Why another Strategy?

This is no doubt the first question that comes to most peoples mind when seeing this document. Over the last 25 years,numerous strategic policies and plans have been elaborated on behalf of the Movement and its components,beginning with the famous Tansley study in 1975 and most recently resulting in important proposals
such as Strategy 2010 ,the ICRC Avenir Plan, the Agreement on the Organization of the International Activities of the components of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (the so called Seville Agreement) and the Plan of Action of the 27th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.
Moreover,many National Societies have periodically reappraised their roles,and in recent years a number
of them have been making great efforts to integrate the concept of core areas into their national strategies and plans.
A number of essential strategic objectives recur again and again throughout these plans and reappraisals.They are:

• the Movement ’s ambition to become the essential independent force for humanitarian action throughout the world;
• the imperative need to develop and sustain local capacity in the National Societies;
• our ‘basic role’ to provide emergency help whenever human needs for impartial protection and assistance exist because of a natural/technological disaster or conflict;
• our role in prevention and advocacy;