves,
a war that was somewhat much more complicated to describe and to explain to the public opinion, to their public opinion.
And by the way, the way you start to announce war on terror.
I mean, this is an endless war. I mean, where do you start? You are the warrior.
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?
Because, as you know, international criminal law, the law of war are low.
In fact, to target military objective and ask to make a very big difference between military and civilian objective.
And it comes to the same, of course, about people. So suddenly that came blurred.
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,
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.
And it put us sometimes in tensions with with the US and the people that push in that direction.
At the same time. As for the ICC,
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.
So how do you deal with them and who are the ones who can influence these people?
We are not interested about Osama bin Laden as such, but we were interested about much more.
The people that would feel what he represents needs to be continued.
And what does that mean? How does that work? So we had to apply and learn what we've learned in Afghanistan.
We had to apply that and understand that throughout our entire operation.
We had, for example, to know how do you engage with it very quickly and at the highest level with, in fact,
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,
making sure that they understand the impartiality. Neutrality that they could translate that if they necessary in the language.
So we it's radically changed the way we were connected and our network operation around the world.
And then at least you change also over time the people that are International Red Cross delegates.
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
this Western country where challenge and perceive as being part of that war against the Muslims again into brackets,
we really had to thought how do we with us and represent the International Red Cross?
What kind of nationality can we have knowing maybe you know that that when we intervene, we intervene without bodyguards and without protection.
So I think we use, if you want, our vulnerability,
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.
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,
its identity and the way we were related to a lot of people does sound like it's
a very challenging kind of shock that goes runs across so many different levels,
so many different layers. Your legal team, your diplomatic team, everyone has to get involved in many different ways.
Respond to it, think,
think about that position and possible institutional reforms that might need in order to deal with with a very different kind of threat,
in this case, Al Qaeda as a non-state actor.
Yeah, and not just al-Qaida, I would say, because I think what is interesting is it's an entire paradigm shift, right?
Yeah.
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.
Can you give us an example of field experience from your time working at the ICRC around those years
after 911 where something practically in the response of the ICRC changed in terms of before 911?
Things were done in this particular way.
After 911, we suddenly saw this as a new priority or we suddenly got these particular kinds of actors involved.
I can give you a surprising example which is related to social media,
because it was a time also where social media start to came in and we as an
organisation that also make some choices sometimes to be very confidential.
We do understand the importance of silence at critical moment when we have to negotiate all that.
So the need we were confronted with the groups and government that we're using and he had talked about early 2000.
So really the beginning of the social media really where using very aggressively social media to put the position but to challenge us.
I do remember, for example, in Somalia being challenged by by one specific group, al-Shabab suddenly on Twitter,
just sent an image of a lorry and says this rotating grain ISIS is bringing to Somalia to to kill the Somalia.
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,
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.
It was a mistake. Whatever.
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,
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,
the leaders and the important people. So that was interesting to observe.
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.
And you had also very smart groups that were using communication.
Communication means to put pressure. So that's a good, interesting example that changed hockey the way we had to relate with communication.
Right. And social media. Very interesting. I mean, you're just saying it changed totally how you had to engage with this.
I'm curious, was it a kind of experience of making things up on the spot?
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?
It's interesting, You know, we decided to maintain discipline, not just all over the place.
We decided to also have one golden rule.
That was what ever communication, public communication we would do, including a fast one, because sometimes you have to be fast, right?
We would always informed or try to engage bilaterally before the communication.
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.
So we would try always to use communication public only to back up if you want, I would say private communication.
So I think so we maintained that and then we had to take some decision all the time because we had to learn.
So one thing we decided was that we would allo. Our stand for.
So to have social media presence because we decided that's also an interesting way.
You can't imagine if you you would represent the ICRC in Yemen, for example,
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.
You would lose so much authority because this is the world in which you operate. So it's interesting, we had to learn that.
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,
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.
No, It's a fascinating example about social media and and how the organisation needs to find some kind of response.
And then that response creates new conditions and in this case creates the question of are we
going to let our staff have social media presences online or not in their official capacity?
And I can imagine that it creates new vulnerabilities to have staff, have social media presences.
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?
So maybe I should say three or four things.
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.
Trust is becoming a rarer commodities, you know, and of course then you work for the Red Cross.
Trust is at the core of what you do.
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.
Right. And you need to be somewhat trusted by the people that you try to help.
So we've seen over time a whole bunch trust has become more difficult to gain.
Point to is if you don't communicate to set, somebody else will communicate about you.
That's the problem. Not anymore. In the world where you can say, Oh, I don't communicate, that's okay.
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.
So controlling the message becomes much more important.
So how do you pass the message? That has been very central and last but not least, create predictability.
As an organisation, you can't even if the situation is very unpredictable.
That's one of the reason why you need to be predictable and you are predictable by you methodology.
And it's not because it's Yan or Eve or Louise or whoever it is about a delegate,
a person working for the International Red Cross and this person with the personality has a
certain methodology and follow the same mythology and we can connect that super important.
So you should allow, of course, the people to be personally engaged.
It's important. And then the same times follow a specific methodology.
And why do we do that?
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.
You need to centralise everything in Geneva.
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.
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.
Right. So you mentioned the necessity, the need for speedy reactions.
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.
One interesting aspect of this is that there's debates as to what counts as a crisis and when something
counts as a crisis and why we suddenly label something as a crisis so we can think of relief operations,
of course, in the context of your work.
Aid organisations such as the Red Cross often refer to crises that they tackle, solutions that they have on offer.
Whereas on the receiving end of these operations, critics, other actors,
actors in the field might speak instead of humanitarian interventions or even intrusions, and the language can be completely different.
So I'm curious to hear how on the one hand you experience this kind of tension and on the other hand,
second point, how did your organisation go about the Red Cross, go about interpreting what the crisis was about?
So firstly, whatever the language you use, you need to reflect about for whom and by whom is it used?
Always very useful to know because you can talk about the crisis.
Absolutely. And and say, Oh my God, there is a crisis.
But then for the very same people where it's happening, it's not a crisis.
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.
And what is interesting, if you look at specifically Syria, that's a disaster.
Absolutely crisis. The problem is this is an emergency that is just being over the other emergency of the situation.
So you have to somewhat be very careful to talk about, yes, it's a crisis.
It's an emergency in Syria in that specific place where, of course,
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.
So when I'm thinking crisis or shock, I'm always thinking who has defined the crisis in the short?
Who called for it, and what does that mean for the people? And that helps you then to manage.
For example, it's true when you think about humanitarian still, I would say the large public things, humanitarian are about the crisis.
And for the people, a crisis is a shock, is a moment where you have a natural disaster,
for example, or you have a bomb or, you know, there is a moment.
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.
You know, that's a little bit the vision.
And what is interesting in the world where I've operated and where my politics operate is the world where emergency last crisis,
last thing about Afghanistan. When was when was the crisis started, when disease ended, when, you know they emerged.
Think about Myanmar. Think about Ukraine. Take three very different example.
So I think what has what has been used is also to understand the importance of crisis and emergency building to mobilise people interest,
but to know what it means for the people needs. And that leads me nicely to the second questions.
You said how, you know, how do we deal with it?
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?
And it's very helpful. What what do they request? What is important for them?
And you don't start with you or with, you know, the feeling that, wow, these are great number.
You really start it. What does that mean for them?
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,
what are they telling you that allows you to understand possibly what could be the response and what could be relevant for that.
And I think there has been too many tendency when there's a crisis to try to rush and to
bring your own services that you've deployed and defined in London maybe or in Geneva,
versus trying to understand what really people are really I give you a two or three example that's really struck me.
I do remember, for example, we were able to to rush and to come to Syria, to a places that was besieged for months.
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.
And interestingly enough, the first request absolutely was Wi-Fi and electricity.
Really you have nothing at no for them site.
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.
So the way you are managing dead people is very crucial.
And that was a absolutely priority for them because they were stuck for three months, completely besieged.
So you would never ever define by the London or Geneva.
But if you listen to the people, that helps you then. Define what the crisis is and how it works.
I'm very interested and we as a project are generally very interested in the question of how international organisations not only experience shocks,
crises, turbulence, protracted complexity,
but also how they then adapt their responses and possibly do that in coordination with other international organisations and agencies.
And I know that from 2014 to 2019 you were chair of the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response,
and in 2015 you were appointed by the World Health Organisation as member of the
Advisory Group on Reform of the World Health Organisation's work in emergencies.
And these are different examples of how the Red Cross interacts and coordinates its action with other agencies, other international organisations.
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?
Several examples.
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.
No way, No way, No way.
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.
That needs to be prepared. They need to be trust, that needs to be understood about that.
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.
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.
So we, the ICRC, we're doing that well, was influencing the donors the way the donors would look at us,
the way they would request us to do something or not, the level of risk they were ready to go.
One thing we've seen over the last ten years is a trend for donors to somewhat being very
risk averse and and want to transfer risk to the Humanitarian Response organisation.
So how do we deal with that? So that was very useful.
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,
both internationally and locally. The second level is partnering with people that have much more capability than you in a specific domain,
both intellectually or sometimes concretely in terms of production.
One example is I've been the director general of an organisation that had to go through the transformation of data.
You know, when I started in 2010, data were important,
but there was nothing close to a lead protection data strategy office where we had to completely rethink how do you manage data?
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.
But we have to realise, oh my God, yes, we want to protect their data and we don't want them to be hacked.
How do we do that? How do we reflect about that? And here we work with top level university, for example.
We also worked with policymaker. We work with the European Union, for example, to really influence the GDR policy.
Another backdrop that's been talking a lot about the pluralisation of global governance.
Many more actors are sort of becoming visible as being relevant, mattering to international responses.
And I'm curious to hear how how that has played out at the ICAC.
Has that changed? Has the perception of the ICAC vis a vis global governance issues changed?
That's just make things much more complicated. Today, you have a very complicated set of actors,
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.
It looks very controlled and much more complicated than we think.
I mean, we all know, for example,
that when you want right now to sit down with Russia and discuss the peace with Ukraine, it's not just about Mr. Putin.
It's much more complicated. So faced with all that complexity, all these different actors who matter, all these different demands.
Would you say that the Red Cross, the ICRC, has a bigger role to play in the future,
or does it need to give away some of its tasks to other organisations, to other actors?
Or where do you see that going? I don't know if it would call a bigger role or not.
I think the question is about what is what what will be relevance tomorrow.
And I think what is great with the Red Cross is that the relevance of this organisation has evolved.
And I think the question is how are you allowing possibility to your relevance to evolve?
I think there will be a lot of ethical questions. My sense, if I look at the world of tomorrow so well,
certainly the Red Cross could also be a very relevant actors and maybe less into concretely providing aid to people.
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,
I think still relevant is a set of principles that are what we call the United Visible and that are really related to humanity,
related to impartiality, related to neutrality, independence, a series of principle that guide you,
whatever the service, whatever your your endeavour is, and that that will remain.
So, yes, I think both the ICC would remain in and the Red Cross will remain an important actor as long as
they have the ability to adapt and to understand that the relevance they are providing much.
Just how would you say the Red Cross can learn from past shocks,
past experiences with crises and emergency to improve its preparedness for the future?
Where are the limits to learning from the past? How can the Red Cross learn from the past?
It's an important question. I think it's a recognise it sounds basic, but in a lot of context where you operate,
the people that operate with you have memory, the people affected.
They've been there sometimes for decades.
The people that you deal with, the non-state armed groups, the government, some people have been there for decades.
So first there is an element of respect where you need to have memory, just also a minimum of respect.
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.
So that's a that's an important element for me, a must that is very valid to the present time.
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.
Otherwise, organisation don't spend the time to learn. It's been a fascinating conversation.
We've talked about social media, about data,
about your experiences with relief operations in Yemen and Afghanistan have certainly learnt a lot from it.
I hope you enjoyed it too. I did. Thank you. Thank you.
You've been listening to Global Shots, the podcast of the Oxford Martin Programme on Changing global Borders.
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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