Speaker 1: Well, as the world watches whether a fragile ceasefire in Gaza will hold ahead of the next exchange of more hostages and Palestinian prisoners, one organization is playing a crucial role. The International Committee of the Red Cross is the main group facilitating the return of hostages to Israel and the release of Palestinian prisoners and detainees from Israeli custody. Becky Anderson sat down with the head of the ICRC, Maryana Spogliaric, in Davos, Switzerland. She asked her about the enormous effort that went into the first release of three hostages and 90 Palestinian prisoners the past weekend. How complex

Speaker 2: was that process for your team? With the planning, the security considerations needed for it to be successful and how concerned were you as you were watching these images?

Speaker 3: These are indeed extremely complex and sensitive operations. They are also dangerous. They can potentially be dangerous not only for our personnel, but especially for those that we are trying to bring back safely to their families. So evidently this is not an operation that is planned overnight. It requires extremely tight coordination with both sides. They also need to know what is required from our perspective and our experience in order to be successful in it. And sometimes it's weeks in the making, sometimes it's days, depending on how much time we have. But all of this now in Gaza is based on a decade-long presence and a decade-long dialogue with both sides.

Speaker 2: And you're a trusted partner, but of course there's a massive trust deficit between the two parties, the Israelis and Hamas. How tenuous was this in the making?

Speaker 3: Look, it's been in the making for a long time as we know. It's in the public space. We have been insisting since day one that the modalities need to be agreed on so that we can have access and support the release of the hostages. Without these agreements, a hostage release is never possible. This is how it works. Now, we do not negotiate the deal itself because that would impede our neutral role and ability to facilitate the implementation. So we rely on intermediaries, like in this case it was Qatar and Egypt, and we work also closely with them to keep them informed of what modalities we need to have in place in order to support the operations.

Speaker 2: You need the support of the Israeli security forces. You also need to ensure that on the Palestinian side, prisons are released and have security. On reflection, did you get what you needed?

Speaker 3: We got what we needed. But we continue discussing how in every round we can improve the safety and security. You saw again the images, you saw the fact that there were hundreds of thousands of people in the street, and I still believe there are means to coordinate even more tightly and to have certain mechanisms in place that would avoid the exposure of those who need to be brought back to their families.

Speaker 2: On the Israeli hostages side, you have been calling for the immediate release of all hostages and access to them to assess their conditions. You haven't got either of those at this point. We are now into what is phase one of this temporary, or this ceasefire process. This is a temporary ceasefire for 42 days. More hostages are due to be released in the next five weeks. How confident are you that this ceasefire will hold? Donald Trump has said he doesn't have much confidence. Are you equally concerned?

Speaker 3: I do not want to speculate about whether the ceasefire will hold or not. What I want to say is it has to hold. There has been too much suffering on both sides. We've been insisting on this agreement for so many months because it's the only way, the only means to alleviate the situation that is extremely dire. I mean, I spent two days in Gaza. I stayed overnight. You do not want to imagine what I saw. I spent so many hours with the families of the hostages. The pain is unmeasurable, and we need this deal to continue. I think the leaders owe this to their people that their suffering can finally ease and that the healing can begin.

Speaker 2: You were also on the West Bank. What was your assessment there?

Speaker 3: It's equally complicated. We need to have more movement to fulfil our mandate. We are also talking to the Israeli authorities as we are to the Palestinian authorities. I met the president of the Palestinian Authority. So we are talking to both sides on how they have to conduct these operations and allow us to access certain groups of people in order to be compliant with international humanitarian law. What you see across the Middle East, and they've also come back from Syria and Lebanon, are the consequences of a permissive interpretation, if not a violation, of international humanitarian law. And you can see it in the form of human suffering, but you can also measure the cost of war.

Speaker 2: Let's talk about the next scheduled release Saturday. Talk to me about the implementation of that. Talk to me about what we can expect. Tell me what you are hearing behind the scenes about how that's going to happen and whether it's going to happen at all.

Speaker 3: We don't disclose what we discuss behind the scenes. It's an essential part of how we operate and this is also the reason why the International Committee of the Red Cross is very often, if not regularly, the facilitator of such operations. But we do hope to be able to reunite families again within a week's time and we hope to be able to continue these release operations based on the necessary agreements until all that have to be released will be released.

Speaker 2: I have to ask you, do you have full confidence that Saturday will happen as scheduled?

Speaker 3: Look, at the moment we are planning for further releases, that I can say.

Speaker 2: You talked about the importance of international humanitarian law. Frankly, there'll be many people watching this who say they just don't see that or have any confidence in the implementation of international humanitarian law after what we've seen in Gaza, what we've seen in Syria, we've seen in Lebanon, we've seen in Ukraine. What do you say to people who feel that, you know, we're living in a new world and they don't have any confidence going forward that these same rules sort of exist anymore?

Speaker 3: People don't have confidence in the implementation of international humanitarian law and specifically in the Geneva Conventions. But what we see, what we see in Gaza, what we see in Syria, what we see in other places like Sudan, I was in Myanmar in the last few months, is the consequences of non-implementation of the Geneva Conventions. So what does this tell us? If you want to alleviate the suffering and especially if you want to prevent that level of suffering and destruction, we have no other choice but bringing the states back to the recognition that this is a treaty that they all have ratified. And it's their obligation to implement.

Speaker 2: Do you have confidence that this new Trump administration buys that argument?

Speaker 3: The International Committee of the Red Cross is the founding member of the Red Cross, Red Crescent movement. We've been there for a hundred and sixty years, through world wars, through numerous US administrations and we will continue to work with every US administration and throughout history the US have always been a steadfast supporter of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Speaker 2: That wasn't my question, with the greatest of respect. This is a new Donald Trump administration and my question was very specifically, do you have confidence that you and others will get the support from this very specific administration?

Speaker 3: I will first thing reach out to them and ask for this support to continue, of course.

Speaker 2: Have you spoken to the Trump administration?

Speaker 3: Not yet, but I plan to do so as soon as possible.