yP+BE*Sk f what people say is true and the future rarely turns out as we expect, all the more reason to prepare for it with a clear head. At a time when uncertainty is becoming increasingly widespread, it is essential for us to try and understand what is happening and, above all, to learn from today so that we can function better tomorrow.
Eighteen months ago, the ICRC launched its Avenir project, which aims to analyse contemporary humanitarian action and to gain a fresh perspective for its future. In so doing, the ICRC committed itself to a process of change rendered necessary by the many challenges which arose from the extraordinarily turbulent period of history that started in 1989. Operational difficulties related to these upheavals and the tragedies that befell the ICRC in Burundi and Chechnya in June and December 1996, respectively, made it all the more urgent to set that process in motion.
In order to define the organization’s future over the coming five to ten years the ICRC embarked on an extensive exercise, mobilizing more than 200 staff members at headquarters and in the field, the Group of International Advisers, various independent experts, and representatives of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. By mandate of the Assembly, which is the ICRC’s supreme decision-making body, a steering committee was set up to oversee the first part of the exercise which, to ensure progressive consolidation, was carried out in three separate stages. The first step was to create a number of working groups, each covering a specific subject, at headquarters and in the field. These groups produced more than 1,200 pages of text containing some 300 different p roposals. As a next step, all their suggestions were examined and developed more in depth. The final stage involved selecting proposals and preparing a general summary, the principal elements of