Distinguished representatives of humanitarian and charitable NGOs, ladies and gentlemen,
Dear friends,
Peace be upon you.
Welcome, and I wish you a pleasant stay in Geneva.
Selfless humanitarian action is the eloquent expression, on the ground, of the spirit of solidarity – that universal value so fundamental in the lives of human beings, that common value shared by men and women whatever their religious faith, spiritual tendency, philosophical school, ideological orientation or political colour.
Expressing the spirit of solidarity is first and foremost an individual and collective duty.
It is dictated by purely ethical considerations, reflecting human beings’ awareness of the need to treat other human beings well and to be of use to them.
It reflects a very pragmatic sense, for solidarity is a guarantee of the survival of the human family.
It responds to eminently religious injunctions, for it is the means of pleasing God by placing oneself at the service of His creatures.
While the term humanitarian action is relatively recent, no one disputes its religious foundation, which is far from new.
To love one’s neighbour, to help the widow, the orphan and the stranger, to rescue the victims of disasters and conflicts, to care for the sick and the destitute and to protect the weak are divine commandments and human qualities that flow from an attribute of God the Merciful: Rahamana in Aramaic – the language of Jesus, peace be upon him – Ar-Rahman in Arabic.
The Hebrew notions of hesed (beneficence; ihsan in Arabic), zakhot (obligatory alms; zakat in Arabic) and tsedaqah (sadaqa in Arabic) are rooted in the Jewish tradition, which holds, according to Hermann Cohen, that “the correlation between man and God is constituted through that which binds man to man.”
Tsedaqah, which has a root in Aramaic and is often translated as charity, means justice and implies a right for the one who receives it. Tsedaqah is therefore more a work of justice than an act of generosity; it strips the charitable act of any condescending connotation.
In Christianity, the word charity – a translation of the Greek agape and the Latin caritas – denotes a Christic virtue: spiritual and divine love. In 1979 Pope John Paul II, in his first encyclical, Redemptor hominis, recalled that “a true relationship with God requires a firm commitment to the service of one’s neighbour”. It is also said that “charity is not only a theological virtue, like faith and hope; it is also the fundamental virtue, the soul of the other virtues”.
In Islam, the Qur’an first of all, when it speaks of the People of the Book, confirms the qualities of that “upright community who recite the verses of God in the hours of the night, prostrating themselves. They believe in God and the Last Day, enjoin what is right, forbid what is wrong and vie with one another in good works” (Qur’an 3:113–114).
In the Islamic tradition, al-ihsan, beneficence, is a quality of the believers, described in the Qur’an as those who “hasten to good deeds and are the foremost in them” (Qur’an 23:61). Al-ihsan is a state placed above submission to God (al-islam) and even above faith (al-iman). The terms “beneficence” and “beneficent” appear more than seventy times in the Qur’an. Islam also affirms that the one closest to God is the one most useful to His creatures.
The ways of beneficence include, notably, zakat (obligatory alms), linked to the notion of tazkiya (an act of purification), and sadaqa (voluntary alms), linked to the notion of sidq – that is, sincerity, authenticity, selflessness.
It is interesting, moreover, to note the different meanings of the Hebrew tsedaqah and the Arabic sadaqa, which share the same Semitic root, and to observe the link this reveals between the notion of justice, the guarantee of the durability of every human undertaking, and that of sincerity, the condition for the success of every human work.
But if expressing the spirit of solidarity is a duty, it is also a right for all.
No one has the monopoly on humanitarian and charitable action, nor the capacity to take it on alone – neither a state, nor an intergovernmental agency, nor a non-governmental organisation.
It is the field of competition and complementarity par excellence.
And, to borrow the terms of the British author George Orwell, just as information cannot be managed by a Ministry of Truth but by free media, and human feelings cannot be decreed by a Ministry of Love but are the fruit of free bonds between people, it would be absurd to believe that humanitarian action could be managed by a Ministry of Charity.
Furthermore, no one has the right to divert humanitarian action from its meaning for profit or for political ends.
Yet what do we see today around the world?
The combination of the military with the humanitarian alibi, the political instrumentalisation of humanitarian work, and the denial to individuals and charitable organisations of the right to humanitarian action.
In one country, humanitarian action is forbidden to any institution not approved by the authorities, for fear it might help promote the image of the opposition. In another, the same is done under outside pressure, on the pretext of the very fashionable imperative of the “fight against terrorism”. And the victims of wars, earthquakes and floods are often left to their sad fate. The state, which often functions poorly, is unable to take the place of civil society’s humanitarian action.
But there is something more serious still. Humanitarian activists who do not bow to the will of regimes are exposed to every danger. They are persecuted, arrested, detained and threatened with the worst abuses.
This is unacceptable. The entire human community must react to this abomination. Solidarity between individuals and humanitarian NGOs must quickly be organised – notably between those of the North and those of the South, those of the East and those of the West – to face this critical situation.
Ladies and gentlemen,
You will find no better place than Geneva to launch and promote this network of solidarity between humanitarian and charitable NGOs.
Geneva is the city of peace and human rights, as the presence on its soil of numerous international and non-governmental organisations working to protect the dignity and rights of the human person and to promote peace bears witness.
Geneva is also, and above all, the capital of humanitarianism, ever since the work of Henry Dunant, who in the second half of the nineteenth century laid the foundations of modern humanitarian action.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, and the whole body of international humanitarian law are symbols of hope for women and men in distress.
We therefore wish every success to this conference, which will certainly be the setting for enriching debates and will lead to useful resolutions establishing effective means and mechanisms to protect all those who have devoted their lives to noble humanitarian action.
Finally, allow me to take this opportunity to invite your distinguished audience to keep in mind, throughout this conference, all the persecuted of the world, especially those who work in the humanitarian field and are held in the dungeons of injustice in lawless countries, and to spare a very special thought for our Italian sisters, Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, kidnapped in Iraq.
Thank you for your attention.
