More than 200 million people live today in contested territories – places where the authority of the state is challenged outright and armed groups exercise full or fluid control. This number has risen by 30 million since 2021. These are not distant statistics; each figure represents a person living in the shadow of competing powers, making difficult choices in an almost impossible environment.
How do people navigate the presence of multiple, often competing, armed actors? Is dignity found in defiance, or safety in uneasy compliance? How do families secure food, water or medical care when neither the state nor armed groups are able or willing to provide basic services? And, crucially, what can humanitarian actors do to better protect and assist those caught in these fractured landscapes?
In this post, and drawing on recently published research in Cameroon, Iraq and the Philippines, Arjun Claire, Senior Policy Adviser at the ICRC, and Matthew Bamber-Zryd, the ICRC’s Adviser on Armed Groups, offer five insights to help strengthen humanitarian responses in contested territories – insights rooted in the lived realities of the people who navigate them every day.
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More than 200 million people live today in contested territories – places where the authority of the state is challenged outright and armed groups exercise full or fluid control. This number has risen by 30 million since 2021. These are not distant statistics; each figure represents a person living in the shadow of competing powers, making difficult choices in an almost impossible environment.
How do people navigate the presence of multiple, often competing, armed actors? Is dignity found in defiance, or safety in uneasy compliance? How do families secure food, water or medical care when neither the state nor armed groups are able or willing to provide basic services? And, crucially, what can humanitarian actors do to better protect and assist those caught in these fractured landscapes?
In this post, and drawing on recently published research in Cameroon, Iraq and the Philippines, Arjun Claire, Senior Policy Adviser at the ICRC, and Matthew Bamber-Zryd, the ICRC’s Adviser on Armed Groups, offer five insights to help strengthen humanitarian responses in contested territories – insights rooted in the lived realities of the people who navigate them every day.
Sixty years on: why the Fundamental Principles must be lived, not just remembered
ICRC Humanitarian Law and Policy Blog
17 minutes 55 seconds
1 month ago
Sixty years on: why the Fundamental Principles must be lived, not just remembered
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement – humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity and universality. Proclaimed in Vienna in 1965, they were born not as abstract ideals but as the direct result of over a hundred years of humanitarian action. They have enabled aid to cross frontlines, families to be reunited, and hope to reach places of despair. Yet today, the world in which they must operate is under extraordinary strain: conflicts drag on for years, humanitarian workers face record levels of attack, climate shocks compound existing crises, digitalization reshapes the battlefield, and politicization erodes the fragile space where help can reach those who need it most. The human consequences of war remain devastatingly constant, and the Principles- that have guided the Movement since 1965 are under growing pressure.
In this post, ICRC’s Director General Pierre Krähenbühl reflects on the enduring relevance and importance of the Fundamental Principles in a rapidly shifting world. He argues that they are not self-sustaining ideals to be admired from afar, but living commitments that must be exercised and defended. Drawing on his three decades of humanitarian work, he makes the case that the Principles resist the dangerous normalization of war, safeguard access to people in need, and fuel the courage necessary to channel indignation into lifesaving action. At sixty, the Principles will only remain vital if we choose to live them, and in so doing, keep humanity alive in the darkest of times.
ICRC Humanitarian Law and Policy Blog
More than 200 million people live today in contested territories – places where the authority of the state is challenged outright and armed groups exercise full or fluid control. This number has risen by 30 million since 2021. These are not distant statistics; each figure represents a person living in the shadow of competing powers, making difficult choices in an almost impossible environment.
How do people navigate the presence of multiple, often competing, armed actors? Is dignity found in defiance, or safety in uneasy compliance? How do families secure food, water or medical care when neither the state nor armed groups are able or willing to provide basic services? And, crucially, what can humanitarian actors do to better protect and assist those caught in these fractured landscapes?
In this post, and drawing on recently published research in Cameroon, Iraq and the Philippines, Arjun Claire, Senior Policy Adviser at the ICRC, and Matthew Bamber-Zryd, the ICRC’s Adviser on Armed Groups, offer five insights to help strengthen humanitarian responses in contested territories – insights rooted in the lived realities of the people who navigate them every day.
