For or against food aid? When looking at the pictures of famine and malnutrition that abound on the small screen, this question may seem at best incongruous and at worst inadmissible. And yet it should be taken at its face value—provocative and stimulating, intended not to discourage but rather to sharpen our minds, for behind this simplistic question lie some real political stakes, some genuine issues of humanitarian ethics and some fascinating methodological problems. Our task here should perhaps be to single out the “operational” angles and then to reply to the questions “When”, “Why” and “How” food aid should be provided, and finally to the question “How can we do without it?”. As the global balance between supply (food resources) and demand (the needs) breaks down, access to these resources becomes more and more difficult for an increasingly large sector of the population, while at the same time the enormous stocks of the 1980s have melted away. Food aid has therefore become a rare commodity, to be used judiciously and in the most appropriate manner.

With the long-heralded advent of the information age, the upheaval caused by the proliferation of visual technologies in a society dominated by the media is forcing the entire spectrum of what used to be called “the press” to redefine itself, to reassess its professional code of ethics and to devise new working methods. Only by examining the role played by images in the global flow of information—especially their relationship to the written word—can we fully grasp what is at stake. Our world view is increasingly shaped by the images, televised or in print, to which the public is constantly exposed. Indeed, so great is their power that one can say, along with many analysts, that they are beginning to replace reality: only what has been authenticated, certified and validated by being photographed or filmed and shown on television really exists. As these images bombard us from all sides, everything that has not been seen captured on film is reduced to oblivion. What makes the power of images so irresistible?

Images impart values. They attract or repel. They appeal to our imagination, play on our feelings and rouse us from our complacency: in other words, images stir our conscience because they purport to show us, in the raw, the unadorned, indisputable reality of things as they are. That is television's great ambition, that is its purpose; and that is what prompted Régis Debray to say that “television is fond of humanitarian stories since they are both human interest stories and moral tales”. Over the years, images of humanitarian action have invaded the media and fired people's imagination.

The role of public advocate on humanitarian issues appears to be a growing one for components of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Before the specific matter of public advocacy can be addressed, however, it is important first to consider—or even, perhaps, reconsider—the statutory or constitutional position of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

The word “neutral” comes from the Latin ne-uter and means: neither one thing nor the other. An institution or a movement is neutral when it refrains from participating in a conflict or altercation and abstains from any interference. Refraining from participation and abstaining from interference can be for various reasons: it may be a question of self-preservation and self-assertion, of the judgement that good and bad, true and false are to be found on both sides, of holding back in the interests of a higher purpose or a special task. Neutrality may however have its origin in indifference, fear and cowardice. Neutrality in itself is therefore not a virtue.

A great deal has occurred this year in relation to the regulation of both conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction. Actually, there is no such dual categorization of arms in international humanitarian law, which regulates all weapons in accordance with certain generally applicable rules in order to prevent excessive suffering and destruction. All of the work and comments of the International Committee of the Red Cross with regard to weapons, whatever their nature from a strategic standpoint, are aimed at assuring the faithful and impartial application of these rules of international humanitarian law.

The World Food Summit, organized by the FAO and attended by some 150 governments, was held in Rome in November 1996. The ICRC took part in the proceedings as an observer and its Vice-President addressed the conference. A paper outlining the ICRC's approach and experience regarding the issue of food security in armed conflicts was distributed to the participants. The text of that document is reproduced below.

Following consultations with relevant international agencies, international organizations and non-governmental organizations, the States represented at the Ottawa Conference, the ‘Ottawa Group’, have agreed to enhance cooperation and coordination of efforts on the basis of the following concerns and goals with respect to anti-personnel mines:

1. a recognition that the extreme humanitarian and socio-economic costs associated with the use of anti-personnel mines requires urgent action on the part of the international community to ban and eliminate this type of weapon;

2. a conviction that until such a ban is achieved, States must work to encourage universal adherence to the prohibitions or restrictions on antipersonnel mines as contained in the amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons;

On 18 October 1996 the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia deposited an instrument with the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in which the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia declared that his country would maintain the reservations and declarations made by the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia regarding the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols.