Olivier Vandecasteele, a seasoned and respected humanitarian worker, is now caught in the tangled mesh of a complex net. This spider’s web keeps him in a now unknown place. The charges unofficially and orally retained by the Iranian authorities against him evoke an offense of espionage.
Negotiations to obtain his release against that of a former Iranian diplomat met with a refusal from the Belgian Constitutional Council – given the charges against Assadollah Assadi, accused of having worked to prepare an attack in France -, while In recent months, a violent deterioration in the political and social situation in Iran has been spreading. Domestic political considerations thus make any negotiations between the two countries even more difficult.
In such a context, and given the profile of Olivier Vandecasteele, the European Union, the world’s second largest funder of international humanitarian aid, has a decisive role to play in breaking the closed door that prevails between the two countries.
His intervention, which requires an official referral from the Belgian State, would make it possible to get out of a status quo which is becoming seriously detrimental to the state of health of this professional. In Afghanistan as in Iran in recent years, he has demonstrated his human qualities and his ability to evolve in sometimes very sensitive political and cultural environments.
The next European Humanitarian Forum (EHF), in Brussels at the end of March, will provide an opportunity for humanitarian organizations to challenge the European Union
One of the first advances to which the European Union will be able to contribute will be to obtain the possibility of contact with an independent medical team. Factual elements establish such legitimacy to act for the benefit of a humanitarian actor retained against his will:
– at the height of the Covid-19 epidemic, in 2020, and despite the potential risk of sanctions from the United States of America, the European Union sent 20 million euros in aid from emergency to the Iranian population;
– in 2022, 11 million euros were allocated to humanitarian programs for the benefit of the most deprived in Iran. The European Union is therefore not indifferent to the situation of the Iranian people.
It cannot be so with regard to those who are the actors of its international solidarity and who implement it! If Olivier Vandecasteele is not released by then, the next European Humanitarian Forum (EHF), which will be held in Brussels at the end of March, will provide an opportunity for humanitarian organizations, with the agreement of his family, to question the European Union on the fate of this humanitarian worker.
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