Activity Report

Today More than Ever

Introduction by Rossella Miccio, President of EMERGENCY, in the 2024 Report

We began our work 30 years ago in a period of world history marked by a modern form of conflict in which civilians paid the highest price. We wanted to treat the victims of those wars and, at the same time, encourage a social revolution that would do away with recourse to war, with the idea of its inevitability. So, we embarked on our first mission in Rwanda, during the genocide. Then we provided surgery in Iraq, to address the effects of landmines, and led a campaign in Italy to ban the production and sale of those mines. We then went to Afghanistan, where we are still remedying the failures of aggressive interventionism, confronting the isolation of women, a humanitarian crisis and the freezing of funds to the country. In those 30 years, our story has become one of collective solidarity, of hospitals built, staff trained, healthcare models of excellence and treatment for all. We are determined to make our own work redundant by promoting a culture of respect for human rights, which is the only real antidote to war.

Today more than ever, peace is needed. In a world ravaged by more than 50 active conflicts, international bodies can no longer be the guarantors of inalienable rights and duties. Heads of state conceal the horrors of war with criminal justifications: war for peace, just war, preventive war. Future warfare is prepared for by funding rearmament, to the detriment of human welfare. In 2024, we bore witness to the effects of these decisions, in places where even humanitarian work has become a military target.

In Khartoum, Sudan, we are the only international NGO to have continuously worked throughout the conflict, at our hospital the Salam Centre. Here, we broadened our services to include primary care for children and aid in medical emergencies, out of responsibility to a people who had been largely forgotten. In Donetsk, Ukraine, we provided the most vulnerable people access to essential care, something the conflict has made scarce. In Gaza, Palestine, our team managed, after months of continuous obstacles, to provide primary care to Palestinians who have been completely devastated by the barbarity of a war in which humanitarian law has been buried under the rubble along with thousands of people.

With this destructive trajectory before us, we felt strongly that we must assert the need to overcome the inhumanity of war. We did so through “Ripudia” (meaning “reject” in Italian), a campaign to raise awareness that echoes Article 11 of the Italian constitution and affirms our country’s rejection of war.

We will go on from here. After 30 years, war is still being forced upon us, and it is one more factor in bringing us together and pushing us to put forward alternative ways of interacting. We – and you, if you agree – shall choose treatment, as we have always done, and turn care into a political and social act that helps build peace.