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In January 2010, considering the hugeness of the damages, the international community is touched and organize itself in order to provide help to the millions disaster victims. The country is totally felled: from the airport to the state structures, it’s in the core of a chaos that the humanitarian actors land, and try to make their contribution to this solidarity construction.

The Red Helmets Foundation, which I am President for, took part in supporting its own way the local teams helping victims, completely overwhelmed by the scale of the catastrophe. Entirely committed into using new technologies to easy humanitarian action, the Red Helmets Foundation deployed two of its containers of telecommunication by satellite, Emergesat, a few hours after the disaster occurred, in response to the French Ambassador in Haiti. The communication network was broken, and Emergesat enabled the governmental and non-governmental organizations to communicate with each other, exchange their data and organize the rescue. Within two months, 19.178 phone calls were established, which represents more than 1.352 hours of communication.

During the humanitarian mission that the Red Helmets Foundation set up in Haiti, a few days after the earthquake, I set on meeting the Haitian President, René Préval, and his wife, Elizabeth Delatour, so as to express my support and France’s one, willing to help them go through this terrible ordeal. We evoked my proposal about creating an international humanitarian force, able to react very quickly after a natural disaster has occurred, which would be headed by the UN. As a witness of an unseen international mobilization, but at the same time of the worse organized rescue intervention of those last years, René Préval joined my fight and launched a “Call for Red Helmets at the UN” to the whole international community. Later we carried on together with this struggle, co-signing press galleries and pleading for a new governance system in front of Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Today it has been 2 years since this catastrophe happened. Haiti is still recovering, rebuilding. If many blame the terrific slowness of the process, let’s remind them that the work that has to be made is really huge. 2011 was a transition year between the emergency and reconstruction. 7.000 people died because of cholera. Almost 500.000 people are still living in “refugee” camps, where sanitary conditions never stop deteriorating. Unemployment concerns 70% of the population, in spite of the 300.000 jobs created by the building process. 2 out of the 4 billions promised by the Donators Conference, are still to be given.

They were two women and one man, between 25 and 30-years-old, with an engineering background, to have been sent in Yemen as program officers for the NGO. Exposed to waves of violence, mainly because of a government-contestation movement spreading and of the reinforcement of Al-Qaida in the South, the NGO suspended its activities right after its 3 workers disappeared on the 28th of May 2011.

In good health, the 3 humanitarian workers should be back in France by the end of the day. In its communiqué, the French Presidency noted that “the head of the state wants to thank warmly the Sultanate of Oman who played a great role in this matter, Oman’s authorities for their decisive help, as well as everybody who contributed to this happy ending”.

Operating on major crises theatres, humanitarian field workers intervene every day in hard conditions marked with instability. Even if the core of their job is solidarity, they are not spared by abductors. We did not forget about the 11 French hostages hold by Bosnian Serbians for a few years and freed in 1994, nor the Doctors of the World members, kidnapped in Darfur in 2009.

According to a report made by the Humanitarian Policy Group, in 2009, attacks targeting humanitarian workers don’t stop increasing since 2006. They concern above all international expatriates and UN officers. Concerning the very year 2008, 260 humanitarian actors were abducted, severely injured or targeted by violent assaults, or killed.

The Red Helmets Foundation is pleased and relieved by this happy ending, and wants to express its sincere thought for the remaining hostages: Denis Allex, officer in the General direction for external security, captive in Somalia since July 2009 ; Pierre Legrand, Daniel Larribe, Thierry Dol and Marc Furrer detained since September 2010 in the Sahel desert.

Floods are all the more frightening than their consequences have not been taken into account sufficiently. According to the Thai victims, finding drinking water is almost impossible right now. While evacuations are on the increase, one of the numerous inhabitants who decided to stay in Bangkok declares that “shops impose rationing on water, and are already lacking of some goods”. Without anticipation, pooling resources could not happen.

And this does not constitute the only pitfall contained in the government’s response to this major crisis. As a colossal body of water waved into the city those last days, Thai authorities do not manage to agree on how to cope with this emergency situation. Contrary to the Prime Minister’s advises, Bangkok Major wanted to maintain partially the water in the inhabited areas of the city, notably in the North, so as to spare industrial zones.

Thanks to the locks’ system, the business district of this 12 million inhabitant’s megalopolis could be preserved. On the contrary, the northern area of the city is still inundated. All over Thailand, the local authorities’ response took a longer time than necessary to be put in place. Today, all authorities seem to be still overwhelmed by the extent of the catastrophe, particularly to rescue far-off villages.

For the time being, if numerous NGOs –most of them already on the field before the flood began- help as much as they can, there is no proper coordination. This obstructs the good procedure of rescuing the stricken populations.

In order to face this kind of situation, as those provoked by hurricanes, earthquakes or tsunamis, the Red Helmets Foundation pleads for the creation of a new humanitarian governance. Thanks to the creation of a general staff under the auspices of the UN, whose actions and policies would be relayed in regional branches, one on each continent, the whole international community could be aware of what happens and, foremost, how to help, in case of a natural disaster.

Anticipation would be the key of such an organization, which would be accompanied with the creation of “Red Helmets”, a humanitarian operational force, to coordinate the emergency responses in the aftermath of a disaster.

Climate change is responsible, every year, for environmental upheavals, more and more deadly. The number of climate refugees do not stop rising, but, as Nicole Guedj already highlighted in the 2009 Copenhagen Submit, natural disasters’ victims are never taken into account during international negotiations on sustainable development. If the Red Helmets Foundation President welcomes the project of creating a World Environment Organization, humanitarian action cannot remain the poor relation of international politics, and must too have its own world organization.

The quake, measuring 7.2, hit the eastern part of Turkey on Sunday. It devastated Van’s area, and the death and material tolls don’t stop rising. Already 459 people are reported dead, 1.350 injured. And it is still impossible to measure how many are missing.

“Hundreds, maybe thousands of people are still trapped under rubble” declared yesterday an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokesman in Geneva, Jessica Sallabank. The Head of Kandilli’s seismologic Institute also announced that the quake may provoke between 500 and 1.000 dead people.

 It is also impossible to measure the number of homeless people, in dire need of shelter, with temperatures plummeting to near zero and snow forecast to fall soon. The survivors’ situation is getting more and more complicated. This is all the more true than Turkish rescue teams seem to be overwhelmed by the catastrophe. First declaring that everything was under control, the Turkish government finally accepted foreign countries’ help, among which China and Israel.

Rescuers still focus on looking for living people covered with rubble in cities, like Van and its million inhabitants. Some remote villages may not be rescued yet. If the Turkish Red Crescent dealt about 13.000 tents and prepared a shelter to almost 40.000 people, this may be insufficient, in particular out of town. “We received 25 for 150 houses” complained Amik’s head, a village in ruins, near to Van. New tents were promised to arrive yesterday by the vice-Prime minister.

This violent earthquake proves once again, that in emergency situations and against natural disasters, only teams coordination and gathering means may help saving lives.

Creating Red Helmets, international and humanitarian force, able to act at anytime, under the aegis of the UN, take on meaning, considering the Turkish disaster. Indeed, last days events would have brought into light the high necessity to improve cooperation among NGO’s and governmental organizations, from all over the world. This is compulsory to back up local authorities efforts. As Nicole Guedj has underlined it since 1997, this solidarity can only be efficient in a well-organized and coordinating system.

At any rate, the Red Helmets Foundation holds to express her full support to rescue teams operating in Turkey, and has a particular thought towards victims’ families.