From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
International Committee of the Red Cross (
ICRC) is a
humanitarian institution based in
Geneva,
Switzerland, and a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signatories) to the four
Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 (
Protocol I,
Protocol II) and
2005 have given the ICRC a mandate to protect victims of international and internal
armed conflicts. Such victims include war wounded,
prisoners,
refugees,
civilians, and other
non-combatants.
The ICRC is part of the
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement along with the
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and 190
National Societies.
It is the oldest and most honoured organization within the movement and
one of the most widely recognized organizations in the world, having
won three
Nobel Peace Prizes in 1917, 1944, and 1963.
History
Solferino, Henry Dunant and the foundation of the ICRC
Up until the middle of the 19th century, there were no organized and well-established army
nursing
systems for casualties and no safe and protected institutions to
accommodate and treat those who were wounded on the battlefield. In June
1859, the Swiss businessman
Henry Dunant travelled to Italy to meet French emperor
Napoléon III
with the intention of discussing difficulties in conducting business in
Algeria, at that time occupied by France. When he arrived in the small
Italian town of
Solferino on the evening of 24 June, he witnessed the
Battle of Solferino, an engagement in the
Second Italian War of Independence.
In a single day, about 40,000 soldiers on both sides died or were left
wounded on the field. Henry Dunant was shocked by the terrible aftermath
of the battle, the suffering of the wounded soldiers, and the
near-total lack of medical attendance and basic care. He completely
abandoned the original intent of his trip and for several days he
devoted himself to helping with the treatment and care for the wounded.
He succeeded in organizing an overwhelming level of relief assistance by
motivating the local population to aid without discrimination. Back in
his home in
Geneva, he decided to write a book entitled
A Memory of Solferino
which he published with his own money in 1862. He sent copies of the
book to leading political and military figures throughout Europe. In
addition to penning a vivid description of his experiences in Solferino
in 1859, he explicitly advocated the formation of national voluntary
relief organizations to help nurse wounded soldiers in the case of war.
In addition, he called for the development of international treaties to
guarantee the neutrality and protection of those wounded on the
battlefield as well as medics and field hospitals.
On 9 February 1863 in Geneva, Henry Dunant founded the "Committee of
the Five" (together with four other leading figures from well-known
Geneva families) as an investigatory commission of the
Geneva Society for Public Welfare.
Their aim was to examine the feasibility of Dunant's ideas and to
organize an international conference about their possible
implementation. The members of this committee, aside from Dunant
himself, were
Gustave Moynier, lawyer and chairman of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare; physician
Louis Appia, who had significant experience working as a field surgeon; Appia's friend and colleague
Théodore Maunoir, from the
Geneva Hygiene and Health Commission; and
Guillaume-Henri Dufour, a
Swiss Army
general of great renown. Eight days later, the five men decided to
rename the committee to the "International Committee for Relief to the
Wounded". In October (26–29) 1863, the international conference
organized by the committee was held in Geneva to develop possible
measures to improve medical services on the battle field. The conference
was attended by 36 individuals: eighteen official delegates from
national governments, six delegates from other non-governmental
organizations, seven non-official foreign delegates, and the five
members of the International Committee. The states and kingdoms
represented by official delegates were
Grand Duchy of Baden,
Kingdom of Bavaria,
Second French Empire,
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,
Kingdom of Hanover,
Grand Duchy of Hesse,
Kingdom of Italy,
Kingdom of the Netherlands,
Austrian Empire,
Kingdom of Prussia,
Russian Empire,
Kingdom of Saxony,
United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, and
Spanish Empire. Among the proposals written in the final resolutions of the conference, adopted on 29 October 1863, were:
- The foundation of national relief societies for wounded soldiers;
- Neutrality and protection for wounded soldiers;
- The utilization of volunteer forces for relief assistance on the battlefield;
- The organization of additional conferences to enact these concepts in legally binding international treaties; and
- The introduction of a common distinctive protection symbol for
medical personnel in the field, namely a white armlet bearing a red
cross, honoring the history of neutrality of Switzerland and of its own
Swiss organizers by reversing the Swiss flag's colors.
The Red Cross in action in 1864
Only one year later, the Swiss government invited the governments of
all European countries, as well as the United States, Brazil, and
Mexico, to attend an official diplomatic conference. Sixteen countries
sent a total of twenty-six delegates to Geneva. On 22 August 1864, the
conference adopted the first
Geneva Convention
"for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the
Field". Representatives of 12 states and kingdoms signed the convention:
The convention contained ten articles, establishing for the first
time legally binding rules guaranteeing neutrality and protection for
wounded soldiers, field medical personnel, and specific humanitarian
institutions in an armed conflict. Furthermore, the convention defined
two specific requirements for recognition of a national relief society
by the International Committee:
- The national society must be recognized by its own national government as a relief society according to the convention, and
- The national government of the respective country must be a state party to the Geneva Convention.
Directly following the establishment of the Geneva Convention, the
first national societies were founded in Belgium, Denmark, France,
Oldenburg, Prussia, Spain, and Württemberg. Also in 1864, Louis Appia and
Charles van de Velde, a captain of the
Dutch Army,
became the first independent and neutral delegates to work under the
symbol of the Red Cross in an armed conflict. Three years later in 1867,
the first
International Conference of National Aid Societies for the Nursing of the War Wounded was convened.
Memorial commemorating the first use of the Red Cross symbol in an armed conflict during the Battle of Dybbøl (Denmark) in 1864; jointly erected in 1989 by the national Red Cross societies of Denmark and Germany
Also in 1867, Henry Dunant was forced to declare bankruptcy due to
business failures in Algeria, partly because he had neglected his
business interests during his tireless activities for the International
Committee. The controversy surrounding Dunant's business dealings and
the resulting negative public opinion, combined with an ongoing conflict
with Gustave Moynier, led to Dunant's expulsion from his position as a
member and secretary. He was charged with fraudulent bankruptcy and a
warrant for his arrest was issued. Thus, he was forced to leave Geneva
and never returned to his home city. In the following years, national
societies were founded in nearly every country in Europe. The project
resonated well with patriotic sentiments that were on the rise in the
late-nineteenth-century, and national societies were often encouraged as
signifiers of national moral superiority.
In 1876, the committee adopted the name "International Committee of the
Red Cross" (ICRC), which is still its official designation today. Five
years later, the
American Red Cross was founded through the efforts of
Clara Barton.
More and more countries signed the Geneva Convention and began to
respect it in practice during armed conflicts. In a rather short period
of time, the Red Cross gained huge momentum as an internationally
respected movement, and the national societies became increasingly
popular as a venue for volunteer work.
When the first
Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901, the
Norwegian Nobel Committee opted to give it jointly to Henry Dunant and
Frédéric Passy,
a leading international pacifist. More significant than the honour of
the prize itself, the official congratulation from the International
Committee of the Red Cross marked the overdue rehabilitation of Henry
Dunant and represented a tribute to his key role in the formation of the
Red Cross. Dunant died nine years later in the small Swiss health
resort of
Heiden.
Only two months earlier his long-standing adversary Gustave Moynier had
also died, leaving a mark in the history of the Committee as its
longest-serving President ever.
In 1906, the 1864 Geneva Convention was revised for the first time. One year later, the
Hague Convention X, adopted at the Second International Peace Conference in
The Hague,
extended the scope of the Geneva Convention to naval warfare. Shortly
before the beginning of the First World War in 1914, 50 years after the
foundation of the ICRC and the adoption of the first Geneva Convention,
there were already 45 national relief societies throughout the world.
The movement had extended itself beyond Europe and North America to
Central and South America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Peru,
El Salvador, Uruguay, Venezuela), Asia (the Republic of China, Japan,
Korea,
Siam), and Africa (South Africa).
World War I
French postcard celebrating the role of Red Cross nurses during the First World War, 1915.
With the outbreak of World War I, the ICRC found itself confronted
with enormous challenges which it could only handle by working closely
with the national Red Cross societies. Red Cross nurses from around the
world, including the United States and Japan, came to support the
medical services of the armed forces of the European countries involved
in the war. On 15 October 1914, immediately after the start of the war,
the ICRC set up its International Prisoners-of-War (
POW)
Agency, which had about 1,200 mostly volunteer staff members by the end
of 1914. By the end of the war, the Agency had transferred about
20 million letters and messages, 1.9 million parcels, and about
18 million
Swiss francs
in monetary donations to POWs of all affected countries. Furthermore,
due to the intervention of the Agency, about 200,000 prisoners were
exchanged between the warring parties, released from captivity and
returned to their home country. The organizational card index of the
Agency accumulated about 7 million records from 1914 to 1923, each card
representing an individual prisoner or missing person. The card index
led to the identification of about 2 million POWs and the ability to
contact their families, as part of the
Restoring Family Links effort of the organization. The complete index is on loan today from the ICRC to the
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva. The right to access the index is still strictly restricted to the ICRC.
During the entire war, the ICRC monitored warring parties'
compliance with the Geneva Conventions of the 1907 revision and
forwarded complaints about violations to the respective country. When
chemical weapons
were used in this war for the first time in history, the ICRC
vigorously protested against this new type of warfare. Even without
having a mandate from the Geneva Conventions, the ICRC tried to
ameliorate the suffering of civil populations. In territories that were
officially designated as "occupied territories," the ICRC could assist
the civilian population on the basis of the
Hague Convention's
"Laws and Customs of War on Land" of 1907. This convention was also the
legal basis for the ICRC's work for prisoners of war. In addition to
the work of the International Prisoner-of-War Agency as described above
this included inspection visits to
POW camps. A total of 524 camps throughout Europe were visited by 41 delegates from the ICRC until the end of the war.
Between 1916 and 1918, the ICRC published a number of
postcards
with scenes from the POW camps. The pictures showed the prisoners in
day-to-day activities such as the distribution of letters from home. The
intention of the ICRC was to provide the families of the prisoners with
some hope and solace and to alleviate their uncertainties about the
fate of their loved ones. After the end of the war, the ICRC organized
the return of about 420,000 prisoners to their home countries. In 1920,
the task of repatriation was handed over to the newly founded
League of Nations, which appointed the Norwegian diplomat and scientist
Fridtjof Nansen
as its "High Commissioner for Repatriation of the War Prisoners". His
legal mandate was later extended to support and care for war refugees
and displaced persons when his office became that of the League of
Nations "
High Commissioner for Refugees". Nansen, who invented the
Nansen passport for stateless refugees and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922, appointed two delegates from the ICRC as his deputies.
A year before the end of the war, the ICRC received the 1917
Nobel Peace Prize for its outstanding wartime work. It was the only
Nobel Peace Prize awarded in the period from 1914 to 1918. In 1923, the
Committee adopted a change in its policy regarding the selection of new
members. Until then, only citizens from the city of Geneva could serve
in the Committee. This limitation was expanded to include Swiss
citizens. As a direct consequence of World War I, an additional protocol
to the Geneva Convention was adopted in 1925 which outlawed the use of
suffocating or poisonous gases and biological agents as weapons. Four
years later, the original Convention was revised and the second Geneva
Convention "relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War" was
established. The events of World War I and the respective activities of
the ICRC significantly increased the reputation and authority of the
Committee among the international community and led to an extension of
its competencies.
As early as in 1934, a draft proposal for an additional
convention for the protection of the civil population during an armed
conflict was adopted by the International Red Cross Conference.
Unfortunately, most governments had little interest in implementing this
convention, and it was thus prevented from entering into force before
the beginning of World War II.
Chaco War
In the
Interwar period, Bolivia and Paraguay were disputing possession of the
Gran Chaco - a desert region between the two countries. The dispute escalated into a
full-scale conflict
in 1932. During the war the ICRC visited 18,000 Bolivian prisoners of
war and 2,500 Paraguayan detainees. With the help of the ICRC both
countries made improvements to the conditions of the detainees.
World War II
Red Cross message from Łódź, Poland, 1940.
The most reliable primary source on the role of the Red Cross during
World War II are the three volumes of the "Report of the International
Committee of the Red Cross on its activities during the second world war
(September 1, 1939 – June 30, 1947)" written by the International
Committee of the Red Cross itself. The report can be read online.
The legal basis of the work of the ICRC during World War II was
the Geneva Conventions in their 1929 revision. The activities of the
Committee were similar to those during World War I: visiting and
monitoring POW camps, organizing relief assistance for civilian
populations, and administering the exchange of messages regarding
prisoners and missing persons. By the end of the war, 179 delegates had
conducted 12,750 visits to POW camps in 41 countries. The Central
Information Agency on Prisoners-of-War (
Zentralauskunftsstelle für Kriegsgefangene)
had a staff of 3,000, the card index tracking prisoners contained
45 million cards, and 120 million messages were exchanged by the Agency.
One major obstacle was that the
Nazi-controlled
German Red Cross
refused to cooperate with the Geneva statutes including blatant
violations such as the deportation of Jews from Germany and the
mass murders conducted in the
concentration camps
run by the German government. Moreover, two other main parties to the
conflict, the Soviet Union and Japan, were not party to the 1929 Geneva
Conventions and were not legally required to follow the rules of the
conventions.
During the war, the ICRC failed to obtain an agreement with Nazi
Germany about the treatment of detainees in concentration camps, and it
eventually abandoned applying pressure to avoid disrupting its work with
POWs. The ICRC also failed to develop a response to reliable
information about the extermination camps and the mass killing of
European Jews. This is still considered the greatest failure of the ICRC
in its history. After November 1943, the ICRC achieved permission to
send parcels to concentration camp detainees with known names and
locations. Because the notices of receipt for these parcels were often
signed by other inmates, the ICRC managed to register the identities of
about 105,000 detainees in the concentration camps and delivered about
1.1 million parcels, primarily to the camps
Dachau,
Buchenwald,
Ravensbrück, and
Sachsenhausen.
Swiss historian Jean-Claude Favez, who conducted an 8-year review of
the Red Cross records, says that even though the Red Cross knew by
November 1942 about the Nazi's annihilation plans for the Jews – and
even discussed it with U.S. officials – the group did nothing to inform
the public, maintaining silence even in the face of pleas by Jewish
groups.
Because the Red Cross was based in Geneva and largely funded by
the Swiss government, it was very sensitive to Swiss wartime attitudes
and policies. On October 1942, the Swiss government and the Red Cross'
board of members vetoed a proposal by several Red Cross board members to
condemn the persecution of civilians by the Nazis. For the rest of the
war, the Red Cross took its cues from Switzerland in avoiding acts of
opposition or confrontation with the Nazis.
A sick Polish survivor in the Hannover-Ahlem concentration camp receives medicine from a German Red Cross worker, April 1945
On 12 March 1945, ICRC President Jacob Burckhardt received a message from SS General
Ernst Kaltenbrunner
accepting the ICRC's demand to allow delegates to visit the
concentration camps. This agreement was bound by the condition that
these delegates would have to stay in the camps until the end of the
war. Ten delegates, among them
Louis Haefliger (
Mauthausen Camp),
Paul Dunant (
Theresienstadt Camp) and
Victor Maurer (
Dachau Camp),
accepted the assignment and visited the camps. Louis Haefliger
prevented the forceful eviction or blasting of Mauthausen-Gusen by
alerting American troops, thereby saving the lives of about 60,000
inmates. His actions were condemned by the ICRC because they were deemed
as acting unduly on his own authority and risking the ICRC's
neutrality. Only in 1990 was his reputation finally rehabilitated by
ICRC President
Cornelio Sommaruga.
In 1944, the ICRC received its second Nobel Peace Prize. As in
World War I, it received the only Peace Prize awarded during the main
period of war, 1939 to 1945. At the end of the war, the ICRC worked with
national Red Cross societies to organize relief assistance to those
countries most severely affected. In 1948, the Committee published a
report reviewing its war-era activities from 1 September 1939 to 30 June
1947. Since January 1996, the ICRC archive for this period has been
open to academic and public research.
After World War II
The ICRC Headquarters in Geneva.
On 12 August 1949, further revisions to the existing two Geneva
Conventions were adopted. An additional convention "for the Amelioration
of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed
Forces at Sea", now called the second Geneva Convention, was brought
under the Geneva Convention umbrella as a successor to the
1907 Hague Convention X.
The 1929 Geneva convention "relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of
War" may have been the second Geneva Convention from a historical point
of view (because it was actually formulated in Geneva), but after 1949
it came to be called the third Convention because it came later
chronologically than the Hague Convention. Reacting to the experience of
World War II, the
Fourth Geneva Convention,
a new Convention "relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in
Time of War," was established. Also, the additional protocols of 8 June
1977 were intended to make the conventions apply to internal conflicts
such as civil wars. Today, the four conventions and their added
protocols contain more than 600 articles, a remarkable expansion when
compared to the mere 10 articles in the first 1864 convention.
In celebration of its centennial in 1963, the ICRC, together with the
League of Red Cross Societies,
received its third Nobel Peace Prize. Since 1993, non-Swiss individuals
have been allowed to serve as Committee delegates abroad, a task which
was previously restricted to Swiss citizens. Indeed, since then, the
share of staff without Swiss citizenship has increased to about 35%.
On 16 October 1990, the
UN General Assembly decided to grant the ICRC
observer status
for its assembly sessions and sub-committee meetings, the first
observer status given to a private organization. The resolution was
jointly proposed by 138 member states and introduced by the Italian
ambassador,
Vieri Traxler,
in memory of the organization's origins in the Battle of Solferino. An
agreement with the Swiss government signed on 19 March 1993, affirmed
the already long-standing policy of full independence of the Committee
from any possible interference by Switzerland. The agreement protects
the full sanctity of all ICRC property in Switzerland including its
headquarters and archive, grants members and staff legal immunity,
exempts the ICRC from all taxes and fees, guarantees the protected and
duty-free transfer of goods, services, and money, provides the ICRC with
secure communication privileges at the same level as foreign embassies,
and simplifies Committee travel in and out of Switzerland.
The ICRC continued its activities throughout the 1990s. It broke its customary media silence when it denounced the
Rwandan Genocide in 1994. It struggled to prevent the crimes that happened in and around
Srebrenica
in 1995 but admitted, "We must acknowledge that despite our efforts to
help thousands of civilians forcibly expelled from the town and despite
the dedication of our colleagues on the spot, the ICRC's impact on the
unfolding of the tragedy was extremely limited."
It went public once again in 2007 to decry "major human rights abuses"
by Burma's military government including forced labour, starvation, and
murder of men, women, and children.
Fatalities
At the end of the
Cold War,
the ICRC's work actually became more dangerous. In the 1990s, more
delegates lost their lives than at any point in its history, especially
when working in local and internal armed conflicts. These incidents
often demonstrated a lack of respect for the rules of the Geneva
Conventions and their protection symbols. Among the slain delegates
were:
- Frédéric Maurice. He died on 19 May 1992 at the age of 39, one
day after a Red Cross transport he was escorting was attacked in the
former Yugoslavian city of Sarajevo.
- Fernanda Calado (Spain), Ingeborg Foss (Norway), Nancy Malloy
(Canada), Gunnhild Myklebust (Norway), Sheryl Thayer (New Zealand), and
Hans Elkerbout (Netherlands). They were shot at point-blank range while
sleeping in the early hours of 17 December 1996 in the ICRC field
hospital in the Chechen city of Nowije Atagi near Grozny. Their murderers have never been caught and there was no apparent motive for the killings.
- Rita Fox (Switzerland), Véronique Saro (Democratic Republic of Congo,
formerly Zaire), Julio Delgado (Colombia), Unen Ufoirworth (DR Congo),
Aduwe Boboli (DR Congo), and Jean Molokabonge (DR Congo). On 26 April
2001, they were en route with two cars on a relief mission in the
northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo when they came under fatal fire from unknown attackers.
- Ricardo Munguia (El Salvador). He was working as a water engineer in Afghanistan and travelling from Kandahar to Tirin Kot
with local colleagues on 27 March 2003 when their car was stopped by
unknown armed men. He was killed execution-style at point-blank range
while his colleagues were allowed to escape. He was 39 years old. The
killing prompted the ICRC to temporarily suspend operations across
Afghanistan.
Thereby the assumption that ICRC's reputation for neutrality and
effective work in Afghanistan over the past thirty years would protect
its delegates was shattered.
- Vatche Arslanian (Canada). Since 2001, he worked as a logistics
coordinator for the ICRC mission in Iraq. He died when he was travelling
through Baghdad together with members of the Iraqi Red Crescent. Their
car accidentally came into the crossfire of fighting in the city.
- Nadisha Yasassri Ranmuthu (Sri Lanka). He was killed by unknown
attackers on 22 July 2003, when his car was fired upon near the city of Hilla in the south of Baghdad.
- Emmerich Pregetter (Austria). He was an ICRC Logistics Specialist
who was killed by a swarm of bees on 11 August 2008. Emmerich was
participating in a field trip along with the ICRC Water and Habitat team
on a convoy which was delivering construction material for
reconstruction of a rural surgical health clinic in the area of Jebel
Marra, West Darfur, Sudan.
The Holocaust
By taking part in the 1995 ceremony to commemorate the liberation of the
Auschwitz concentration camp, the President of the ICRC,
Cornelio Sommaruga, sought to show that the organization was fully aware of the gravity of
The Holocaust
and the need to keep the memory of it alive, so as to prevent any
repetition of it. He paid tribute to all those who had suffered or lost
their lives during the war and publicly regretted the past mistakes and
shortcomings of the Red Cross with regard to the victims of the
concentration camps.
In 2002, an ICRC official outlined some of the lessons the organization has learned from the failure:
- from a legal point of view, the work that led to the adoption of
the Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in
time of war;
- from an ethical point of view, the adoption of the declaration of
the Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, building
on the distinguished work of Max Huber and Jean Pictet, to prevent any more abuses such as those that occurred within the movement after Hitler rose to power in 1933;
- on a political level, the ICRC's relationship with Switzerland was redesigned to ensure its independence;
- with a view to keeping memories alive, the ICRC accepted, in 1955, to take over the direction of the International Tracing Service where records from concentration camps are maintained;
- finally, to establish the historical facts of the case, the ICRC
invited Jean-Claude Favez to carry out an independent investigation of
its activities on behalf of the victims of Nazi persecution, and gave
him unfettered access to its archives relating to this period; out of
concern for transparency, the ICRC also decided to give all other
historians access to its archives dating back more than 50 years; having
gone over the conclusions of Favez's work, the ICRC acknowledged its
past failings and expressed its regrets in this regard.
In an official statement made on 27 January 2005, the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the ICRC stated:
Auschwitz also represents the greatest failure in the
history of the ICRC, aggravated by its lack of decisiveness in taking
steps to aid the victims of Nazi persecution. This failure will remain
part of the ICRC's memory, as will the courageous acts of individual
ICRC delegates at the time.
Characteristics
The emblem of the International Committee of the Red Cross (French: Comité international de la croix-rouge).
The original motto of the International Committee of the Red Cross was
Inter Arma Caritas
("Amidst War, Charity"). It has preserved this motto while other Red
Cross organizations have adopted others. Due to Geneva's location in the
French-speaking part of Switzerland, the ICRC is also known under its
initial French name
Comité international de la Croix-Rouge
(CICR). However, the ICRC has three official languages (English, French
and Spanish). The official symbol of the ICRC is the Red Cross on white
background (the inverse of the
Swiss flag) with the words "COMITE INTERNATIONAL GENEVE" circling the cross.
Under the Geneva Convention, the red cross, red crescent and red
crystal emblems provide protection for military medical services and
relief workers in armed conflicts and is to be placed on humanitarian
and medical vehicles and buildings. The original emblem that has a red
cross on a white background is the exact reverse of the flag of neutral
Switzerland. It was later supplemented by two others which are the
Red Crescent, and the
Red Crystal.
The Red Crescent was adopted by the Ottoman Empire during the
Russo-Turkish war and the Red Crystal by the governments in 2005, as an
additional emblem devoid of any national, political or religious
connotation.
Mission
The
official mission statement says that: "The International Committee of
the Red Cross (ICRC) is an impartial, neutral, and independent
organization whose independently humanitarian mission is to protect the
lives and dignity of victims of war and internal violence and to provide
them with assistance." It also conducts and coordinates international
relief and works to promote and strengthen
international humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles. The core tasks of the Committee, which are derived from the Geneva Conventions and its own statutes are:
- to monitor compliance of warring parties with the Geneva Conventions
- to organize nursing and care for those who are wounded on the battlefield
- to supervise the treatment of prisoners of war and make confidential interventions with detaining authorities
- to help with the search for missing persons in an armed conflict (tracing service)
- to organize protection and care for civil populations
- to act as a neutral intermediary between warring parties
The ICRC drew up seven fundamental principles in 1965 that were adopted by the entire Red Cross Movement. They are humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, volunteerism, unity, and universality.
Legal status
The ICRC is the only institution explicitly named in
international humanitarian law as a controlling authority. The legal mandate of the ICRC stems from the four
Geneva Conventions
of 1949, as well as its own Statutes. The ICRC also undertakes tasks
that are not specifically mandated by law, such as visiting political
prisoners outside of conflict and providing relief in
natural disasters.
The ICRC is a private association registered in Switzerland that has enjoyed various degrees of special privileges and legal
immunities within the territory of Switzerland for many years.
On 19 March 1993, a legal foundation for this special treatment was
created by a formal agreement between the Swiss government and the ICRC.
This agreement protects the full sanctity of all ICRC property in
Switzerland including its headquarters and archive, grants members and
staff legal immunity, exempts the ICRC from all taxes and fees,
guarantees protected and duty-free transfer of goods, services, and
money, provides the ICRC with secure communication privileges at the
same level as foreign
embassies,
and simplifies Committee travel in and out of Switzerland. On the other
hand, Switzerland does not recognize ICRC-issued passports.
Contrary to popular belief, the ICRC is not a sovereign entity like the
Sovereign Military Order of Malta and also it is not an
international organization, neither of
non-governmental nor of
governmental type. The ICRC limits its membership to Swiss nationals only, and also
unlike most NGOs[citation needed]
it does not have a policy of open and unrestricted membership for
individuals as its new members are selected by the Committee itself (a
process called cooptation). However, since the early 1990s, the ICRC
employs persons from all over the world to serve in its field mission
and at Headquarters. In 2007, almost half of ICRC staff was non-Swiss.
The ICRC has special privileges and legal immunities in many countries,
based on national law in these countries, based on agreements between
the ICRC and the respective governments, or, in some cases, based on
international jurisprudence (such as the right of ICRC delegates not to
bear witness in front of international tribunals).
Legal Basis
The ICRC's operations are generally based on
international humanitarian law,
primarily comprising the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, their two
Additional Protocols of 1977 and Additional Protocol III of 2005, the
Statutes of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and
the resolutions of the International Conferences of the Red Cross and
Red Crescent.
International humanitarian law is founded upon the Geneva
conventions, the first of which was signed in 1864 by 16 countries. The
First Geneva Convention of 1949 covers the protection for the wounded
and sick of armed conflict on land. The Second Geneva Convention asks
for the protection and care for the wounded, sick and shipwrecked of
armed conflict at sea. The Third Geneva Convention concerns the
treatment of prisoners of war. The Fourth Geneva Convention concerns the
protection of civilians in time of war. In addition, there are many
more customary international laws that come into effect when necessary.
Funding and financial matters
The 2010 budget of the ICRC amounts to about 1156 million
Swiss francs.
All payments to the ICRC are voluntary and are received as donations
based on two types of appeals issued by the Committee: an annual
Headquarters Appeal to cover its internal costs and
Emergency Appeals
for its individual missions. The total budget for 2009 consists of
about 996.9 million Swiss Francs (85% of the total) for field work and
168.6 million Swiss Francs (15%) for internal costs. In 2009, the budget
for field work increased by 6.9% and the internal budget by 4.4%
compared to 2008, primarily due to above-average increases in the number
and scope of its missions in Africa.
Most of the ICRC's funding comes from Switzerland and the United
States, with other European states and the EU close behind. Together
with Australia, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand, they contribute about
80–85% of the ICRC's budget. About 3% comes from private gifts, and the
rest comes from national Red Cross societies.
Responsibilities within the movement
The ICRC is responsible for legally recognizing a relief society as an official national
Red Cross or Red Crescent society
and thus accepting it into the movement. The exact rules for
recognition are defined in the statutes of the movement. After
recognition by the ICRC, a national society is admitted as a member to
the
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
(the Federation, or IFRC). The ICRC and the Federation cooperate with
the individual national societies in their international missions,
especially with human, material, and financial resources and organizing
on-site logistics. According to the 1997
Seville Agreement,
the ICRC is the lead Red Cross agency in conflicts while other
organizations within the movement take the lead in non-war situations.
National societies will be given the lead especially when a conflict is
happening within their own country.
Organization
The ICRC is headquartered in the Swiss city of
Geneva
and has external offices called Delegations in about eighty countries.
Each delegation is under the responsibility of a Head of delegation who
is the official representative of the ICRC in the country. Of its 2,000
professional employees, roughly 800 work in its Geneva headquarters and
1,200 expatriates work in the field. About half of the field workers
serve as delegates managing ICRC operations, while the other half are
specialists such as doctors,
agronomists, engineers, or
interpreters.
In the delegations, the international staff are assisted by some 13,000
national employees, bringing the total staff under the authority of the
ICRC to roughly 15,000. Delegations also often work closely with the
National Red Cross Societies of the countries where they are based, and
thus can call on the volunteers of the National Red Cross to assist in
some of the ICRC's operations.
The organizational structure of the ICRC is not well understood
by outsiders. This is partly because of organizational secrecy, but also
because the structure itself has been prone to frequent change. The
Assembly and Presidency are two long-standing institutions, but the
Assembly Council and Directorate were created only in the latter part of
the twentieth century. Decisions are often made in a collective way, so
authority and power relationships are not set in stone. Today, the
leading organs are the Directorate and the Assembly.
Directorate
The
Directorate is the executive body of the ICRC. It attends to the daily
management of the ICRC, whereas the Assembly sets policy. The
Directorate consists of a Director-General and five directors in the
areas of "Operations", "Human Resources", "Financial Resources and
Logistics ", "Communication and Information Management", and
"International Law and Cooperation within the Movement". The members of
the Directorate are appointed by the Assembly to serve for four years.
The Director-General has assumed more personal responsibility in recent
years, much like a CEO, where he was formerly more of a first among
equals at the Directorate.
Assembly
The
Assembly (also called the Committee) convenes on a regular basis and is
responsible for defining aims, guidelines, and strategies and for
supervising the financial matters of the Committee. The Assembly has a
membership of a maximum of twenty-five Swiss citizens. Members must
speak the house language of French, but many also speak English and
German as well. These Assembly members are
co-opted
for a period of four years, and there is no limit to the number of
terms an individual member can serve. A three-quarters majority vote
from all members is required for re-election after the third term, which
acts as a motivation for members to remain active and productive.
In the early years, every Committee member was Genevan, Protestant,
white,
and male. The first woman, Renée-Marguerite Cramer, was co-opted in
1918. Since then, several women have attained the Vice Presidency, and
the female proportion after the
Cold War has been about 15%. The first non-Genevans were admitted in 1923, and one Jew has served in the Assembly.
While the rest of the Red Cross Movement may be multi-national,
the Committee believes that its mono-national nature is an asset because
the nationality in question is Swiss. Thanks to permanent Swiss
neutrality, conflicting parties can be sure that no one from "the enemy" will be setting policy in Geneva. The
Franco-Prussian War
of 1870–71 showed that even Red Cross actors (in this case National
Societies) can be so bound by nationalism that they are unable to
sustain neutral humanitarianism.
Assembly Council
Furthermore,
the Assembly elects a five-member Assembly Council that constitutes an
especially active core of the Assembly. The Council meets at least ten
times per year and has the authority to decide on behalf of the full
Assembly in some matters. The Council is also responsible for organizing
the Assembly meetings and for facilitating communication between the
Assembly and the Directorate. The Assembly Council normally includes the
President, two Vice Presidents and two elected members. While one of
the Vice Presidents is elected for a four-year term, the other is
appointed permanently, his tenure ending by retirement from the vice
presidency or from the Committee. Currently
Olivier Vodoz and
Christine Beerli are the Vice Presidents.
The President
The
Assembly also selects, for a term of four years, one individual to act
as President of the ICRC. The President is both a member of the Assembly
and the leader of the ICRC, and has always been included on the Council
since its formation. The President automatically becomes a member of
both the Council and the Assembly, but does not necessarily come from
within the ICRC. There is a strong faction within the Assembly that
wants to reach outside the organization to select a President from Swiss
government or professional circles (such as banking or medicine).
In fact, the four most recent Presidents were all previously officials
for the Swiss government. The President's influence and role are not
well-defined, and change depending upon the times and each President's
personal style.
From 2000 to 2012, the President of the ICRC was
Jakob Kellenberger,
a reclusive man who rarely made diplomatic appearances, but was quite
skilled in personal negotiation and comfortable with the dynamics of the
Assembly.
Since July 2012, the President has been Peter Maurer, a Swiss citizen
who is a former Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He was appointed by the
Assembly for a renewable four-year term.
The Presidents of the ICRC have been:
Staff
As the ICRC
has grown and become more directly involved in conflicts, it has seen
an increase in professional staff rather than volunteers over the years.
The ICRC had only twelve employees in 1914 and 1,900 in the Second World War complemented its 1,800 volunteers.
The number of paid staff dropped off after both wars, but has increased
once again in the last few decades, averaging 500 field staff in the
1980s and over a thousand in the 1990s. Beginning in the 1970s, the ICRC
became more systematic in training to develop a more professional
staff. The ICRC offers attractive careers for university graduates, especially in Switzerland,
but the workload as an ICRC employee is demanding. 15% of the staff
leaves each year and 75% of employees stay less than three years.
The ICRC staff is multi-national and averaged about 50% non-Swiss
citizens in 2004. The ICRC's international staff are assisted in their
work by some 13,000 national employees hired in the countries where the
delegations are based.
The ICRC worldwide 2013
The
ICRC operates in over 80 countries with a total number of 11,000
employed people worldwide. The extensive network of missions and
delegations of the ICRC can relieve nations that are affected by armed
conflicts and other sources of violence. In 2013 the ten largest
operations worldwide are Pakistan, Mali/Niger, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq,
Colombia, Israel, Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan.
In 2011, with support from the Red Cross Society of the DRC, the
ICRC returned to their families in the RDC 838 unaccompanied children
including over 390 former child soldiers, 34 of whom had been in
neighboring countries.
Relationships within the movement
By virtue of its age and its special position under
international humanitarian law, the ICRC is the lead agency in the
Red Cross Movement,
but it has weathered some power struggles within the movement. The ICRC
has come into conflict with the Federation and certain national
societies at various times. The American Red Cross threatened to
supplant the ICRC with its creation of the International Federation of
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies as "a real international Red Cross"
after the First World War. Elements of the
Swedish Red Cross desired to supplant the Swiss authority of the ICRC after WWII.
Over time the Swedish sentiments subsided, and the IFRC grew to work
more harmoniously with the ICRC after years of organizational discord. Currently, the IFRC's Movement Cooperation division organizes interaction and cooperation with the ICRC.
In 1997, the ICRC and the IFRC signed the
Seville Agreement
which further defined the responsibilities of both organizations within
the movement. According to the agreement, the Federation is the lead
agency of the movement in any emergency situation which does not take
place as part of an armed conflict.
Acceptance of Magen David Adom
From its inception in 1930 until 2006, the
Magen David Adom organization, the Israeli equivalent to the Red Cross, was not accepted as part of the Federation, as it used the
Star of David,
which the ICRC refused to recognize as an acceptable symbol. This meant
that although Arab ambulances would be protected by the ICRC, Israeli
ambulances would not. In May 2000,
Bernadine Healy, the President of the
American Red Cross, wrote: "The international committee's feared proliferation of symbols is a pitiful
fig leaf,
used for decades as the reason for excluding the Magen David Adom – the
Shield (or Star) of David." In protest over the ICRC's perceived
anti-Israel discrimination, the ARC withdrew its financial support. In
2005, at a meeting of nations party to the Geneva convention, the ICRC
adopted the new
Red Crystal.
Magen David Adom then centered the Star of David sign inside the newly
accepted signage, and in 2006 was accepted as a full member. Yonatan
Yagodovsky, director of MDA's fundraising department, said in an article
published in October 2011 that "MDA will continue to use its emblem and
logo, and no one ever asked us to take it off."
International relationships
The Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in 1963 when the prize was jointly awarded to the ICRC and the Federation. From left to right: King Olav of Norway, ICRC President Leopold Boissier, League Chairman John MacAulay.
The ICRC prefers to engage
states directly and relies on low-key and confidential negotiations to lobby for access to
prisoners of war
and improvement in their treatment. Its findings are not available to
the general public but are shared only with the relevant government.
This is in contrast to related organizations like
Doctors Without Borders and
Amnesty International
who are more willing to expose abuses and apply public pressure to
governments. The ICRC reasons that this approach allows it greater
access and cooperation from governments in the long run.
When granted only partial access, the ICRC takes what it can get
and keeps discreetly lobbying for greater access. In the era of
apartheid South Africa, it was granted access to prisoners like
Nelson Mandela serving sentences, but not to those under
interrogation and awaiting trial. After his release, Mandela publicly praised the Red Cross.
The presence of respectable
aid organizations can make weak
regimes appear more
legitimate,
according to Fiona Terry, who contends that "this is particularly true
of [the] ICRC, whose mandate, reputation, and discretion imbue its
presence with a particularly affirming quality."
Recognizing this power, the ICRC can pressure weak governments to
change their behavior by threatening to withdraw. As mentioned above,
Nelson Mandela acknowledged that the ICRC compelled better treatment of
prisoners and had leverage over his South African captors because "avoiding international condemnation was the authorities' main goal."
In a controversial move, three officials from the Palestinian political movement
Hamas,
which many governments have designated as a terrorist organization,
have been living at the International Red Cross office in
Jerusalem. Israel believes that these three officials had a role in the 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier
Gilad Shalit, and has issued deportation orders for them. Red Cross spokesperson Cecilia Goin, in speaking with
CBN News, said that hosting the Hamas officials is in line with the organization's humanitarian mission. Israel arrested two of the Hamas members for conducting "Hamas activities inside Jerusalem," said the police.
