Comité International de la Croix Rouge - Comments

8) Links to the military

-As national societies are sometimes run by high-ranking officers or defence ministers, the Red Cross movement has close ties to security forces. This is especially true for the ICRC, which regularly intervenes in battlefields and organises training sessions to promote international humanitarian law amongst soldiers and policemen. The institution mainly interacts with the armed forces on two levels: during relief operations, to secure its teams, and in the legal domain, to limit the casualties of wars.

-Geneva’s position has evolved over time. Initially, the Committee was not against military supervision because it was not operational and had to rely on national societies which were usually integrated with armed forces. As seen in the chronology above, prior to World War One, Red Crosses were often controlled by senior officers. Many were even created and directed by security services. In Romania, for example, the Red Cross was set up in 1876 by an Inspector-General of the Armed Forces, Carol Davila (1828-1884), of French origin, and led by Prince Demetrius Ghika (1816-1897), the Chief of Police for Bucharest. In some national societies, however, military control led to internal conflict with medical and civilian personnel. In Belgium, for instance, the Red Cross was presided between 1874 and 1879 by Bruno-Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Renard, a General and Minister of War from 1868 to 1870. But a Doctor, Antoine Depage, became increasingly hostile to the Army’s hold over the organisation, which he headed from 1914 onwards. In 1907, he founded the country’s first nursing school, and, in 1912, bypassed the military when providing relief to wounded soldiers in the Balkans conflict. During World War One, his uniform was untidy, he disrespected the hierarchy and he disputed army rules and regulations, in particular when petrol rationing threatened the running of his ambulances.

-Despite their reputation for neutrality, national societies in Northern Europe were also militarised. In Denmark, the Red Cross was initially presided between 1876 and 1887 by Christian Albert Frederich Thomsen (1827-1896), Minister of War from 1873 to 1874. In Sweden, it was run by a General, Axel Gabriel Leijonhufvud, from 1873 onwards . In November 1945, leadership passed to another officer in the Army, the infamous Count Folke Bernadotte (1895-1948) . Born to a father who had been forced to give up the Swedish crown after marrying a commoner, the Count had attempted to organise a volunteer force to assist Finland, attacked by the Soviets in November 1939. As he was in the United States at the time of the invasion, he began fundraising to purchase aeroplanes and train pilots for the Finnish Air Force. While no official support was forthcoming from Washington, Winston Churchill provided British aircraft and set up an air force base in Canada. The project eventually failed when Helsinki signed a peace agreement with Moscow in March 1940. But i n Finland, the president of the Red Cross, Field Marshal Gustaf Mannerheim (1867-1951), was to become a hero in the fight against the Soviet invasion, and head of state from 1944 to 1946.

-Because it depended on national societies to carry out field operations, the ICRC was not able to put a stop to the increasing influence of military circles. Despite the Geneva Conventions, for example, it was unable to prevent the American and Australian Red Crosses from providing relief to able-bodied solders, in addition to the war-wounded. A branch of the BRCS (British Red Cross Society), the Australian Red Cross was actually set up to support the Army. It was launched in Melbourne by Helen Munro-Ferguson, the Governor General’s wife, on 13 August 1914, just nine days after England declared war against Germany. Following World War Two, the ICRC remained dependent on national societies and their military ties to access hard-to-reach areas. It used British military aircraft to send relief to Yogyakarta during Indonesia’s war of independence in September 1947. Similarly, the ARC (American Red Cross) had transported supplies in US military airplanes to assist the survivors of an earthquake in Chile in January 1939. So did the League of Red Cross when sending relief to the victims of floods in India and Pakistan in September 1955.

-Another example of this trend was during the Korean War in 1950 and 1951. The ICRC was refused access to the north by the Communists, and completely depended on foreign troops for operations in the south. As Washington had requested humanitarian staff to wear A rmy uniforms, the Geneva Committee supplied their own in the hope of distinguishing its personnel from American soldiers. Operating out of Tokyo, t he League of the Red Cross was also forced to give up its emblem in favour of that of the United Nations to gain access to South Korea. The United States, which provided the majority of the troops , kept strict control over relief programmes. Supplies had to be pooled, sold to civilians, distributed by the Seoul government or, for some 10%, handed over to the South Korean Red Cross. The League of Red Cross was not given authorisation to run programmes until May 1951, and national societies were mostly concerned with providing relief to their own military contingents, especially t he ARC (American Red Cross), which was indistinguishable from the US Army and which lost two volunteers during the conflict. Only the Scandinavian societies focused their efforts on civilian populations. But they were still subject to strict military control. For instance, the crew of a Danish hospital s hip, the Jutlandia, was asked to respect a blackout whenever the Blue Helmets went into combat. Compromise was necessary before a solution could be found. To allow the ship to display a lighted Red Cross logo as per the Geneva Conventions, the crew finally agreed to sail out to sea and respect the official secrets it had knowledge of whenever the American Army was planning an attack.

-Since then, the ICRC’s operational capacities have grown in scale and the organisation is no longer completely dependent on military logistics. However, it still occasionally works with the armed forces. When conflict broke out in N’djamena in March 1980, for example, it evacuated the seriously wounded to a hospital run by a French Army medical team in Kousseri, Cameroon. National societies do the same with their own military. According to Steve Pratt, the Danish Red Cross took on members of the special forces to assist in relief operations for Rwandan refugees and displaced Congolese persons in Goma in 1996. Likewise, the Canadian Red Cross worked with the Department of National Defence in 1999 to accommodate 5,000 refugees from Kosovo, a military Operation called Parasol. Around the same time, London requested the British Red Cross to act as a go-between between the government and humanitarian NGOs to facilitate civilian-military cooperation during peace-keeping operations.

-The ICRC’s relations with armed forces are not only logistical in nature. In addition to using military resources to transport supplies or treat the wounded, the Committee also tries to secure its humanitarian operations and s taff in dangerous environments. According to Barthold Bierens de Haan, a psychologist responsible for expatriates, the annual death rate of ICRC employees varied between 1% and 2% in the 1990s, a higher proportion than in other at-risk professions , like firemen or policemen. This situation is mostly because more delegates are being sent to war zones, and not necessarily because warring factions have less respect for international humanitarian law. Nevertheless, political and criminal violence is a problem for many staff in the field, especially the employees of national societies. Armed robbery, for instance, is as much to blame as war, as seen in various examples exposed in the chronological section above. Unsolved murders include those of Catherine Duclaux, a French IFRC delegate stabbed to death by bandits in Yaoundé on 27 May 2001, and John Maurice Scott, director-general of the Fijian Red Cross, found dead next to his homosexual partner at home in Suva on 1 July 2002.

-In order to continue operating in dangerous environments, the ICRC had to choose between providing staff with arms, hiring private security companies, negotiating protection agreements with guerrilla forces or organizing military escorts. The first solution was not aberrant for an organisation based in Switzerland, a country where conscripted citizens keep their weapons at home. Gustave Ador, head of the ICRC, even presided the gun society of his village, Cologny, while another member of the Committee, Pierre Boissier, was killed during a military training exercise. Moreover, the Geneva Convention of 1929 authorized humanitarian personnel to bear weapons for self-defence. Hence doctors of the Swedish and British Red Crosses carried their own guns during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1936. And in Congo at the end of 1960, it was the Geneva Committee who requested Colonel Joseph-Désiré Mobutu to provide a military escort to its delegate, Geoffrey Senn, in order to transport relief from Luluabourg to Bakwanga. Nevertheless, arming staff is obviously in contradiction with the ICRC’s neutral stance. Consequently, at the 26th International Red Cross Conference in December 1995, the movement voted to prohibit relief workers from carrying arms or working with military escorts. At a special meeting of all its delegates in Geneva in 1997, the ICRC announced a new security policy based on keeping a low profile. Visibility would be reduced by employ ing more local staff, renting used vehicles, and not show ing the Red Cross logo, in particular in Muslim countries where this could be seen as offensive. In addition, the ICRC hired a full-time consultant to develop security guidelines published in 1999 and 2005: David Lloyd Roberts, a former British soldier, held this position from 1993 to 2003.

-Nevertheless, the Committee sometimes contracted with armed guards and private security companies. In 1968, it hired Securitas to evacuate Europeans in Katanga. After the tragedies of Somalia in 1991 and Chechnya in 1996, resorting to contractors became more common. Al Venter, for example, mentions the case of Sierra Leone in the early 1990s. ICRC’s envoy, Primo Corvaro, initially refused to send supplies using helicopters owned by Executive Outcomes, a South African company known for employing mercenaries. However, he did accept to care for the wounded that Executive Outcomes transported from rural areas to the capital city. Later on, he used helicopters provided free of charge by an American competitor, ICI (International Charter Incorporated). The ICRC also contracted with DSL (Defence Systems Limited), part of the Armor Group, and the Sierra Leone branch of Sandline, linked to the South Africans of Executive Outcomes. In October 2007, the Geneva Committee eventually produced guidelines on hiring security firms. National societies followed the same trend. In Iraq, the Kuwaiti Red Crescent hired a small company, the Crescent Security Group, where five guards (one Austrian, Bert Nussbaumer, and four Americans, Paul Christopher Johnson-Reuben, Joshua Mark Munns, John Young and Jon Cote) were kidnapped and probably killed after escorting a humanitarian convoy near Basra in November 2006. As for the American Red Cross, it organised in November 2005 a charity gala with Blackwater, the infamous military contractor involved in several massacres in Iraq, especially in Al Najaf in April 2004 or Baghdad in February 2005. To work with private security firms, however, is still controversial, as it potentially contradicts Article 47 of the first additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits mercenaries.

-Generally speaking, the ICRC is against the use of force for humanitarian purposes. It considers that being escorted by the Blue Helmets presents a risk for its neutrality, as UN (United Nations) troops are part of a political organisation. Consequently, the Geneva Committee has declined offers of military protection during peacekeeping operations. When the UN security guide for humanitarian NGOs was revised in November 2006, for instance, the ICRC and the IFRC managed to have all mention of the Red Cross Movement deleted. In any case, most peacekeeping operations do not aim at supporting relief programmes. UN troops, explains Meinrad Studer, are usually more concerned with maintaining order and providing access to victims than protecting humanitarian staff. As evidence of this trend, Abby Stoddard mentions a meeting on 17 May 1994 between the American Under-Secretary of State, Tim Wirth, and the ICRC operations director, Jean de Courten. During discussions, the latter requested that UN troops be sent to Bosnia to protect civilians, not to facilitate the distribution of supplies. ICRC staff in Sarajevo also refused military escorts and only accepted assistance from the UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force) in transporting prisoners.

-The Committee’s refusal of UN assistance is based on fears that it would compromise its neutrality, hence its security in the eyes of local warring factions . However, the ICRC has not always been so wary of intergovernmental organisations. Gustave Ador, its president, even held an official role at the League of Nations when fighting the Russian famine in 1921 and repatriating refugees from World War One. National societies have also played key roles in launching peacekeeping operations. General Armas-Eino Martola, president of the Finnish Red Cross, even took charge of UN troops in Cyprus between 1966 and 1969. In some situations, the ICRC has condoned the use of force to protect victims. In 1991, for instance, it requested a specialised group in the Thai army, the DPPU (Displaced Persons Protection Unit), to keep order in Khmer refugee camps.

-The situation is paradoxical: on the one hand, the ICRC does not encourage the use of force to save lives; on the other, it is not a pacifist organisation. The Geneva Conventions can therefore be interpreted in different ways. They can be read as justifying acts of war, and not only as a means of limiting their humanitarian impact. Henry Shue, for instance, criticizes the first additional protocol of 1977 and Article 52(2), which authorizes attacks on vaguely defined “military objectives” as long as their destruction, capture or neutralization “offers a definite military advantage”. This ambiguity blurs the underlying message of the Geneva Conventions, which focuses on distinguishing civilians from combattants. The contradiction is particularly obvious in Article 52(2), which allows attacks on “objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action.” Thus defined, objectives could include humanitarian supplies for warring factions. Henry Shue therefore proposes a more limited definition of the term, which forbids attacks on all infrastructure necessary for the population’s survival. Interpretation would need to be adjusted on a case-by-case basis: residents of underdeveloped countries, for example, are less dependent on public services. As in Afghanistan in 2001, they may be less affected by the bombing of power plants supplying energy to both hospitals and military barracks, unlike Serbia in 1999 or Iraq in 2003.

-Strictly speaking, the ICRC does not condemn war. It seeks to make it more humane. Its position has long been criticized. W hen Henry Dunant was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, he was attacked for only being active in the humanitarian field, and not opposing war, unlike his co-winner Frédéric Passy, who was so sure of being nominated that he did not even need to campaign to have his candidacy accepted. According to the pacifist Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicitas Freifrau von Suttner (1843-1914) who herself received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905, Henry Dunant perfected the art of war and his award contradicted the last wishes of Alfred Nobel. As time went on, the ICRC did not modify its position. In its rare statements on the subject, the Geneva Committee limited itself to denouncing the humanitarian consequences of military actions, rather than their causes. During the Cold War, for instance, it did not reiterate comments made by the League of Red Cross condemning armed conflict and promoting peace through education, the disarmament of mentalities, solidarity, mutual understanding, the fight against racism, international humanitarian law and efforts to help those in need. At the time, Geneva was wary of any initiatives that would play into the hands of the Soviet Union, given the arms race with the United States. Its involvement in the action plan drafted at the W orld Red Cross Peace Conference from 11 to 13 July 1973 in Belgrade was therefore peripheral. Likewise, it kept its distance from statements made by the movement during the first Gulf Crisis. In a press release published on 23 October 1990, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Standing Commission initially encouraged all parties to work together to find a peaceful solution. In a memorandum dated 14 December 1990, the ICRC also expressed its hope that the crisis would be resolved by peaceful means. However, to avoid compromising its neutrality and irritating the United States, it never openly criticized American plans to attack Saddam Hussein’s regime. According to Geneva, calls for peace would have amounted to tacit approval of the invasion of Kuwait and its annexing as the 19th province of Iraq. In the end, the ICRC’s position on the matter was much more complex than those adopted by national societies – who had no qualms in criticizing the United States . The second Gulf Crisis led to a similar situation. Geneva’s statements were often more balanced than those of national societies which had preemptively condemned the American military intervention in Iraq. The French Red Cross, for example, called for a peaceful solution in the Quotidien du médecin newspaper on 7 March 2003.

-Nevertheless, the ICRC does participate in peace education programmes. Since the end of the Cold War, i t also claims to be involved in conflict prevention, for instance in rural parts of Kenya’s Turkana Province from 2004 onwards. According to Nicholas Berry, the Committee actually attempts to discredit war by making it impossible to launch military actions without violating international humanitarian law. Under the pretext of facilitating negotiations for peace, the institution engages in a covert diplomacy that contradicts its apolitical and unbiased stance. As a consequence, the ICRC operates on several levels at once: it encourages mediation, it acts as a watchdog for human rights violations, it encourages the trials of war criminal s, it lobbies governments or the United Nations to intervene against warring factions, and it isolates armed groups by sending supplies and reinforcements to civilians. Last but not least , explains Nicholas Berry, the Committee tends to demobilize combatants by inciting warring parties to become closer and to talk to each other in order to reduce the likelihood of massacres . In promoting stricter rules of engagement, the ICRC eventually deters military operations. Its intervention in conflicts means the Committee could potentially have a pacifist role in two areas. Firstly, it neutralises zones to prevent the entry of armed forces. Secondly, it works towards agreements to ban weapons. Regarding neutralisation , for instance, the ICRC negotiated a humanitarian truce which eventually ended up the fighting in the Dominican Republic in 1965. If it could not rival the United Nations, which secured whole regions in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991 and Bosnia in 1993, the Committee did manage to neutralise parts of Madrid in 1936 and Shanghai in 1937; hotels in Jerusalem in 1948, Dhaka in 1971, Nicosia in 1974 and Phnom Penh in 1975; hospitals in Dhaka (Bangladesh) in 1971, Ndjamena (Chad) in 1980, Sidon (Lebanon) in 1985, Jaffna (Sri Lanka) in 1990 and Osijek (Croatia) in 1992; a beach in Tyr (Lebanon) in 1982; a valley at El Serr-Beni in Yemen in 1964 ; cathedrals in Port Stanley on the Falkland Islands in 1982 and San Cristobal de Las Casas in Mexico in 1994; a monastery in Dubrovnik in 1991; a convent in Jerusalem in 1948; an airport in Managua in 1979; schools in Monrovia in 1990; and colleges in Dhaka (Bangladesh) in 1971 and Tripoli (Lebanon) in 1983. These operations have sometimes been implemented without written consent from government authorities, like in Nicosia in 1974, or with permission from only one of the warring parties, like Pakistan and not India in Dhaka in 1971. In any case, ICRC neutralisation projects would collapse without the tacit approval of at least one of the belligerents, as in Saigon and Phnom Penh after the communists took power in 1975.

-The ICRC also plays a key role in having certain categories of weapons banned, another regulation which deters military operations. According to Catherine Rey-Schyrr, the Committee is not out to “draw up a list of authorised and non-authorised weapons”. Instead, its activities in this area focus on promoting humanitarian principles to safeguard civilians. Its position evolved over time. After World War One, for instance, public opinion supported the complete disarmament of major powers, so the ICRC could concentrate on eliminating toxic gases. As a result, the Committee encouraged states to adopt a protocol on bacteriological and chemical weapons in Geneva in 1925. During a disarmament conference at the League of Nations in 1932, it even went so far as to propose that air raids and bacteriological and chemical weapons be prohibited. After World War Two, its focus shifted to atomic bombs, given their devastating effects on civilian populations and incompatibility with humanitarian principles. Launched in April 1950, its initiative to abolish nuclear weapons was quickly supported by Poland and widely promoted at the 19th International Conference of the Red Cross in New Delhi in 1957. Fearing another world war, national societies in Western Europe also joined. In an article published by Le Figaro newspaper during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, André François-Poncet, the president of the French Red Cross, recommended a fifth Geneva Convention be adopted to ban nuclear weapons. However, the ICRC never participated in strategic negotiations on the issue between the major world powers. Between 1978 and 1980, it merely took part in a United Nations conference on “conventional” weapons that were excessively injurious or had indiscriminate effects. Discussions targeted explosives and antipersonnel mines with risks for civilians, as well as light weapons. At the end, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons was adopted in New York on 10 October 1980 and ratified on 2 December 1983. However, it was not until February 1994 that the ICRC officially took a stand advocating the elimination of antipersonnel mines. Since then , it has been involved in mine clearing operations in Angola and Afghanistan. In the same vein, it has attempted to re-launch the April 1972 convention on bacteriological and chemical weapons. In September 2002, it warned against the dangers of biotechnological warfare.