Humanitarian actors have been charged to be impartial and neutral in the discharge of their primary functions. Mr Joseph Shopade gave the charge on Wednesday in Jos, while delivering a lecture at the opening of a 4-day workshop organised for humanitarian workers.

The workshop was organised by the Justice Development and Peace Commission (JDPC) of the Catholic Archdiocese of Jos in partnership with Plateau Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) and supported by Oxfam Nigeria.

Shopade explained that Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who would be the focal point of humanitarian actors and must be treated with dignity, love and devoid of any form of discrimination and show of preference.

”Humanitarian actors must remain humane, impartial, and neutral while handling victims of crisis, flood or any other forms of disasters.

”Humanitarian actors must carry out their functions on the bases of needs alone, given priority to urgent cases of distress, and not on the bases of nationality, race, gender, creed of political opinions.

”Organizations rendering humanitarian services must adhere to humanitarian principles for their own safety, credibility and effectiveness”, he said.

According to him, all humanitarian actors must assure of its autonomy, that is, standing away from any political, economy, religious or military interest, which should indicates it independence.

Coordinator of JPDC, Benedicta Daber, in her welcome address, enjoined participants to pay wrap attention and participate actively in order to be well equipped to tackle future challenge of disaster management.

The workshop which draws participants from Plateau and Nasarawa states was aimed at building capacity of humanitarian actors in humanitarian response.

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Humanitarian actors charged to be impartial in performing their duties