FRANCAISComité International de la Croix Rouge - Comments
4) The networking: relations with national societies
-While Red Cross and Red Crescents are essential intermediaries in distributing humanitarian aid and organising relief missions, they can also be obstacles to the ICRC. Officially, the Geneva Committee underlines the important contributions made by national societies. However, they also cause problems linked to bad governance, nationalist tendencies, inefficiency and violations of humanitarian principles. Each of these calls for more detailed analysis.
-Problems linked to governance include the fact that many national societies are un democratic, suffer from factionalism and have a low turnover of prominent members. The ICRC itself has had its share of internal disputes with the departure of leading members like Henry Dunant and Guy Deluz at the behest of Gustave Moynier and Cornelio Sommaruga respectively. The institution’s inertia has been a source of frustration for many: Jacques Freymond, who joined the Committee in 1959 and became acting president in 1969, left in 1972 after the organisation flatly refused to undergo reforms. However, the problems faced by the ICRC are nothing compared to the tensions within the IFRC and some national societies, where disagreements have led to divisions and even caused staff to stop working. In 1946, the League of Red Cross Societies and Henry Dunning, who became its Secretary General in 1958, peremptorily shut down the Joint Relief Mission that was set up with the Geneva Committee in 1940. The staff went on strike and demanded severance pay. The event was a shock to all, especially as it came on the heels of the Second World War, at a time when the League was actually running an operating surplus for the first time since its creation! Many more incidents like this have taken place, but the recent example of the ARC (American Red Cross) is particularly illustrative given its democratic foundations. The organisation has been no stranger to scandal since the era of its founder, Clara Barton. Over the last few years, it has lost several high-ranking members. The organisation's president, Bernadine Healy, was forced to resign in October 2001 because of her arrogance, her tendency to centralise , her intransigent position on the Israeli Red Shield society and her management of donations following the attacks on the World Trade Centre. Her successor, Vice-Admiral Marsha Evans, then left the ARC in December 2005 because of irregularities in aid distribution to victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. A similar fate awaited Mark Everson, formerly a Commissioner of Internal Revenue. He took over as president in April 2007, and resigned six months later for engaging in an inappropriate sexual relationship with a subordinate. In November 2007, he was replaced by Mary Elcano, a jurist previously employed by the federal post office.
-In its favour, the ARC does try to be democratic. Its dynamism contrasts sharply with dormant organisations where there is a dire shortage of volunteers and a crystallisation of leadership structures. The Burundi Red Cross, for example, has been run by Doctor François-Xavier Buyoya since 1967. In 2003, it only had 108 contributing members. In Senegal, the Red Cross has also experienced remarkable “continuity”. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was run by Doctor Rito Alcantara and, in the 1980s, by Mohamed Abdoulaye Diop. In Hong Kong, one man, Run Run Shaw, a film producer, headed the Red Cross for over thirty years. Only after the British enclave was handed over to China did women take control: Betty Tung in 1998, and Selina Tsang in 2005. This leadership problem affects countries across all continents. In Latin America, the situation of the Nicaraguan Red Cross has been edifying. Esperanza Bermúdez de Morales, the president of the organisation, clung to power from January 1994 to February 2008. Acting independently of the General Assembly, she managed to squeeze out her rival, vice-president Juan José Vanegas, and attempted to instate her son, Ricardo Bermúdez. When the latter tried to take charge of regional operations at Bluefields in October 2005, however, volunteers tried to break away and form their own organisation by occupying local headquarters. They were evicted by police, and one person was wounded. At the end of her mandate in December 2005, Esperanza Bermúdez de Morales put off holding internal elections, to the increasing anger of members. In spite of an IFRC circular condemning her actions in March 2007, she tried to modify the organisation’s statutes to allow for her fourth consecutive election. She was assisted by her son, who had conveniently been appointed as legal advisor. In February 2008, she was finally forced to leave by the Nicaraguan Red Cross Board and the government appointed Leonor Elizabeth Gallardo Rivera as her provisional replacement. European national societies have also experienced a crystallisation of leadership structures. The Austrian Red Cross (Österreichisches Rotes Kreuz), for instance, was headed by Adolf Pilz in 1945, Karl Seitz from 1946-1950 and Burghard Breitner from 1950-1956. Since then, however, it has been led by a string of doctors whose mandates have stretched across several decades: Hans von Lauda was president from 1956 to 1974; Heinrich Treichl, from 1974 to 1999; and Fredy Mayer, since 1999.
-National societies in Europe have also tended to recruit leaders of a certain social standing. Prospective candidates for key positions have often come from an elitist, aristocratic, and resolutely urban class. The French Red Cross, for example, was intially governed by a kind of dynasty with, successively, Duke Raymond de Montesquiou, his son-in-law Count Charles de Goyon and Count Emmanuel Flavigny, the brother-in-law of his predecessor. As for the Greek Red Cross, it was founded in 1877, its patron was Russia’s Queen Olga Konstantinovna (1851-1926), and it was led until his death by Marc Renieris (1815-1897), the Governor of the Greek National Bank. This aristocratic tendency continued in the 1960s: in Sweden with Princess Sybilla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1908-1972) and in Luxemburg with Prince Felix of Bourbon-Parma (1893-1970). It is also present in countries with constitutional monarchies, where leaders are recruited from the nobility. In Great Britain, Angela Olivia, Countess of Limerick, was president of the Red Cross from 1974 until her death in 1981. Such leaders usually have very long mandates. Baron Jonkheer Guup Kraijenhoff, for example, was president of the Dutch Red Cross from 1966 until he was replaced by Jan van der Weel in 1986. After Prince Frédéric de Mérode led the Belgian Red Cross from 1954 until his death in 1958, the organisation was headed by the Prince of Liège (crowned King Albert II in 1993), then by the King’s daughter Princess Astrid from 1994 onwards. The case of Liechtenstein is even more extreme. Since the end of the Second World War, its Red Cross has only had two presidents, Georgina von Wilczek (1921-1989) from 1945 to 1985, and Marie-Aglaë von Wchinitz und Tettau (1940-) from 1985 on. Both women are married to sovereign princes.
-The tendency to recruit aristocratic leaders also applies to monarchies outside of Europe, from the Middle East to Asia, Africa or Oceania. Queen Halaevalu Mata’Aho, for example, has led the Tongan Red Cross since 1981. Obviously, national societies have followed a different course in countries where the monarchy has been abolished. This was the case for the Libyan Red Crescent, which was founded in 1957, or the Egyptian Red Cross, which was run by Soliman Azmi, a Pasha close to the king until the royal family was overthrown in 1952. In Iran, the Red Lion and Sun Society was led by Princess Chams Pahlavi until the Shah’s regime collapsed in 1979. In Ethiopia, the Crown Prince Merid Azmatch Asfa Wossen ran the Red Cross until the Negus was deposed in 1974. Finally, the Afghan Red Crescent was run by Akhter Mohammed under the patronage of Prince Ahmed Shah Khan when it was recognised by the ICRC in 1954, 31 years after its creation in 1923. But in countries where the monarchy or traditional chieftaincies have retained their importance, the aristocracy continues to play a role. In its early days, for instance, the Japanese Red Cross was presided by nobles like Tadanori Ishiguro from February 1917, a viscount in charge of medical services in the Army, or Shigenobu Hirayama from September 1920, a philanthropic baron. In Thailand, another constitutional monarchy, the Red Cross has always been closely linked to the royal family, including in the 1950s, when the organisation was led by Queen Mom Rajawongse Sirikit Kitiyakara (the wife of King Rama IX Bhumibol Adulyadej) and then in the 1980s by Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. Other Asian societies established more recently followed the same pattern. The Cambodian Red Cross, for example, was set up in 1955 under the patronage of the monarchy. Initially run by King Norodom Sihanouk’s aunt, Princess Norodom Rasmi Sobhana, leadership passed to his wife, Queen Norodom Monineath Sihanouk in 1967 until the Republican coup d’état of 1970. When the civil war ended in 1991, the organisation’s four factions – khmer rouge, royalist, republican and governmental – were reunited around a central committee in 1994 and presided until 1998 by Princess Norodom Marie Ranariddh under the patronage of Queen Norodom Monineath Sihanouk. In Nepal, the Red Cross was recognised by the ICRC in 1964 and headed by princesses Princep Shah from 1964 to 1981 and Helen Shah from 1981 to 1990. As for the Indonesian Red Cross, the PMI (Palang Merah Indonesia), it was set up in 1945, admitted to the League in 1950 and presided by Prince Paku Alam VIII from 1959 onwards, seeking prestige by co-opting nobles from the former sultanates.
-Red Crescent societies have had similar experiences. In Iran, the Red Lion and Sun Society was sponsored by the Shah, who passed a law in 1934 to allocate the organisation 20% of the revenues from all abandoned waqf charitable foundations under state control . In Morocco, the Red Crescent was recognised by the ICRC in 1958 and led by two sisters of King Hassan II, Princess Lalla Aïcha and Lalla Malika, who succeeded Mohamed Sebti and Jebli El Aïdounai. Set up in 1948, the Jordanian Red Crescent also enjoyed considerable support from the royal family . From 1964 on, the organisation was led by Senator Ahmed Abu-Goura and, from 1993 on, his son-in-law Doctor Muhammad al-Hadid. Under the patronage of the King, the organisation received many governmental grants while trying to develop its own fundraising to participate in the IFRC and support Bangladeshi, Indian, Sri Lankan and Philippine immigrants escaping from Kuwait after the invasion by Iraq in 1990. The Gulf Emirates have followed the same pattern. Created in 1978 and recognised by the ICRC in 1981, the Qatar national society has always been led by a member of Sheikh Ali Ben Jaber Al-Thani’s clan. Set up in 1933 and recognised by the ICRC in 1963, the Saudi Red Crescent is very close to the authorities too, despite the fact that its presidents, who have never been elected, do not come from the royal family and are professional doctors . Examples include Abdulaziz Mudarris up until 1982, Hamad Abdullah Al-Sugair from 1982-1999 and Abdul Rahman al-Swailem from 1999 onwards. The organisation i s part of the Ministry of Health, where the latter was second in charge from 1988 to 1997, and plays a key role in coordinating pilgrimages to Mecca.
-Given their close collaboration with governments, national societies often reflect their country’s power structures: whether these are monarchies, single party dictatorships or military juntas. As a result, their leaders may have clan or family ties with the authorities. When Tunisia became independent, for example, Habib Bourguiba named an advisor, Mohamed Aziz Djellouli, and his son-in-law, Doctor Chardly Zoutien, as president and vice-president of the local Red Crescent, set up in 1956. The wives of heads of state also play leading roles. In Singapore, Inche Yusuf bin Ishak’s wife, Toh Puan Noor Aishah, led the Red Cross from 1967 on. In Mexico, the wife of Carlos Salinas de Gortaris, Occelli de Salinas, took charge of the Red Cross in 1989. In Hong Kong, the wife of Donald Tsang Yam-Kuen (the head of the regional government), Salina Pow Siu Mei, headed the Red Cross from 2005. In some countries, the trend is so marked that it is almost possible to speak of dynasties. In Panama, for instance, the Red Cross is traditionally run by the wife of the head of state: Diana (married to Ramón Maximiliano Valdés) from 1917, or Pepita (married to Marco Robles) from 1966. The Egyptian Red Crescent works along the same lines, from Jihane Sadate to Suzanne Moubarak. In Cambodia, a kind of alternating system has been put in place. From 1994-1998, the Red Cross was led by Norodom Marie Ranariddh, whose husband became Prime Minister in 1993 and President of the National Assembly in 1998 as the royalist leader of the United National Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia, FUNCINPEC (Front Uni National pour un Cambodge Indépendant, Neutre, Pacifique et Coopératif). Between 1998 and 2006, the organisation was headed by Bun Rany Sen, the wife of the Prime Minister and leader of the communist Cambodian People’s Party. In Mozambique, Janet Mondlane, was another variation on the same theme, when she became the secretary general of the national Red Cross society in 1987 as the widow of the first president of the country after independence.
-In the context of authoritarian regimes, some national societies have proved to be less than democratic, as their presidents are not elected by members or volunteers. According to Allan Rosas, one study carried out into 29 Red Cross organisations found that, in 25% of cases, leaders had been nominated or approved by their government. Internal regulations do little to counter this trend. During a meeting at Oxford in 1946, the Council of Governors of the League of Red Cross Societies (LRC) agreed on the principle of having a majority of elected members to outbalance government representatives on the boards of national societies. But the diversity of organisations made any attempt at homogenization difficult and the rule was not fully implemented. Legally, most national societies are considered to be private associations. However, some have adopted hybrid structures: the Finnish Red Cross, for example, underwent reform in 1950 and became a kind of public corporation partly subject to administrative law. During further meetings at Toronto in 1953 and Mexico in 1971, the LRC’s Council of Governors attempted to develop organisational standards inspired by French legislation on associations. Its recommendations proved unsuitable and were replaced by a new code in 2000.
-Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to caricature all national societies as mere extensions of their government. Some have very difficult relations with the authorities. In South Vietnam, for instance, the local Red Cross was targeted by the government of Ngô Dinh Diêm because it protested against arbitrary arrests and detentions without judgements. As a result, the regime stopped its subsidies, forbade the organisation to raise funds in the streets and confiscated its health centres, which were transferred to municipal councils. After a mutiny in Saigon in November 1960, Ngô Dinh Diêm eventually arrested and replaced the leaders of the national society: its president, its general secretary and a member of its central committee, who were kept in jail for several months. Likewise in Brazil, the Red Cross board, located in Rio de Janeiro and not in the capital Brasilia, was suspended and dissolved by the military junta from 1968 to 1971. In Bolivia, the president of the Red Cross, Doctor Celso Rossell Santa Cruz, brought the government before the Supreme Court to quash a decree of 24 January 1968 which rendered the organisation ineligible for funding from the national lottery, and placed its childcare centres and medical dispensaries under the control of the Ministry of Health . In Sudan, the Red Crescent used to be secular. Consequently, the board was dissolved when an Islamic military junta took power in June 1989. Moreover, some national societies are relatively independent of government grants. In this respect, the American Red Cross is a good example. With one of the most sophisticated fund-raising schemes, it receives donations from individuals, companies and private foundations. In the 1950s, its president, Ellsworth Bunker, even claimed that in the field of natural disaster relief, it had never received public subsidies. A counter-example is the Canadian Red Cross, where scandal caused the state to reduce its financial support from 87% of the organisation’s budget in 1989 to 67% in 1994 and 58% in 2004.
-In most cases, however, national societies work on good terms with the authorities and have similar views on medical and health issues. Even in democratic countries, they can play a parastatal role. In the United States, for example, the Red Cross runs the national blood bank and organises civil defence. In Norway, it is charged with distributing government aid in international humanitarian crises. Moreover, national societies are often administered by civil servants or retired military staff, acting under presidents who were formerly Ministers of Health or Social Affairs, such as Fredy Mayer in Austria, Jean-François Mattéi in France, Karl Kennel in Switzerland, Leendert Cornelis “Elco” Brinkman in Holland and Sushila Nayyar in India. In Western Germany, the Red Cross has been presided by a former Minister of Finance for North Westphalia, Doctor Heinrich Weitz in 1952-1961, state secretaries like Hans Ritter von Lex in 1961-1967 or Walter Bargatzky in 1967-1982, and a prominent member of the Christian Democrat Party (the CDU or Christlich Demokratische Union), Botho Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein in 1982-1994. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the two German Red Crosses, the organisation was run from 1994 by Knut Ipsen, a university Vice-Chancellor, and from 2003, by Rudolf Seiters, a CDU Minister of Internal Affairs.
-National societies are sometimes led by acting members of the government. Set up as a branch of the British Red Cross Society (BRCS) in April 1945, independent since September 1960 and recognised by the ICRC in June 1961, the Nigerian Red Cross was initially headed by the Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa (1912-1966). In Malaysia, where the Red Cross became a Red Crescent under a law passed on 21 May 1975, the organisation was run from 1972 by Tun Abdul Razak (1922-1976), the Prime Minister since 1970. As for the IRCS (Indian Red Cross Society), it is led by a secretary general under the patronage of the President of the Republic in office. During the 1980s, for instance, it was run by Muhammad Hidayatullah (1905-1992) and Ramaswamy Venkataraman (1910-2009), who were respectively in power in 1969 and from 1987-1992. In other words, the organisation was mainly led by civil servants until a reform of 1994 allowed 12 of the 18 members of its board to be elected by regional branches of the IRCS.
-The American Red Cross (ARC) is a textbook example because of its close ties to the White House under the presidency of William Howard Taft (1857-1930) from 1906, Henry « Harry » Pomeroy Davison (1867-1922) from 1917, Livingston Farrand (1867-1939) from 1919, John Barton Payne (1855-1935) from 1921, Cary Grayson (1878-1938) from 1935, Norman Davis (1878-1944) from 1938, Basil O’Connor (1892-1972) from 1944, George Catlett Marshall (1880-1959) from 1949, Roland Harriman (1895-1978) from 1950, Ellsworth Bunker (1894-1984) from 1954, Alfred Gruenther (1899-1983) from 1957, James Collins (1905-1989) from 1964, George McKee Elsey (1918-) from 1970, Frank Stanton (1908-2006) from 1973, Jerome « Brud » Holland (1916-1985) from 1979, Richard Schubert (1937-) from 1983, George Moody (1930-2005) from 1985, Elizabeth Dole (1936-) from 1991, Norman Augustine (1935-) from 1992, Bernadine Healy (1944-) from 1999, David McLaughlin (1932-2004) from 2001, Marsha « Marty » Johnson Evans (1947-) from 2002, Bonnie McElveen-Hunter (1950-) from 2004, Mark Everson in 2007 and Mary Elcano from 2008. Since 1913, the President of the United States has been the organisation’s honorary president and, since 1905, he has had the right to name the chairman of his or her choice. Consequently, the ARC has often been run by politicians or members of the military. With a few exceptions like Livingston Farrand, a professor at Colorado University, its chairme n all belonged to one of the major political parties. William Howard Taft, a Republican, was President of the United States from 1909 to 1913. Henry Davison, who led the ARC between May 1917 and February 1919, was a banker charged by Democrat President Woodrow Wilson with fundraising for the army during World War One. The chairman of the organisation from October 1921 up until his death from pneumonia in January 1935, John Barton Payne, was a Democrat judge and Secretary of the Interior in 1920. His successor, Rear Admiral Cary Grayson, was a personal friend and the doctor of Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt. Norman Davis, a Democrat diplomat, headed the organisation during World War Two, from February 1938 to July 1944. His successor, Basil O’Connor, was Franklin Roosevelt’s law partner: the two men set up the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation to fight polio in 1921, then the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in 1932. General George Catlett Marshall, who led the ARC from October 1949, was another Democrat, and had been Chief of Staff for the American Army from 1939 to 1945. During Harry Truman’s presidency, he was Secretary of State from 1947 to 1948 before taking on the Defence portfolio at the beginning of the Korean War in 1950. The procession of diplomats and military personalities at the head of the American Red Cross continued after the Second World War. Its chair between 1954 and 1956, Ellsworth Bunker, had been an ambassador to Argentina, Italy and India: he resigned from the organisation to pursue his diplomatic career, notably in South Vietnam, where he was based from 1967 until the withdrawal of American troops in 1973. As for Dr. Jerome Holland, the first Black to preside the ARC (from 1979 to 1985), he was an American ambassador to Sweden in 1970. Similarly, Bonnie McElveen-Hunter was ambassador to Finland in 2001-2003 before taking the reins of the organisation in 2004. In addition to diplomats, there has been no shortage of military personnel at the head of the American Red Cross. General Alfred Gruenther, for instance, led the organisation between 1957 and 1964, after being Chief of Staff for the Allied Forces in Europe in 1951. His successor until 1970, General James Collins, was a veteran of the Korean War (1950-1953). A key actor in Franklin Roosevelt’s intelligence service during the Second World War, George McKee Elsey then chaired the ARC from 1970 to 1982. Later on, Marsha Johnson Evans, who headed the organisation from 2002 to 2005, was one of the first women to be admitted to the rank of Rear Admiral in 1997. Nor were other ARC chairs strangers to politics . Frank Stanton, for instance, had been president of CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) from 1973-1979, and organised the famous debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon during the 1960 presidential elections. Head of the American Red Cross f rom 1983 to 1989, Richard Schubert was a former Under Secretary of Labour in the Richard Nixon administration in 1973. F rom 1999 to 2001, Bernadine Healy was a cardiologist by profession and a Republican candidate for the Senate in Ohio. F rom 1991 to 1999, Elizabeth Dole was a former Republican Secretary of Transportation under Ronald Reagan in 1983 and a Secretary of Labour under George Bush in 1989. After her husband Richard Dole’s unsuccessful campaign for the White House in 1996, she retired from the ARC to pursue her own political career, which also included running for the US presidency.
-In sum, Red Cross societies are rarely untouched by domestic politics, given their leadership and management structures. They sometimes help the victims of all sides in foreign conflicts where their own military do not intervene. But they give priority to their troops when their government is at war, especially within their country. Focused on national issues, their loyalty towards the IFRC or the ICRC is often called into question. Donald Tansley, for example, noted that the representatives of Red Crosses in Geneva answered first to their own country before serving the LRC . In addition, national societies have often proved incapable of resisting political turmoil at home. In Belgium, for instance, the tensions between Dutch and French-speaking sections of the population led the Red Cross to modify its statutes in April 2004. Officially, it is still one legal entity despite the political crisis after the June 2007 elections. Unofficially, however, it has actually split into two linguistic groups with independent accounting and management systems. Communitarian committees now decide on the organisation’s funding, budget and strategic objectives, the Flemish aiming to reduce financial transfers to the Walloon branches of the Red Cross.
-Civil wars are a further source of internal tension for national societies, and can even lead to their disintegration. True , the opposite can also take place when the fighting is over or countries are reunited, for instance in Yugoslavia in 1946, Vietnam in 1975 and Germany in 1991. A further example occurred when Syria and Egypt briefly formed a United Arab Republic; their Red Crescents merged u nder the chairmanship of Hussein El Shafei in 1959. Interestingly enough, the Federation of Malaya experienced both extension and disintegration. Initially a branch of the British Red Cross, its national society became independent in October 1957 and absorbed the Committees of Sarawak and Sabah when these two regions on Borneo Island joined the government on the Malaysian Peninsula, giving rise to a new organisation recognised by the ICRC in July 1963. In August 1965, however, the Singapore branch seceded when the city-state gained independence from Kuala Lumpur. It later formed its own national society, created in April 1973 and recognised by the ICRC five months later. Generally speaking, national societies are severely affected by political tensions. The Cold War, in particular, caused divisions in Germany in 1948, China and Taiwan in 1949, Korea in 1950 and Vietnam in 1954. The case of the DRK (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz) is interesting, as it has been subject to both centralizing and decentralizing trends. In January 1921, all the country’s regional committees were grouped under one organisation, with its office in Berlin. After World War II, however, this trend was reversed. The organisation was purged by the Allied Forces and placed under the control of Princess Margaret, an Englishwoman married to Prince Louis of Hesse. Until August 1946, the occupying troops prohibited communication between provinces and the movement of supplies between the British, American, French and Soviet forces. These administrative hurdles, in addition to the effects of the Cold War and the country’s division into East and West, soon led to the DRK’s complete disintegration. The organisation quite simply ceased to exist after being dissolved by the Soviets in October 1945 and forbidden by the French forces from January 1946 until April 1947. In Coblenz on 4 February 1950, Otto Gessler then set up a West German Red Cross, which was recognised by the ICRC on 26 June 1952. In East Berlin, an equivalent organisation was launched on 26 February 1951, when the country became the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Recognised by the communist government in October 1952 and the ICRC in October 1954, its presidents were professors of medicine: Werner Ludwig from 1952 to 1981, Siegfried Akkermann from 1981 to 1987, Gerhard Rehwald from 1987 to 1989 and Christoph Brückner in 1990. But following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the organisation was reunited with its western counterpart in November 1990.
-Civil wars can cause the complete disintegration of national societies. This was the case in Lebanon, for instance. Presided by the Marquise Moussa of Freige prior to 1964 and by her daughter Alexandra Issa El-Khoury from 1964 to 1991, the organisation split when its committee in the Chouf region seceded in 1989 and set up its own short-lived Red Cross and Red Crescent society. Another example is Cambodia. After the Vietnamese invasion in 1979, the Red Cross split into four factions: khmer rouge, royalist, republican and governmental. These groups were not reunited under a central committee until the end of the war in February 1992. Statutes were then adopted in April 1994, revised in June 2000 and confirmed by royal decree in May 2002 to ensure the legal continuity of the organisation from February 1955 onwards, when it was first created. The effects of civil war on national societies are perhaps best seen, however, in Yugoslavia. From 1991 onwards, the Red Cross literally imploded, despite relatively stable beginnings. Dating back to 1923, the organisation was set up in what was known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. From 1929, it became known as the Red Cross of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In 1946, it adopted a federal structure, merging the national societies of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia (founded in 1875, 1876 and 1945 respectively). Run by Dr. Pavle Gregori? (a Croatian) in the 1960s, leadership passed to Olga Miloševi? (a Serbian) in the 1980s, Dr. Branislav Pesi? (a Montenegrin) at the end of the decade, and Dr. Miljenko Brki? (a Bosnian and a member of the Bosnia Herzegovina government) in 1991. The organisation’s presidents were, therefore, fairly representative of the country’s makeup. Nevertheless, this was not sufficient to preserve the society from the Serbian nationalist pressures of Slobodan Miloševi? after 1989. In the Red Cross and Red Crescent Magazine in 1998, Iolanda Jaquemet described the effect of the collapse of the one party regime on the Yugoslavian Red Cross. Not only did the organisation lose its public utility status, it also lost the privileges that went along with it. In other words, the organisation was no longer subject to tax exemptions, it no longer had a monopoly in the field of emergency relief and it no longer received funds from the national lottery or tickets to cultural events. With the exception of Slovenia, where fundraising activities based on individual donations were successfully developed, the Red Cross became dependent on the municipal authorities that paid its salaries. Predictably, some of these authorities took advanta ge of their position to dismiss employees from “rival” communities. In 1991, for example, the Serbian Parliament shut down the Kosovo Red Cross and fired its Albanian employees. As for the Slovenian and Croatian branches of the Red Cross, they seceded and were recognised as independent organisations by the ICRC on 25 August 1993. Ethnic tensions ran high. In Eastern Slavonia, two separate branches of the Red Cross coexisted until the region came back under Zagreb’s control in January 1998: one organisation for Serbians who had stayed there, and another for Croats returning from exile. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, there were three Red Cross chapters : one for each of the conflicting parties. In areas controlled by Croats or Muslim Bosnians, the Mostar, Prozor, Jablanica and Vitez branches operated completely independently of Serbian branches . Even after the Dayton Peace Agreement of November 1995, the “Red Cross of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina” founded in October 1997 only brought together the Croat-Muslim sections of the organisation. Not until December 2000 were they joined by their Serbian counterpart. As for the Yugoslavian Red Cross, presided by Radovan Mijanovi? since 1995, it has continued to lose ground since Montenegro and Kosovo were declared independent in June 2006 and February 2008 respectively.
-Events like these lead to serious concerns for the reliability of national organisations. Incapable of withstanding the pressure of domestic politics, they are also subject to national, ethnic, religious and ideological tensions. For the ICRC, three major issues are important. Firstly, organisations may be inefficient. Secondly, they may be involved in military activities. Thirdly, they may be discriminatory, going against humanitarian principles and the Committee’s own impartial status. From an operational point of view, organisations recognised by Geneva can be inefficient for several reasons. Firstly, they may be structurally inactive with insufficient resources for relief missions. Secondly, they may be too slow in reacting to events. After the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001, for instance, the ARC (American Red Cross) was criticised for not being immediately present on the scene: the organisation’s president reacted by firing senior staff in the emergency response department, attracting the hostility of other employees. One month later, she was forced to resign. Thirdly, national societies may undertake missions with unexpected and undesired consequences. A case in point is the British Red Cross which, unaware of the cancer risks associated with smoking, distributed cigarettes to wounded servicemen during the Second World War. Fourthly, national societies are sometimes involved in missions that never even get off the ground. An example is the Turkish Red Crescent organisation. Known as the Türkiye Kizilay Derne?i since 1935, it was severely criticised following two earthquakes that devastated the north west of the country in 1999. These deficiencies led to the organisation’s modernisation and the appointment of a new president, Tekin Kücükali, who followed figures such as Ali Rana Tarhan in the 1950s or Riza Cerçel in the early 1970s. Finally, national societies may provoke collateral damages. To accommodate Rom families after flooding in 2010, the Hungarian Red Cross thus exacerbated a local conflict by buying houses within a contested village, Gyöngyöspata, where the right wing militia of the Jobik party was already fighting “gypsy criminals”.
-For many national societies, supervising transfusion services and managing stocks of donated blood is a recurrent problem . Countries where Red Crosses play this role include El Salvador (since 1944), the United States (since 1948), Japan (since 1952), Poland (since 1964), Columbia (since 1966), Ethiopia (since 1969), Switzerland (1949-1999) and Canada (1947-1998). The Belgian Red Cross, for example, was responsible for approximately 95% of the country’s blood collection. Its Canadian counterpart dealt with up to one million donors each year, and the American Red Cross filled half of the country’s blood banks. This trend is also visible in developing countries like Jordan, where the Red Crescent was presided by the former director of the kingdom’s blood bank, Doctor Muhammad al-Hadid, from 1993. In the Philippines, the PNRC (Philippines National Red Cross) has had a monopoly over the sale and commercialisation of donated blood since 1997. Pursuant to Law 7719, the private sector’s involvement in this domain is prohibited. Consequently, a considerable part of the PNRC’s revenues come from its activities in this area, which are under the control of the Ministry of Health. However, such a specialization has not been free of controversy. In Burundi in 2003, the media criticized the national society for selling blood that had been donated by volunteers free of charge. The American Red Cross (ARC) has been accused of spreading contaminated blood. In order to sell blood at prices that undercut the market, it contracted debts, underpaid employees and failed to apply tests for impurities. Little regard being paid to donors’ medical histories, tracing the origin of contaminated donations became extremely difficult. After eight years of investigations and ineffectual recommendations, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) finally began proceedings against the ARC for negligence in 1993. But this was not the end of the story. Following the wave of donations after the World Trade Centre attacks in New York in September 2001, further deficiencies in blood quality were observed. And the problem arose yet again after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005. Even though volunteers flocked to give blood, the ARC persisted in calling for further donors and ended up with excess stock, which it was forced to destroy at the end of its 42-day use-by period. The organisation’s continued failure to respect sanitary regulations led to a $10,000 per day fine at the end of 2001, which it was condemned to pay until practices improved. Meanwhile, the FDA still observed more infractions during visits to collection centres in Salt Lake City and New York. In November 2006, the authorities finally sentenced the ARC to a US$5.7 million fine.
-The biggest scandal as a result of blood transfusions involves the CRCS (Canadian Red Cross Society). Like its American counterpart, it was accused of carelessly carrying out blood collection using less than professional standards. The organisation was warned of the AIDS risk in December 1982, but only began testing donated blood in November 1985. Fearing shortages, it continued to collect blood from high-risk sources, including American prisoners and communities with large homosexual populations, like San Francisco. To save money, the organisation then tried to sell contaminated stocks, put off systematic testing for AIDS, and refused to test for Hepatitis C. While the CRCS itself was only part of a larger problem, it did contribute to infecting about 2,000 people with AIDS between 1980 and 1985, and 30,000 people with Hepatitis C between 1980 and 1999. Even when the extent of the tragedy became apparent, the organisation did not contact those who had been infected, despite the fact that 8,000 of them risked death as a result of illnesses contracted during blood transfusions. Nor did the CRCS offer treatment. Instead, it destroyed any compromising documents that would have helped identify victims and stop the spread of the virus. The organisation also negotiated with the Ministry of Health to put a halt to demands for compensation. Under its presidents Janet Davidson from 1995 and Pierre Duplessis from 1997, it attempted to protect its leaders while an unprecedented judicial saga was in the making. A public enquiry was launched, headed by Judge Horace Krever. Despite the CRCS’s best efforts to get in his way, a damning report was released in November 1997 after four years of investigations. Federal authorities took charge of blood transfusion activities and transferred them in July 1997 to public organisations, the Canadian Blood Society and Héma-Québec. The CRCS, sapped dry by legal battles, found itself on the verge of bankruptcy. This was exacerbated by cuts in public funding; the organisation received only $CA 252 million in 2004, compared to $CA 462 million in 1994. Given its precarious financial position, the CRCS feared having to pay compensation to victims and tried to block the course of justice. As a result, only its director from 1974-1986, Doctor Roger Perrault, was put on trial for criminal negligence in February 2006; the organisation’s president in the late 1980s, Alan Watson, had worked in the pharmaceutical industry and was not called into question . The judicial saga ended up costing the taxpayer nearly $10 billion. Only in May 2005 did the organisation finally plead guilty in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and Doctor Pierre Duplessis, the Secretary General, officially apologise to victims. In terms of compensation, the organisation grudgingly agreed to dedicate part of its revenues from blood transfusion activities (around $1.5 million) to medical research and scholarships for the children of families concerned.
-Unfortunately, inefficiency is not the only problem that national societies pose for the ICRC. Whether operating under democratic or authoritarian regimes, s tructural limits also restrict their humanitarian activities, especially during wartime when they are incorporated into the army and forbidden to provide relief to the “enemy”. In some cases, they play an active role in their countries’ military efforts, as seen above in the chronology prior to 1914 or in a later section dedicated to interaction between the Red Cross and armed forces. In the meantime, it is enough to mention that national societies can be caught up in state militarism as well as in militant movements. Founded in 1969 and eventually recognised by the ICRC in 2006, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), for instance, was led by Yasser Arafat’s younger brother, Doctor Fathi, between 1978 and 2004. Initially, it was considered the “humanitarian” branch of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) and its militant branch, Fatah. The organisation supported armed struggle against Israel and did not seek to distance itself from terrorist activities. However, after the Oslo Agreement and the creation of a quasi-state in the occupied territories in 1994, the PRCS took part in setting up the Palestinian Ministry of Health and, in 1996, moved its headquarters from Jericho to al-Bireh in order to be closer to the country’s administrative capital, Ramallah. Nevertheless, the organisation was again involved in military activities during the second Intifada. According to the Israeli, it was used as cover by terrorists (including the first Palestinian woman kamikaze) to get through army checkpoints in Jerusalem and Nablus in February 2002. Explosives were found in one of its ambulances and militants used one of its buildings near Ramallah to shoot at Israeli soldiers. In spite of protests by the ICRC over misuse of the Red Crescent emblem, nine members of the PRCS’s senior staff were arrested by Israeli forces on 3 April 2002. Among them was Younis al-Khatib, who was later to replace Fathi Arafat at the head of the organisation. PRCS ambulance drivers were accused of knowingly transporting terrorists. In an attempt to prove its neutrality, the organisation signed a cooperative agreement with its Jewish counterpart, the Red Shield Society (Maguen David Adom) in December 2000 . This was not enough to alleviate the suspicions of Israel , which continued to search all convoys crossing the frontline: some were blocked, seized or even used as human shields against combatants in the occupied territories.
-Another important point is that national societies may also intervene in military activities abroad, outside of their own country. For political, ideological, geographical, ethnic or religious reasons, some have deliberately supported guerrillas or allied government forces in foreign conflicts, going so far as to distribute propaganda or help distribute arms. Several examples illustrate this. Firstly, militants may abusively use the emblem to cover up movements of troops or arms without the permission of national societies. In an article published on 30 November 1994 by a Belgian magazine,Télémoustique, Jan Segers, a UN military observer to Bosnia, claimed to have witnessed a helicopter painted with the Red Cross distributing crates of weapons to Atif Dudakovic’s Muslim forces in Cazin that year. In this case, however, no particular national society was implicated. But in February 2001, journalists from Burundi explicit ly accused the Tanzanian Red Cross of wilfully supplying arms to the Forces for the Defence of Democracy and members of the Party for the Liberation of the Hutu People, led by Jean Bosco Ndayikengurukiye and Cossan Kabura in the border region of Kigoma.
-Red Crescents in particular have been known to support Arab and Islamic liberation movements on several occasions. A case in point is the Egyptian society. During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the organisation took no pains to hide its sympathies for the Palestinian cause when it was presided by Mahmoud Mahfouz, the Minister of Health under Anouar el-Sadate in the late 1970s. Prior to that, Mahmoud Hamchari, the organisation’s representative to France in the late 1960s, even expressed these sympathies openly. Another example is Afghanistan. After supporting Bosnian Muslims in 1995 and 1996, the Iranian Red Crescent was suspected of supplying arms (disguised as medical provisions) to the Shiite community to combat the Taliban regime in 1997. As for the Saudi Arabian Red Crescent Society (SARCS), Millard Burr and Robert Collins explain that it gave around 1 million riyals or US$27 million per year to fund Afghan resistance to the Red Army between 1984 and 1992. In Pakistan’s Kachagari refugee camp , it also backed a Palestinian Doctor, Abdullah Yusuf Azzam , who laid the foundations of Al-Qaeda before being killed in combat in 1989 and replaced by Wael Hamza Julaidan at the head of the MAK (Maktab al-Khadamat al-Mujahidin al-Arab), the Mujahideen Support Office. Inside Afghanistan, the SARCS helped transport arms delivered by the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and distributed supplies to freedom fighters via the Pakistani IIS (Inter-Intelligence Service). After 1985, the organisation’s activities were run from Peshawar by Doctor Ayman Muhammad Rabie al-Zawahiri and Wael Hamza Julaidan. A member of the Egyptian Jihad, the former had already worked for the SARCS in Pakistan between 1980 and 1981; jailed in Cairo for the illegal possession of firearms, he was released in 1984 and went into exile in the Sudan, where he used the cover of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent in 1991 to travel to Europe and America in order to collect funds for the “holy war”. Also known as Abu Hasan al-Madani, the latter was close to Osama bin Laden and helped set up Al-Qaeda in Peshawar in 1988. Only after the attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001 did Pakistani authorities finally decided to deport SARCS employees. The organisation had been in the spotlight since April 2000 when UN peacekeepers searched its offices in Pristina, Kosovo, and discovered documents linking it to Al-Qaeda and Wael Hamza Julaidan, the then Secretary General of the Rabita Trust in Pakistan.
-National societies may also be influenced by militant movements supporting violence for a “good cause”. Once again, this is particularly the case for Red Crescent societies, at times swayed by the arguments of Islamic fundamentalists. One example is Ayman al-Zawahiri, a member of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent who visited the United States during a fundraising mission in 1995. In addition to being Osama bin Laden’s personal doctor, he was sentenced to death by an Egyptian court after being implicated in the attack on the American Embassy in Nairobi in 1998. Similarly, the Emirati Red Crescent used goods confiscated in 1997 to the Abu-Dhabi Welfare Organisation, a charity which was suspected of supporting the jihad of the Gamaat Islamiya in Egypt. In the Balkans, it has also been accused of collaborating with the Global Relief Foundation, an organisation linked to Al-Qaeda and involved in planning attacks on Western interests in Pristina, where its offices were searched and several staff members arrested by the Kosovo Force (KFOR) in December 2001. Since its arrival in the region after the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) bombings in June 1999, the Emirati Red Crescent had supported various religious activities. In brochures quoted by Xavier Pauly, for instance, it promoted school programmes designed to teach the local Albanian Muslim population of the dangers of the Western way of life. However, unlike other organisations such as the International Islamic Relief Organisation or the Al-Haramayn Foundation, it did not restrict its aid to Muslims and assisted Orthodox Serbs in parts of Kosovo patrolled by KFOR’s Emirati contingent. As a matter of fact, Red Crescents are not the only national societies to be recognised by the ICRC on the one hand, and condone violence in certain circumstances on the other hand. Some Red Crosses took sides and supported political struggles too. Opposed to the British Empire, Irish volunteers of the American Red Cross fought along with the French in 1870 and the South African Boers in 1900. Later on, national societies in Northern Europe backed freedom fighters during decolonisation. The Finnish Red Cross, for example, was very involved in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Pär Stenbäck, i ts Secretary General in 1985-1988 and President after a brief stint at the IFRC until 1992, held strong views on the matter. Under the banner of a Finnish Committee set up in Helsinki in April 1965, he took part in fundraising for guerrillas of the South-West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) in Namibia. With the Finnish Communist Party SKP (Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue), the Finnish Democrat League SKDL (Suomen Kansan Demokraattinen Liitto) and the Swedish People’s Party RKP (Ruotsalainen Kansan Puolue), he also formed a “Committee for South Africa” to lead a boycott campaign against the government in Pretoria from May 1966 onwards. Interestingly enough, the Minister of Justice in Helsinki refused to register the organisation on the grounds that it would be prejudicial to Finland’s foreign relations. The “Committee for South Africa” finally took shape as the Finnish branch of the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) in 1968, an NGO set up in London in 1953 by Christian Aid to assist and support prisoners who opposed the apartheid regime, especially militants of the African National Congress (ANC).
-Obviously, initiatives promoting armed struggles go against the principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, regardless of the circumstances. The gap between theory and practice, however, is great. This contradiction is particularly evident when national societies are run by members of coercive state organisations . Examples include Nazi Germany, where Ernest Grawitz, an officer of the SS (Schutzstaffel), ran the DRK (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz) at the end of the 1930s, and Indonesia, where a Minister of the Interior, General Basuki Rachmat, ran the PMI (Palang Merah Indonesia) in the 1960s. Nor is this trend limited to third world dictatorships. In Europe, the Spanish Red Cross is one example. During Francisco Franco’s reign (1939-1975), it was headed by Antonio Maria de Oriol y Urquijo, a minister and head of the Council of State from 1973-1979. He took over from a duke who had presided the Cruz Roja Española during the 1960s. The situation was even more blatant in the Yugoslavian crisis of 1991, when the Red Cross split into several factions, each defending a different national interest. In Belgrade, the organisation’s Secretary General was a member of Slobodan Miloševi?’s party and candidate in local elections. In the Serbian part of Bosnia from 1994 onwards, the local Red Cross was run by Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzi?, the wife of the Republika Srpska’s “president” , Radovan Karadzi?, who has since been indicted for war crimes. She violated the Geneva Conventions and was involved in ethnic cleansing operations before being dismissed in 1998. In the northwest of the Republika Srpska, for instance, the director of the Red Cross in Prijedor was charged with managing the Trnopoplje detention centre. The Muslim-Croat opposition, however, did not always fare better, and the Drvar section of the Red Cross was accused of playing an ambiguous role in clashes that led to the death of two Serbian civilian returnees.
-The Nazi German Red Cross went even further and was involved in many atrocities, but was not repudiated by the ICRC. As early as 29 November 1933, the DRK (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz) was placed under the direct control of Adolf Hitler's government and his Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, who was in charge of repressing the civil society that emerged during the Weimar Republic. Women were removed from key positions, the Nazi ideology proclaiming male superiority, and the organisation’s focus shifted to spearheading veterans’ associations. In 1934, Joachim von Winterfeldt-Menkin, the DRK’s president since 1919, was ousted, and in 1937, his Secretary General, Paul Draudt, likewise ended his term (in this position since 1922, he had unified and reconstructed the German Red Cross after World War One). These leadership changes also affected the rank-and-file: the Nazi swastika became part of the emblem and all volunteers were required to swear allegiance to the Führer. On 9 December 1937, the organisation was officially militarised; on 24 December 1937, new statutes were adopted which dissolved the 9,000 local committees and centralised the organisation around 13 regional branches. From this point onwards, only the Führer could hire and fire the president of the DRK. In 1934, he appointed Carl-Eduard Herzog von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and a member of the National Socialist Party. The Duke was however of a considerable age and handed over the day-to-day running of the organisation to Doctor Ernest Grawitz, a member of the SS (Schutzstaffel), in 1936. As a result, any signs of resistance within the DRK were swiftly and firmly quashed. One victim of this policy was Alexandrine von Üxküll-Gyllenband, who had worked for the ICRC in Upper Silesia. She was sent to a concentration camp after her brother was executed for plotting against Adolf Hitler. Another was Otto Gessler, deported to Ravensbrück after taking part in an assassination attempt against the Führer in July 1944. He was eventually released in February 1945 and became president of the Bavarian Red Cross in July 1949. Of course, the Nazi influence over the DRK was at its strongest during the Second World War. As an integral part of the Third Reich, the organisation first concentrated its efforts on treating wounded soldiers from September 1939, before turning to the civilian victims of Allied bombings on German towns from August 1943. Under the leadership of its director, Ernest Grawitz, and president, Karl Gebhardt, both members of the SS, the DRK turned a blind eye to Jewish deportees and Soviet prisoners of war. Even worse, it carried out medical experiments in concentration camps. After the Nazis were defeated on 8 May 1945, Ernest Grawitz committed suicide. Karl Gebhardt was sentenced to death by the Nuremberg Tribunal on 21 August 1947, and executed on 30 May 1948. Meanwhile, the ICRC still kept contact with the DRK. When it went to negotiate the release of prisoners at Ravensbrück in April 1945, for example, it hired Doctor Hans Meyer, a former assistant to Karl Gebhart.
-The case of the DRK is symptomatic of a much larger problem: many national organisations are unable to remain impartial. As such, they are the weakest part of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. They are far more susceptible to national, racial, religious, social and political pressure when it comes to providing assistance to individuals in need. In addition to Nazi Germany, this has been a problem in countries that have applied racial segregation: the United States until the 1960s and South Africa until the early 1990s. This has also been an issue for Red Crescent organisations in countries where non-Muslim minorities are deliberately ignored, like the Baha’i in Iran. Several factors explain such discrimination . National societies may be following the ideologies of racist regimes, o r discriminate for operational reasons. When Norway, Denmark and the Baltic Countries were invaded in 1939, for instance, the neutral Swedish Red Cross found itself applying double standards when assisting foreigners caught up in the turmoil. While German, Polish and Russian nationals were treated by the government as prisoners-of-war and sent to camps, British and American citizens were considered as “administrative detainees” and held in hotels. Another example is the American Red Cross, as Ellsworth Bunker explains. While soldiers must pay for its services during war-time, civilians receive free treatment when they are victims of natural disasters. This double standard is in part due to the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, when the organisation was brought before the courts because survivors of the earthquake refused to reimburse the interest-free loans it had given them.
-In most cases, national societies reflect the racial or class prejudices of the authorities under which they operate. During the First World War, for example, European Red Cross organisations were accused of favouring commissioned officers over the rank-and-file. Inspired by the eugenic movement in the early 1920s, the League of Red Cross also advocated sterilisation and incarceration as ways of dealing with deviants, while promoting marriage and monogamy to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. In doing so, the ancestor of today’s IFRC acted in line with the views of some members who wanted to assist only those “who really deserved it”. This approach was particularly visible in the United States, where beneficiaries had to work to receive aid, in order to discourage laziness. According to Lester Jones, a Quaker from the AFSC (American Friends Service Committee), the ARC (American Red Cross) refused to give food to the unemployed during the economic depression of 1920 on the grounds that they had refused pay cuts in 1917, and therefore caused their own downfall. As a matter of fact, the Victorian Anglo-Saxon sphere of influence was very much impregnated with the social theories of Darwinism and natural selection, especially in the British Empire. Even after independence in India, for instance, Sushila Nayyar, the Minister of Health and chair of the IRCS (Indian Red Cross Society) from 1964, supported prohibiting alcohol and coercive family planning policies.
-In sum, national societies recognised by the ICRC can be obstacles to humanitarian activities through their involvement in war crimes or discrimination amongst victims. On several occasions, they have scuppered attempts by the Geneva Committee to launch relief programmes, as with the British in Ireland in 1922, the Japanese in China from 1931, the Germans with respect to Jews from 1933, and the Italians in Ethiopia in 1936. In Lebanon, for instance, the French Red Cross only assisted Maronite Christians and prevented other ICRC activities when some Muslim groups rebelled in Djebel Druze in July 1925. As the French government had recently blocked access to Morocco during the Rif War , the Geneva Committee decided to intervene in December 1925 without seeking approval from Paris. Its envoy was Raymond Schlemmer, a French delegate who had previously worked in the Balkans in 1921-1922, Ireland in 1923 and Morocco in 1924. In Lebanon, he was not given authorisation to access Djebel Druze, nor did he have the means to carry out all the activities the ICRC had hoped to accomplish. French colonial troops were suspicious of the Committee, fearing it would provide supplies to the rebels. As a result, the ICRC’s actions were limited to distributing medical supplies to a hospital in Soueida and did not extend to resettling displaced persons after the end of the revolt in April 1926. Nevertheless, Geneva had the full support of Henri de Jouvenel, the French High Commissioner in Beirut, who encouraged the Committee to set up an agency providing assistance to all the victims of conflicts in Syria and Lebanon in December 1925. According to Dzovinar Kévonian, the ICRC was to supervise private humanitarian initiatives and justify France’s position in colonies under the mandate of the League of Nations. This coordinating role also helped the Committee to assert its predominance and to circumvent the LRC’s boycott of the 12th International Red Cross Conference, which was initially planned for Geneva in October 1925. In the field, many national societies were less than cooperative. The American Red Cross, one of the LRC’s leaders, refused to fund any ICRC activities whatsoever in the region. As for the Lebanese branch of the French Red Cross, it bore no resemblance at all – in thought or deed – to an affiliated society, according to Georges Burnier, who replaced Raymond Schlemmer in January 1926. In fact, the Turkish Red Crescent was almost the only one to assist the ICRC . L ed by a former Ottoman official, Ahmed Ishan Bey, it organised fundraising in the Arab world, and had already offered its support during the Rif War. Its initiative was beneficial to both parties. For the ICRC, it meant reinforcing ties with a society that had refused to join the LRC. For Ankara, it was an opportunity to divert attention towards the plight of the Druzes in Lebanon and away from massacres on the domestic front, at a time when Turkey was being investigated by the League of Nations for deporting Christian minorities to the Iranian border…
-For the ICRC, national societies in war-torn countries are often problematic because they lack neutrality and create obstructions. This was the case in Greece d uring the uprising of the communist People’s Liberation Army ELAS (Ellinikós Laikós Apelevtherotikós Stratós) against the royalist government in Athens. The president of the Greek Red Cross, Athanase Philon, wanted to be the sole leader of relief operations and used his influence to suspend the ICRC’s exemption from customs duties on imported supplies for seven months from July 1947 until being replaced by Constantin Georgacopulos in February 1948. A month later, the ICRC delegate, Emile Wenger, was exp elled at the request of the Greek Red Cross because he had attempted to independently distribute clothes in Thessaloniki prisons with the support of the Minister of Justice. On some occasions, Geneva’s neutrality is also threatened by personal initiatives. Thus the president of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke Bernadotte, put the ICRC in a difficult position when he was sent to Jerusalem by the United Nations to negotiate a deal between Jews and Palestinians in June 1948. His political agenda, which supported the creation of Israel, caused some confusion and infringed on Geneva’s neutrality. By using both the Red Cross emblem and a military escort, for instance, he broke with tradition since delegates of the Committee nearly always avoided being armed in order to gain the trust of warring parties.
-Similar cases arose during decolonisation. In April 1950, for example, a short-lived Republic of South Moluccas was created by rebels on Ambon Island in Indonesia. Under pressure from the public and the Ambon community in the Netherlands, the Dutch Red Cross publicly stated it would provide relief to the secessionists, as ICRC operations were restricted to government zones. The Committee asked for the organisation to keep a low profile until it informed Indonesian authorities of its intentions. However, the Dutch Red Cross put pressure on the ICRC to provide assistance to the rebels. The press got wind of the plans and stirred matters up even further. The former Dutch colonisers were accused of wanting to retain control over some islands by supporting the rebels and favouring the country’s disintegration. The consequence, explains Catherine Rey-Schirr, was that the nationalist Indonesian government forbade the ICRC from accessing South Molucca in July 1952. Of course, the Dutch Red Cross was not the only society to interfere with Geneva’s humanitarian activities during decolonisation. This trend is also visible in organisations operating in countries losing their colonies. The French Red Cross, for instance, blocked the ICRC’s access to Tunisia when conflict broke out in Sfax in March 1952. The organisation’s president , Doctor Georges Brouardel, argued that the uprising was an “internal” affair and not an inter-state war. He denounced Geneva’s interference and threatened to make a formal complaint to the LRC on the grounds that his society was perfectly capable of assisting political prisoners. Nor was the matter solved after a visit by David Rousset’s International Commission Against Concentration Camps. It was only after t he ICRC delegate to Paris, William Michel, bypassed the French Red Cross that the situation was freed up, thanks to his personal connections with the head of French government Pierre Mendès France, his brother-in-law. In February 1955, the Geneva Committee finally obtained the right to visit political prisoners in Algeria and Morocco… but not Tunisia, where tensions had already died down.
-Other recent examples confirm that national societies can be obstacles to ICRC activities. Cases in point include the Iranian Red Crescent during the war with Iraq and the Ethiopian Red Cross during the famine in the 1980s. On some occasions, national societies sympathize with one of the parties to the conflict, usually governments, making dialogue with rebel groups difficult. In northwest Guatemala, explains for instance David Stoll, the peasant militia prevented ICRC doctors from vaccinating locals in 1992 because they feared that the Committee would use this opportunity to collect intelligence and inform the government via the local Red Cross organisation. On other occasions, national societies refuse to let the Committee enter their country. Thus in Cuba after 1962, ICRC could not rely on the CRC (Cruz Roja Cubana), which was institutionalized by a decree in 1981 and which became part of the regime under the leadership of Doctor Esmildo Gutiérrez Sánchez and the chairmanship of Health Ministers like José Gutiérrez Muñiz in the 1970s and Julio Teja in the 1980s. In thirty years, the Geneva Committee could visit political prisoners on the island only twice, in 1988 and 1989.
-Practically speaking, national societies are not necessary for the ICRC to run relief operations. In Nepal, for example, the Red Cross organisation was not recognised until 1964. However, the Committee had been active in the region since 1959, when it resettled 30,000 Tibetans in exile, following a pilot project for 750 refugees in the Dhor Patan region. In North Yemen , the ICRC started to work in 1962, preceding any Red Crescent in the country. Likewise, the Committee is willing to provide relief to regions that secede or become independent without any official Red Cross or Red Crescent organisation. This was the case in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994 and West Timor in 1999. In other words, the ICRC should be able to break with a national society without compromising its ability to run operations in a given country. However, it has never fully assumed this position. It is reluctant to expel organisations that it has recognised, even when they fail to respect humanitarian codes of conduct.
-Consequently, there is no real way of banning a national society, except in cases of self-dissolution or withdrawal from the IFRC. Theoretically, the right to suspend members has existed since 1932. It applies to organisations who lack integrity, transgress their own statutes, violate international humanitarian law or are subject to “excessive” government interference. At the 19th Conference of its Governors held in Oxford in June 1946, the LRC also passed a rule allowing it to ban national societies by a two-thirds majority vote (today, 60%) at the General Assembly. But neither the Geneva Committee nor the Federation has ever expelled a member organisation. Similarly, no national society has ever withdrawn from the movement. Despite the numerous problems they raise, the Geneva Committee can not control the members of the Federation. When amending their statutes, for example, nothing compels members to submit their charters to the ICRC and IFRC for vetting in line with resolutions adopted in 1973 and 1981. The Committee’s recommendations have little sway when it comes t o preventing government interference or the transgression of humanitarian principles . At best, national societies are accountable to their Federation, in line with Resolution 3 adopted by its delegate council in 2001. Otherwise, joining the movement is a purely formal and administrative process. Usually, it depends on whether the country in which the organisation is based has ratified the Geneva Conventions. For the organisation to be admitted, no real checks are carried out, due to a lack of regulations on quality and operational capabilities. As Christophe Lanord states, there is no-one to evaluate the activities of a Red Cross or Red Crescent organisation, nor are there sufficiently well-defined standards to apply. Once a national society has gained entry to the Federation, it is perfectly capable of flouting the movement’s statutes , adopted in October 1986. This is particularly true with respect to Article Four, which sets down the conditions for recruiting volunteers and staff without discriminating on the basis of race, sex, religion or political opinion. Unfortunately, the movement refused to implement the regular peer-review system advocated by Donald Tansley in 1975 to “name and shame” wrongdoers and launch enquiries carried out by external investigators.
-Instead, to preserve its universal aspirations and to keep all its intervention options open, the ICRC chose to continue supporting substandard societies. Since its early days, the institution has decided not to remove inactive organisations from its list, especially in developing countries where the first Red Crosses had little local support, and were mostly funded by expatriates or citizens of European origin like Pedro Roberts in Argentina in the 1890s. In Africa at Independence, it then recognised national societies which existed only on paper, like in Congo in 1963. Thus it had to establish in Salisbury in 1963 a regional delegation which moved to Dakar in 1965 and which followed the pattern of similar offices in Beyrouth or Phnom Penh: its aim was not to respond to humanitarian emergencies but to reinforce the capacities of new organisations. The problem did not disappear as the movement gathered momentum. In 1975, Donald Tansley studied 23 national organisations. He concluded that many were “incapable of carrying out their statutory duties or assuming their local and international responsibilities.” Four failed to fulfil even the basic criteria necessary for an organisation to be recognised by the movement. Another three raised serious doubts because they only covered part of the country in which they operated and were obviously unable to carry out their duties in the case of war. “If admission criteria based on the Principles set out in Oxford in 1946 had been applied,” wrote Donald Tansley, “ten of the 23 organisations studied would have failed to gain entry to the movement.” He considered that his sample was “reasonably representative” and extended his conclusions to the entire movement. In his words, “there [was] no valid reason to believe national organisations not examined during the study would fare any better were they subjected to the same admission criteria today.” History would prove him right. At a meeting of ICRC and IFRC representatives in Budapest in November 1991, the Federation’s Secretary General, Pär Stenbäck, admitted that around 50 national societies were moribund and needed “artificial respiration” according to Daphne Reid and Patrick Gilbo. In Africa and the Caribbean, for example, many organisations only existed on paper. Nor was the situation much better in Asia, where societies were often limited to activities in and around the main towns, to the detriment of rural areas. Similarly, according to a survey of 400 people from the upper and middle class suburbs of Manila in February and March 2001 carried out by TNS (Taylor Nelson-Sofres) , only 4% of respondents were aware of the existence of a Red Cross despite the fact that most NGOs in the Philippines have their offices in the capital city.
-Even when national societies act against humanitarian values, and not just their own statutes, the Geneva Committee has chosen not to ban them from the movement. Only on rare occasions has the ICRC put pressure on some countries, always “weak” states. Consequently, the Committee threatened to take action against the Haitian Red Cross in the 1950s for political discrimination, but not against the German Red Cross, which was purged of Jews and brought under Nazi control in the 1930s. It also announced the dissolution of the Ethiopian Red Cross without preliminary warning in a circular endorsing the Italian colonisation of Abyssinia on 25 June 1936. Later on, in January 1941, it backtracked and argued “continuity” to avoid beginning the formal ratification procedure all over again when the society was reconstituted in Addis-Ababa with the support of British troops and the Negus from October 1947. In the 1970s, it did take steps against the South African Red Cross for its racial discrimination under apartheid, but only because of intense international pressure. The organisation was threatened with expulsion on several occasions, yet the ICRC always tried to block the process, so that its activities in the country would not be compromised. At each international Red Cross conference, it managed to neutralize resolutions targeting South Africa, leaving them without substance. In Istanbul in 1969, in Tehran in 1973, in Bucharest in 1977 and in Geneva in 1986, it succeeded in turning these motions into vague statements condemning “all forms of racism and discrimination” in national societies. Following the 25th international Red Cross conference where the ICRC abstained from voting on a resolution expelling the South African Red Cross, the Committee chose to focus its efforts on reforming the organisation itself. In 1989, it lobbied for the recruitment of “local leaders” to work with coloured communities and supported Black employees who had been fired after going on strike to demand more representative leadership. Eventually the apartheid system was dismantled, and the ICRC took part in drafting a new, multi-racial constitution for the South African Red Cross: the document was adopted on 28 September 1992. Likewise in Haiti, the Geneva Committee avoided expelling the national society. Instead, it attempted to assist in its restructuring with the support of Doctor Victor Laroche, its president in 1968, and the government of dictator François Duvalier, who donated a building for the organisation’s headquarters. On very rare occasions, the ICRC has directly intervened in the running of a national society. In 2002, for example, the Liberian Red Cross was suffering an internal management crisis. The IFRC withdrew its support, concluding it was incapable of resolving the situation. At that point, the ICRC took on the budget of the organisation for one year, so that it would not collapse before its return to the Federation in 2003.
-To conclude , the ICRC should be responsible for national societies, like multinational companies are responsible for their subsidiaries in developing countries when they fail to respect labour codes. There are at least four reasons why this should be so. Firstly, the ICRC recognizes these societies. To avoid being mistakenly implicated in their misdeeds, it should therefore be able to sanction defaulting organisations by withdrawing its certification. Secondly, the Committee monitors humanitarian values embodied in the Red Cross Movement. Consequently, it is responsible for promoting their implementation . Thirdly, the ICRC’s social and legal liability results from its organisational and statutory relations with national societies, in particular at international conferences. And fourthly, the Committee’s operations rely heavily on the various Red Crosses and Red Crescents that provide staff, logistical support and funds (the ICRC also sponsors them, as we shall see in the next section). In other words, the institution bears a kind of corporate social responsibility regarding national societies. Hence it should be able to withdraw its Red Cross label from organisations that break the Geneva Conventions and humanitarian codes of conduct. Of all the problems faced by the Committee, this is probably the most serious and the biggest threat to the movement’s future.
