Peter Maurer

Quotes by Peter Maurer

• It's one thing if a politician in a small country says a little bit of torturing is good to do. There is a qualitative difference... when it's a candidate to run a superpower.

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• Conflicts are not temporary interruptions: they are structural, socio-economic catastrophes, and funding must be allocated accordingly.

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• We must understand the factors that cause fragility, violence, and conflict in order to develop solutions that will meaningfully reduce instability at its roots rather than merely addressing the symptoms.

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• In our fibre-optic world of tweets and tablets, we are more conscious of the world around us. The technicolour violence and humanitarian abuses of today are just a flick of a switch away. In our homes, on the train, in our coffee shops, we see it, we feel it, we know about it. All of us. All of the time. Human suffering is visible, constantly.

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• Even in war, everyone deserves to be treated humanely.

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• Torture and other forms of cruel or humiliating treatment are an affront to humanity, and the physical and psychological scars can last a lifetime.

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• Torture can destroy the social fabric of communities, degrade a society's institutions, and undermine the integrity of its political systems.

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• Experience shows that the reliance on illegal, immoral, and inhumane interrogation techniques is universally a very poor choice.

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• Very often, development agencies or even some of the humanitarian actors choose the... more comfortable type of work, where it is safe, while the more important work has to be done where it is profoundly unsafe.

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• Every day, we hear of civilians being killed and wounded in violation of the basic rules of international humanitarian law and with total impunity. Instability is spreading. Suffering is growing. No country can remain untouched.

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• The International Committee of the Red Cross visits roughly half a million detainees in nearly 100 countries each year. It's our job to try to prevent and put an end to torture and ill-treatment.

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• While the nature of warfare is changing and wars are moving into cities, they are also becoming longer and their consequences more impactful.

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• New technologies are rapidly giving rise to unprecedented methods of warfare. Innovations that yesterday were science fiction could cause catastrophe tomorrow, including nanotechnologies, combat robots, and laser weapons.

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• You don't torture people. You don't indiscriminately attack civilians. You protect as good as you can the impact of your warfare on women and children.

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• The young, the old, women, the disabled, the sick and the wounded are entitled to protection under international law. Too often, the ICRC's calls for those laws to be respected are ignored.

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