Quotes from Peter Maurer

There is great potential for investments that are built around improving social, environmental, and economic conditions.

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.

Economic activity can help repair war-torn societies, but if it's not conducted responsibly, it can also create or prolong violence. Companies and international organisations must help strengthen communities and overcome the trauma of violence.

Even in war, everyone deserves to be treated humanely.

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

The mess in the world is a strong driver because, at the end of the day, it's the increasing unacceptability of the divergences and rifts in the world economically, socially, politically, and culturally which lead everybody to say, 'We have to do something.'

The Fourth Industrial Revolution does not just entail risks: it also brings solutions to humanitarian problems.

Local businesses and communities must be included from the very start in developing solutions to fragility, violence, and conflict.

The fragility created by protracted conflicts, resulting in destroyed cities and dramatically insufficient services, is not something that humanitarian organizations can address comprehensively. Only political solutions can end armed conflicts.

The creative capacity of the private sector should be harnessed to develop new and more effective ways to deliver humanitarian solutions.

As responsible politicians, you have to manage migration.

Every year, we ask our donors to dig deeper. And every year, they gladly, generously comply. It is now up to us to find ways and means to forestall the day when they cannot - or will not. Or the consequences for people in war zones could be disastrous.

The discourse of sovereignty is a relative one when a crisis has become a global crisis.

When millions of kids are missing out on school, delivering educational services becomes an issue that concerns the humanitarian system.

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

Urbanisation, poverty, youth unemployment are leading to violence-prone cities.

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

The disconnect between what people think and what the political leaders are actually doing is something that we really need to start raising.

The sad fact is that horrendous human conflict is nothing new.

The relatively unpredictable flow of funds to humanitarian organizations, and the bureaucratic strings often attached to them, can have a highly negative impact on an organization's ability to plan and execute programmes effectively. We need to be able to rely on predictable income flows to plan sustainable programmes.

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.

Businesses operating in fragile or conflict-affected environments bear a responsibility to, at the very minimum, do no harm and avoid fuelling conflict or reinforcing fragility.

The issue of corruption in the humanitarian system is not an issue which is fundamentally different from dangers of corruption in other areas. One of the best ways to strengthen accountability is to engage in principled and law-based humanitarian action.

Short-termism is no longer an option. We have to envisage humanitarian action with a medium- and long-term perspective.