Red Helmets: humanitarian speech

Nicole Guedj has always given her professional and political life a turn towards the defence of human rights and humanitarian action. Following a resolutely pragmatic view, she has always tried to propose efficient solutions to help the most unprovided ones. Being fundamentally convinced by the necessity to use new technologies at the service of the victims, she notably put into order the “Kidnapping Alert” (“Alerte Enlèvement” iFrench) in France and the unique telephone number 08VICTIMES, whose purpose is to listen, accompany and inform of their rights the victims. Hence, she decided to emphasize her daily fight in favour of the modernisation of humanitarian action.

When this former Secretary of State to the victims’ rights was still at the government, she had to deal directly with the tsunami and she stated right away that the rescue of the victims was not as efficient as it ought to be, due to a lack of coordination and communication between the different field actors. If she has been pleading for a long time for the creation of an international humanitarian force of fast reaction that she named “Red Helmets”, that very disaster only confirmed the decisive complexion of the establishment of such a structure.

These humanitarian brothers of the Blue Helmets will be composed with firemen, logisticians, emergency doctors, specialists of engineering and security. Gathered in one and only brigade, their mission will be to coordinate and organize the actions of the NGO acting on sites touched by natural, industrial or epidemic disasters.
So as to quickly cover all the needs of the humanitarian actors, the “Red Helmets” will have at their disposal an appropriated logistic. Thus, in the first twenty-four hours of a crisis, helicopters, mobile hospitals, telecommunication containers, water treatment tools, etc. will be deployed.

If the efforts made by the NGO and the generosity of the States are to be saluted, it would seem that a rationalization of the resources and the abilities is indispensable to optimize the rescue of the too numerous victims. And is it not the part of the United Nations to mutualise every Nation’s force in order to help in a better way the countries victims of the disasters? If the UN currently sends thousands of men to maintain peace on sites touched by armed conflicts, it certainly must be able to do the same to assure life after tragedies generated by broken out nature.

France, country of human rights, decided to show the way by adopting this international humanitarian force proposition, at a Council of Ministers, in September 2004. The President of the Republic of the time, Jacques Chirac, then proposed this project in the name of France, to Kofi Annan who accepted it. Today, the opportunity of the setting of “Red Helmets” is being discussed at the UN.

Since that, the European Union became aware of the necessity to act in that very purpose and currently thinks about creating a European organ aiming at coordinating rescue actions when a crisis happens on the Old Continent. One can only hope now that this initiative will soon be integrated to a global process.

Already, Nicole Guedj created the Red Helmets Fund, whose main mission is to mobilize the active countries around this project, so as to make the UN quickly adopt a resolution on the creation of the “Red Helmets”.
If Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize for Peace, and Abdou Diouf, former President of Senegal and General Secretary of the International Organisation of the French Language, already showed their support by accepting to sponsor this fund, tomorrow, many voices shall raise to demand the creation of the “Red Helmets”.

Meanwhile, the Red Helmets Fund works on elaborating new technological tools which will be used in the future by the “Red Helmets” and which are for now put at the disposal of UN agencies and NGOs supporting the project.

This is how, with the partnership of CNES and Thales Alenia Space, that the first humanitarian container of telecommunications and information exchanges through satellites was born. Emergesat is a unique tool which offers the possibility for the rescue teams to communicate between one another, to share their data, but also to access tools of telemedicine and water analysis, in any situation. A first exemplar of Emergesat is currently being deployed in Chad, at the Sudanese border, in camps run by the United Nations High Commissionership for Refugees, in order to help humanitarian people to succeed in acting in favour of the refugees of Darfur. Soon, a second exemplary will be given to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ready to be shipped at any moment to deal with a major humanitarian crisis.