The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a humanitarian movement with approximately 16million volunteers, members, and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, and to prevent and alleviate human suffering. The Movement has seven fundamental principles that inform its activities: humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity, and universality.
The Movement contributed to the meeting of the first and subsequent Geneva Conventions, and the foundation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). The Geneva Conventions created the international treaties and humanitarian laws that primarily govern war-time conduct, which the ICRC helped to develop. The ICRC supplies aid to war-impacted areas, promotes humanitarian standards, and reviews compliance with the Geneva Conventions and humanitarian law in areas experiencing violent conflicts. Similarly, the IFRC provides support to areas in need of aid due to non-violent issues, such as famine, disease, and man-made and natural disasters. It is partially distinguished from the ICRC by its function as a cooperative network between national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies to coordinate international aid delivery.
History Foundation
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, there were no organized or well-established army nursing systems for casualties, nor safe or protected institutions to accommodate and treat those who were wounded on the battlefield. In June 1859, Swiss businessman Jean-Henri Dunant, a devout Calvinist, traveled to Italy to meet then-French emperor Napoleon III with the intention of discussing difficulties in conducting business in Algeria, which at that time was occupied by France. He arrived in the small town of Solferino on the evening of 24 June after the Battle of Solferino, an engagement in the Austro-Sardinian War. In a single day, about 40,000 soldiers on both sides died or were left wounded on the field. 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 of the wounded. He took part in organizing an overwhelming level of relief assistance with the local villagers to aid without discrimination.
Back at his home in Geneva, he decided to write a book entitled A Memory of Solferino, which he published using his own money in 1862. He sent copies of the book to leading political and military figures throughout Europe and to people he thought could help him make a change. His book included vivid descriptions of his experiences in Solferino in 1859, and he explicitly advocated the formation of national voluntary relief organizations to help nurse wounded soldiers in the case of war, inspired by Christian teaching regarding social responsibility and his experience after the battlefield of Solferino.; He called for the development of an international treaty to guarantee the protection of medics and field hospitals for soldiers wounded on the battlefield.
In 1863, Gustave Moynier, a Geneva lawyer and president of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare, received a copy of Dunant's book and introduced it for discussion at a meeting of that society. As a result of this initial discussion, the society established an investigatory commission to examine the feasibility of Dunant's suggestions and eventually to organize an international conference about their possible implementation. The members of this committee, which has subsequently been referred to as the "Committee of the Five", aside from Dunant and Moynier, were 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".
International conference From 26 to 29 October, 1863, the international conference organized by the committee was held in Geneva to develop possible measures to improve medical services on the battlefield. The conference was attended by 36 individuals: eighteen official delegates from national governments, six delegates from 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: Swiss Confederation, Austrian Empire, Grand Duchy of Baden, Kingdom of Bavaria, French Empire, Kingdom of Hanover, Kingdom of Italy, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Kingdom of Prussia, Russian Empire, Kingdom of Saxony, Kingdom of Wurtemberg, United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
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 The introduction of a common distinctive protection symbol for medical personnel in the field, namely a white armlet bearing a red cross
Geneva Convention, national societies, and ICRC Only a year later, the Swiss government invited the governments of all European countries, as well as the United States, the Empire of Brazil and the Mexican Empire, to attend an official diplomatic conference. Sixteen countries sent a total of 26 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.
Directly following the establishment of the Geneva Convention, the first national societies were founded in Belgium, Denmark, France, Oldenburg, Italy, 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.
The government of the Ottoman Empire ratified this treaty on 5 July, 1865. The Turkish Red Crescent organization was founded in the Ottoman Empire in 1868, partly in response to the experience of the Crimean War (1853–1856), in which disease overshadowed battle as the main cause of death and suffering among Turkish soldiers. It was the first Red Crescent society of its kind and one of the most important charity organizations in the Muslim world. There was some discourse in Europe during the Great Eastern Crisis (the first use of the crescent symbol to mark medical personnel in international combat) as to whether the use of a crescent was allowed under the Geneva Convention. The Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary, the states most directly involved in the Crisis, both rejected the Red Crescent, however most other European powers accepted its validity.Kölnische Zeitung, 23rd April 1877. https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/newspaper/item/727YRCQ57WWAOYRLAKKFZSLKMIUN7OP4?query=Halbmond&issuepage=5
In 1867, the first International Conference of National Aid Societies for the Nursing of the War Wounded was convened. Also in 1867, Jean-Henri 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 significant 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 Jean-Henri Dunant and Frédéric Passy, a leading international pacifist. More significant than the honor of the prize itself, this prize marked the overdue rehabilitation of Jean-Henri 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 into Central and South America in the Argentine Republic, the United States of Brazil, the Republic of Chile, the Republic of Cuba, the United Mexican States, the Republic of Peru, the Republic of El Salvador, the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, and the United States of Venezuela; Asia, in the Republic of China, the Empire of Japan, and the Kingdom of Siam; and Africa, in the Union of South Africa.
World War I
With the outbreak of World War I, the ICRC found itself confronted with enormous challenges that it could handle only 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 August, 1914, immediately after the start of the war, the ICRC set up its International Prisoners-of-War Agency (IPWA) to trace Prisoners of war (POWs) and to re-establish communications with their respective families. The Austrian writer and pacifist Stefan Zweig described the situation at the Geneva headquarters of the ICRC: