©ICRC, Ashish Bhatia

Women and men playing basketball together on the same court, competing amidst vociferous cheers, claps and whistles. For us at the regional delegation in New Delhi, this sporting event brightened the winter afternoon in December last year when the first National Wheelchair Basketball Championship in India took place. The idea and effort behind the initiative was to promote the social inclusion of people with disabilities through sports and to have a good time.

The ICRC joined hands with the Wheelchair Basketball Federation of India (WBFI), Chennai and Choice International, UK to organize the first ever National Wheelchair Basketball Championship in India. The regional delegation’s physical rehabilitation programme in India is now being shaped to enhance the accessibility of people with disabilities to affordable quality treatment, provision of mobility devices, physical rehabilitation services and to implement projects as per the priority of the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India.

Over the last few months, the ICRC in New Delhi also strengthened its relationship with another important community of stakeholders – journalists in India and Bhutan. While in Bhutan, we held our first ever workshop in Thimpu deliberating on the ethics of conflict reporting, back home in New Delhi, we organized our annual award event with an eclectic group of journalists who don’t just work in difficult conditions but make the effort to step out of their comfort zones to bring to us some extraordinary stories of human resilience. The PII-ICRC 2014 Annual Awards ceremony for best article and best photograph on a humanitarian subject, in its seventh edition, is a recognition of this endeavour. Similarly, the Emergency Room Trauma Course (ERTC) conducted by the delegation recently in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) for medical officers is one small step towards strengthening emergency health care services.

We started the year with a high level visit to India by the Director General of the ICRC, Yves Daccord, in early January. His second visit to the country was an opportunity to interact with diverse stakeholders including government officials on issues of mutual interest ranging from humanitarian action in an age of drones and cyber attacks to India’s role in restoring international convergence on these issues.

As spring finally settles in after a cold winter in Delhi, we remain steadfast in our resolve to contribute to whatever challenges the humanitarian landscape throws at us even as we learn from the year gone by.

Mary Werntz

Head of the Regional Delegation New Delhi