Happy New Year 2025. With 10 good humanitarian resolutions to share!

Mayotte after the Cylone Chido © SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL/Michael Bunel

Dear reader, dear friends of Défis Humanitaires,

Please accept my warmest wishes for you, your families and your projects for a wonderful year 2025, for which I propose10 good humanitarian resolutions linked to current and future crises.

At the start of this year, let’s think about Mayotte, Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, Haiti, Syria and the DRC, the Sahel countries and Burkina Faso, all crises for which 305 million men, women, children and families need humanitarian aid and solidarity right now.

Here is a draft roadmap for 2025 that you can modify, add to and debate.

1. That humanitarian aid be more committed, competent, effective, empathetic, participatory and mobilising with and for the victims of crises. Humanitarians should think further ahead, both to optimise their mission and to broaden their audience and support. Let’s set an example.

2. Humanitarian organisations must work together to ensure that all the financial resources needed to meet the urgent needs of populations in danger are made available each year. Far from resigning ourselves to the situation, let’s argue and influence to reverse the downward trend in humanitarian budgets. Let’s shake things up and convince others to reverse this deadly trend.

Food security in Chad © Solidarités International

3. Humanitarian aid must include in its aid grammar respect for the identity of peoples, cultures, ways of life, beliefs, languages and histories that constitute dignity, especially when everything has been lost. There is a universalism of diversity and a diversity of universalism, far from any levelling. One for all, all for one.

4. That international humanitarian aid and national and local humanitarian aid cooperate actively in a complementary way to add their respective strengths. In the face of hardship, solidarity must first and foremost be local, and the scale of needs calls for international solidarity. Their aim is to create a new humanitarian synergy. Acting together.

5. Humanitarian aid should avoid any simplistic use of the term colonialism. Colonialism generally means the long-term conquest of a territory, its wealth or even power, which is not the same as humanitarianism. On the other hand, condemning colonialism while exporting this or that ideology to other peoples in order to change fragile societies raises a serious ethical problem. Let’s practise discernment.

6. Humanitarian action must be humanitarian, far from any partisan politicisation that is contrary to the principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence that humanitarian organisations claim to uphold. The application of these principles is a major condition for access to populations at risk in the face of the obstacles posed by crises. Humanitarianism is an ethical commitment that must be practised.

7. Humanitarian aid must consider the person in need of help as a human being who is the victim of a crisis (war, disaster, epidemic) and not as a client in a market that would become commercial! Humanitarians act on principle and not out of commercial interest.

8. Humanitarian aid must not become a form of industrial ‘Taylorism’, a mechanical repetition of the same gestures, but a human, empathetic, adapted, participative and evolving response, in order to be effective and accepted and not limited to the simple control of the ‘time sheet’ devoted to the execution of tasks. The real effectiveness is the concrete positive impact on the populations affected.

9. Humanitarian aid must be reactive and effective in emergencies, and must be able to adapt its action as soon as reconstruction becomes possible and necessary, so that development can be relaunched in a peaceful situation. Humanitarians aspire to peace, but peace remains the responsibility of political and military actors, and first and foremost of the belligerents. Everyone must assume their responsibilities and strive for peace.

10. Humanitarian action should focus on major causes such as water, hunger, habitat, health, climate, biodiversity and everything related to the vital needs of populations in crisis situations in order to safeguard their existence in an emergency and in the long term. The legitimacy of the action is based on advocacy.

Installation EAH Solidarites International © Solidarités International/Vincent Tremeau

By way of conclusion.

In 2025, according to Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator with UNOCHA, there will be 305 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, with an estimated budget of 47 billion US dollars for aid in 32 countries. This project brings together more than 1,500 humanitarian partners.

But by November 2024, only 43% of the $50 billion required had been received. Not only is this penny-pinching immoral in an increasingly rich world, but the consequences are disastrous and will come back like a boomerang.

Let’s mobilise today, wherever we are, to ensure that funding finally meets the vital needs of populations adrift and abandoned for lack of essential resources. It’s our duty.

In 2025, together with you, Défis Humanitaires is committed to providing you with the best possible information, depending on our resources. You can personally take part in this humanitarian rescue operation by making a donation here (link here). Your donation is 66% tax deductible. With your donation, we will be more effective together for the humanitarian cause.

I would like to thank you personally for your generosity and wish you, despite the crises, the best possible year for you and for our relief efforts.

Alain Boinet.

Chairman.
Défis Humanitaires. (faireundon)

Thank you for your support.

Alain Boinet is President of the association Défis Humanitaires, which publishes the online magazine www.defishumanitaires.com. He is the founder of the humanitarian association Solidarités International, of which he was Managing Director for 35 years. He is also a member of the Groupe de Concertation Humanitaire at the Centre de Crise et de Soutien of the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, and of the Board of Directors of Solidarités International, the Partenariat Français pour l’Eau (PFE), the Véolia Foundation and the Think Tank (re)sources. He continues to travel to the field (Northeast Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh and Armenia) and to speak out in the media.