Professor Paul McMaster:

We always tell our teams that, if it is easy, we should not be there and that, if everyone wants us there, it is time for us to go home. The locals, be they militia or M23, have agendas in which they want to involve us. I understand that my responses to the Deputy’s question may seem naive, but we must take this approach. We must do all that we can to ensure that we are not being manipulated. We do not succeed in every situation, as shown by Rwanda and so forth, but we try desperately hard. For this reason, we make what I am sure sounds to the Deputy like a naive and artificial separation in the real world. I do not need to tell him that many of the world’s militaries now claim to deliver humanitarian aid. The boundaries are rapidly blurring.

In countries where we get into trouble, it is usually owed to a breakdown in people’s understanding of who we are and what we are doing. For this reason, young people are vital. They can look at me and wonder what I am, but it is obvious what a 33 year old Irish nurse working in the Congo is, namely, a young humanitarian worker.