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International Committee of the Red Cross
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History

Comité International de la Croix Rouge - History




1880-1889


-1880-1938, Austria: Following the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867, the local Red Crosses are merged and placed under Vienna’s control in 1880. The new organisation is chaired by Baron Karl von Tinti, who led the first Austrian Red Cross since the 1864 Geneva Convention. Until the establishment of a republic in 1918, his successors are also nobles: Count Franz Falkenhayn from 1885 to 1898, Prince Alois Schönburg-Hartenstein from 1899 to 1913, and Count Rudolf Abensperg-Traun from 1913 to 1919. In the meantime, the organisation begins emergency programmes for civilians during peacetime. Under the impetus of Baron Jaromir von Mundy (1882-1894), it helps to mobilise fire brigades, surgeons, and flood specialists after a spectacular fire that destroyed the Ring Theatre in Vienna and left 449 dead in December 1881. While the scheme is extended to Budapest in 1887, various groups of volunteers also contract with the army to operate during wartime. They plan to take over the urban transportation of wounded soldiers and fire fighting in barracks, arsenals, and military hospitals in Vienna. But the Red Cross returns to centre stage during World War One. After the fall of the monarchy and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it is then re-organised under the aegis of Baron Max Vladimir Freiherr von Beck (1854-1943), who was briefly Prime Minister from 1906 to 1908. Led from 1919 to 1938 by Doctor Max Vladimir Eck, the ÖRK (Österreichisches Rotes Kreuz) is now confined to the Austrian territory and must immediately deal with the political troubles that shake the young republic and eventually force Geneva to intervene. In October 1934, for instance, the ICRC delegate to Vienna, Louis Ferrière, is given permission to visit Wöllensdorf prison, where many Nazi suspects are imprisoned since the assassination of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfüss in July. He finds the conditions of detention acceptable. Arguing reciprocity, the ICRC will thus be able to negotiate directly with the Nazis to obtain the right to visit concentration camps without having to go through national Red Cross societies. In the meantime, Adolf Hitler’s troops invade Austria, which becomes part of Germany in March 1938, and the ÖRK has to merge with its German counterpart. The ICRC and the League of Red Cross Societies accept this anschluss without protest.
 
-1881-1919, Hungary: Led by Count Gyula Karolyi (1837-1890), the Hungarian Red Cross is created in 1881, one year after its Austrian counterpart. Given the dual power arrangement of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it is recognized by the ICRC in 1882 despite the rule that allows for only one Red Cross per country. After World War One, the collapse of the monarchy and Hungary’s independence, the exemption is no longer necessary anyway. But the country’s internal conflicts lead the ICRC to intervene directly to take charge of political prisoners in addition to prisoners of war. Indeed, many people are arrested when Count Michael Karolyi resigns and a Hungarian Soviet Republic is declared in March 1919. Fortunately enough, the ICRC delegate to Budapest, Rodolphe Haccius, can assist both those incarcerated by Béla Kun’s Communist government, and those imprisoned by Romanian occupation troops after the fall of the Soviet Regime on the 1st of August 1919. His visits, which began on the 28th of April at Gyüstöfogház, are a first: unlike his counterpart Edouard Frick in Russia in May 1918, Rodolphe Haccius has official permission to see political prisoners who are nationals of the country. The initiative sets a precedent and, in April 1925, the ICRC will obtain authorisation from Belgrade to visit Montenegrin separatists imprisoned by the Yugoslavian government. At the request of Italian and Canadian lobbies that support the independence of Montenegro, Geneva will also innovate by publishing its inspection report in the Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge of June 1925.
 
-1882-1912, United States: While Washington finally ratifies the Geneva Convention in March 1882, almost twenty years after it was signed, Clarissa “Clara” Harlowe Barton (1821-1912) launches an American Association of the Red Cross which will be formalised by a federal amendment in June 1900 and become the American National Red Cross, better known as the ARC (American Red Cross). Such relief organisations already existed. During the Civil War, a United States Sanitary Commission had been established in June 1861, with a European branch in November 1863: from September 1870 to March 1871, it had helped the French when the Prussians laid the siege of Paris. But it was unable to obtain government approval for a real American Red Cross with a monopoly over private-sector wartime relief. The ARC, which provides food supplies during the Russian famine of 1891-1892, also experiences many difficulties. During pogroms against the Armenians in 1895-1896, Clara Barton manages to get approval from Tawfik Pasha, the Ottoman Foreign Affairs Minister, to launch relief operations in Turkey on the condition that she accepts military escort. She is supposed to help both the Armenians and the Muslims. However, explains Ann Marie Wilson, she compromises her neutrality and is almost deported because she falls under the influence of American missionaries and denounces the massacre of “Christian martyrs” in the international press. During the Spanish-American War in Cuba in 1898, again, the ARC is criticised for its inefficiency and her leader is accused of misappropriating funds. Even the official historian of the institution, Foster Rhea Dulles, acknowledges that Clara Barton is not accountable and manages the organisation as a personnal asset. Her nephew, Stephen Barton, is vice president of the institution and, in December 1902, at the age of 82, she has herself elected as president for life in order to stave off her younger rivals, notably Mabel Thorp Boardman (1860-1946). Close to both the U.S. Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, and the sister of President Theodore Roosevelt, Anna Cowles, the latter is the daughter of bankers and she aims at raising funds in the business community. Moreover, she wants to professionalize the organisation and strengthen provincial chapters that were deliberately held back in order to maintain the pre-eminence of the national committee. Even though subsequent lawsuits are unsuccessful due to lack of proof, Clara Barton is eventually forced to resign in April 1904. Placed under the control of an 18-member central committee led by retired veterans, the ARC is then taken over by military officers, but not completely integrated into the army as recommended in a report by Major Walter McCaw. The organisation is thus presided in 1905 by Rear Admiral William Van Reypen (1840-1924), former Surgeon General of the Navy, followed in 1906 by General Robert Maitland O’Reilly (1845-1912), Surgeon General of the US Army, and in 1907-1915 by General George Whitefield Davis (1839-1918), a veteran of the Philippine War of Independence of 1898, governor of Puerto Rico in 1899 and the Panama Canal Zone from 1900 to 1905. State control of the ARC is endorsed at the highest level. In accordance with a law passed in 1905, the White House names the organisation’s president and chooses the directors of its Central Committee, which includes five representatives from the Departments of State, War, Treasury, Justice, and the Navy. In the field, the ARC now plays the role of an auxiliary to the authorities. After the San Francisco earthquake of 18 April 1906, for example, it distributes relief alongside the army; as a result, local residents and associations protest because they are excluded from the management of the crisis. At the time, the organisation is quite weak anyway: its budget does not exceed $20,000, of which only 10% come from members’ contributions despite attempts to develop fund-raising and professionalize the ARC with its new national director since 1908, Ernest Bicknell. In practice, accounts are overseen by the Department of Defense and approved by Congress. And ties with the military are steadily reinforced under the influence of New York Republicans. In 1911, a presidential decree makes ARC volunteers subject to the Army’s disciplinary code. In 1912, another decree confirmes the organisation’s monopoly to help the military during wartime. Given food and transportation by the federal government, ARC volunteers are effectively treated as civilian employees of the Army.
 
-1883-1928, Russia:  The president of the Russian Red Cross since 1874, Lieutenant General Alexandre Joseph Baumgarten, dies in 1883. He is replaced the following year by another military, Michel de Kaufmann, who commanded the Tsar’s army during the conquest of Central Asia in 1876. Inspired by Nikolai Ivanovitch Pirogov, a heroic doctor in the Crimean War of 1854, and founded in Saint Petersburg on 15 May 1867 as the “Russian Society for Relief to the War-Wounded”, the organisation is clearly dominated by the aristocracy and controlled by the army. Known as the Russian Red Cross from 1879 onwards, it sends volunteers during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-1871, the Balkan Wars against the Ottoman Empire in 1877-1878, the Spanish-American War in 1898, and the Anglo-Boer War in 1899. With a new charter adopted on 17 April 1893, it gains international recognition for hosting the Seventh International Conference of the Red Cross in 1902 in Saint Petersburg. However, in Russia, it looses prestige after the army is defeated by Japanese forces in Manchuria in 1905. As the revolutionary movement develops and threatens the regime of the Tsar, neither is the Russian Red Cross able to escape the divisions that tear the country apart. Thus, provincial assemblies (primarily composed of the nobility) and elected local governments (the zemstvo) each create their own Red Crosses. Meanwhile, the national organisation, pro-Tsar, is accused of embezzlement by the liberals and does not survive World War One. In March 1917, it is purged of its “reactionary” members and placed under the direct control of the Ministers of Defence and Public Health. In October, its properties are seized by the Bolshevists, then nationalised under the decrees of 6 January and 2 June 1918. Its headquarters are transferred to Moscow and many of its leaders are arrested. Lastly, it is forced to merge with a “Proletarian Red Cross” the following 8 September, and incorporate Red Guards without medical qualifications. As the Council of the People's Commissars denounce all political, economic, and military treaties concluded by the imperial regime, the rupture with the former organisation is total, in spite of a decree proclaiming continuity and signed by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov  “Lenin” on 7 August 1918. Led by Count Paul Ignatieff, the Tsarist Red Cross goes into exile in Paris and the ICRC has to deal exclusively with its Communist successor in Moscow, which is officially recognized by Geneva on 15 October 1921. As for the municipal Red Crosses that sprung up during the 1905 Revolution and were grouped in 1919 under the aegis of a Union called “Vozgor” (Vozrozhdennyi Soyuz zemstv i gorodov, a combination of zemstvo and towns), they disappear after the defeat of the Tsarist armies in Siberia and the Ukraine. In the territory of the former Russian empire, only states that obtain independence and escape the Bolshevist influence are able to create their own national societies, as in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, and for a brief period, Georgia. For the others, the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on 30 December 1922 leads to the inauguration, in May 1923, of a central governing body which runs all the Communist Red Crosses as part of a single organization, ending the bilateral agreements previously signed by the Russian, Byelorussian, and Ukrainian associations. This Alliance of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is officially recognized by the ICRC as the heir of the former Russian organization on 3 January 1928. It brings together the Red Crosses of Russia (1918), the Ukraine (1918), Armenia (1920), Belarus (1921), and Georgia (1923), and the Red Crescents of Azerbaijan (1923), Uzbekistan (1925), Turkmenistan (1926), Tajikistan (1929), and Kazakhstan (1937), before incorporating the Red Crosses of regions occupied by Soviet troops from 1940 onwards –namely Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and Moldavia. However, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, which specify that there can be only one national society per ratifying country, the ICRC refuses to recognize the individual member organizations of the Alliance of the Red Cross and Red Crescents Societies, arguing that the Soviet Federal Republics are not politically independent states.
 
-1884, Switzerland: After a 15-year hiatus, the Third International Conference of the Red Cross brings together 20 national societies in Geneva, celebrating the triumph of the nation-state. Subject to the will of the military, the Red Crosses have re-focused on their respective countries and gave up sending volunteers to armed conflicts that do not directly concern their government. Because of their close links to the powers-that-be, they also enjoy a monopolistic position and various fiscal facilities. Led by high-level civil servants and retired military officers, volunteers wear uniforms and regularly participate in army training exercises. Historian John Hutchinson considers this a failure and argues that charity got militarised instead of making war more humane. Indeed, Red Cross delegates do not plan to condemn states or national societies that violate the Geneva Convention. They refuse to give the ICRC a supranational coordinating role, yet do not succeed in establishing an International Federation, an idea evoked in Brussels as soon as 1876. Even Gustave Moynier embargoes for two years a Russian proposal to confirm the compulsory nature of relief work, give the ICRC force of law and replace it by a Committee bringing together representatives of national societies. This last recommendation annoys Geneva and is eventually rejected during the Fourth International Conference of the Red Cross held on 21 September 1887 in Karlsruhe, Germany.
 
-1885-1921, Thailand:  Led by Thanpuying Plien Pasakornravongs, the ladies of the Royal Siam Court convince King Chulalongkorn (Phra Chula Chom Klao Chao Yu Ha), also known as Rama V, to establish a relief society for wounded soldiers, the Sapa Unalom Daeng, which is the forerunner to the Thai Red Cross. Formally launched in April 1893 during a border war with French Indochina, the organisation is placed under royal patronage and presided by Queens Sawang Wadhana and Saovabha Bhongsri, two of King Rama V’s four wives. Called Sapa Unalom Daeng until 1910 and governed by a royal charter adopted in 1918, the Siamese Red Cross is officially recognised by the ICRC in May 1920 and the IFRC in April 1921 as the TRCS (Thai Red Cross Society).
 
-1886-1918, Japan: The National Society of the Red Cross, Nippon Sekijuji Sha, is recognised by the government and the ICRC when the Emperor ratifies the Geneva Convention in 1886. The organisation inherits another association, Hakuai Sha, created in 1877 during the Satsuma Rebellion and led by Count Tsunetami Sano (1822-1902), a Minister of Finance in 1880 and Agriculture in 1892. Unlike the Ottoman Empire or the Kingdom of Siam, the Japanese authorities have no real problems in adopting the Red Cross emblem instead of the symbol initially used: a sun rising over the horizon (two parallel, horizontal rectangles). They do, however, take control of the organisation. When a new civil code is put into place in 1898, the JRCS (Japanese Red Cross Society) becomes an official auxiliary to the army. From that moment on, it needs a permission of the Empress to work during peacetime and provide relief to victims of natural disasters. Presided until his death in 1902 by an inspector of the Japanese Army Sanitary Department, Tadanori Ishiguro, then by a former Minister of Finance, Count Masayoshi Matsukata, who develops its fundraising, the JRCS serves first and foremost military purposes. Quite efficient during the 1894 Sino-Japanese War, its volunteers receive fixed salaries, are subject to the army’s disciplinary code and are mobilised as reservists. A world record, the JRCS has more than one million members (as against 900,000 in 1903, 160,000 in 1895 and 37,000 in 1893) when war with Russia breaks out over Manchuria in 1905. On the winning side, it comes out of the conflict even more important than before. With two hospital ships, the Hakuai Maru and the Kosai Maru, that were already in use during the Boxers Rebellion in China in 1900, the organisation treats wounded enemy soldiers throughout the fighting, especially sailors from the Russian cruiser Variag. It also takes care of prisoners of wars and send disabled soldiers back home through the Chinese town of Chefoo (now Yantai). The only recorded incident is during the Battle of Tsushima on 27 May 1905, when the Russian Tsarist Red Cross complains about the Japanese Navy’s inspection and diversion of its two hospital ships, the Oryol and the Kostroma. At the time, Japan respects the Geneva Conventions so that it can take its place among “civilised” nations. By doing so, it also hopes to ward off the possibility of an intervention of Western powers alongside Russia over Manchuria. Under the direction of Empress Shoken, born Masako Ichijo (1849-1914), the Japanese Red Cross further serves to ease diplomatic relations. For instance, it gives donations to the victims of the 18 April 1906 earthquake in San Francisco in the United States. Likewise, it sends medical teams to help the Allied in Europe during Word War One. And it takes care of some 4,300 civilian and military German prisoners in China. The Swiss delegate of the ICRC in Tokyo until his death in February 1944, Doctor Fritz Paravicini, is thus able to visit them in July 1918 with interpreters of the JRCS, which funds his trip to prove that Japan pays respect to the Geneva Convention.
 
-1887, Portugal:  The ICRC recognises the local Red Cross, more than twenty years after its foundation in 1865 by an army surgeon who participated in signing the first Geneva Convention of 1864, Doctor José António Marques (1822-1884). Initially called the Comissão Portuguesa de Socorros a Feridos e Doentes Militares em Tempo de Guerra, the CVP (Cruz Vermelha Portuguesa) is not very active, hence the reluctance of Geneva to certify it. But the organisation has close ties to Portuguese military and colonial circles, with a former governor of Mozambique, Joaquim José Machado, among its ranks. Except for one jurist, professor Manuel António Moreira Júnior, from January 1909 to January 1911, the CVP is led for nearly a century by senior officers, including an admiral, Domingos Tasso de Figueiredo, from January 1911 to May 1916: Generals José Maria Baldy from August 1866 to September 1870, Augusto Xavier Palmeirim from October 1870 to May 1887, António Florêncio de Sousa Pinto from June 1887 to February 1890, António de Sampaio e Pina Freire de Brederode (Duke of Palmela) from October 1890 to November 1905, Francisco Maria da Cunha from November 1905 to January 1909, Joaquim José Machado from May 1916 to July 1924, and Tomaz António Garcia Rosado from August 1924 to January 1930. The CVP intervenes in all opposing camps during the many coups d’état and uprisings that occur between October 1910, when a republic is formed, and February 1919, when royalists seize the northern part of the country. However, it is taken over by the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, who comes to power in July 1932. Control of the CVP then passes to some of the regime’s high-ranking figures:  Henrique José Monteiro Mendonça from January 1930 to November 1942, Admiral Guilherme Ivens Ferraz from November 1942 to October 1948, General Fernando Pereira Coutinho from October 1948 to June 1956, Professor Leonardo de Sousa Costa Freire from October 1956 to August 1965, General Carlos Mario Sanches de Castro da Costa Macedo from April 1966 to March 1969 and an Army health corps manager, Ricardo Horta Júnior, from March 1969 to May 1974. After the fall of the dictatorship and the Carnation Revolution in April 1974, the Portuguese Red Cross continues to be led by senior officers, despite the country’s new democratic status. It is thus presided by a brigadier, Armando José Marques Girao, from June 1974 to October 1974, a military doctor, António Fernandes Tender, from January 1975 to August 1981, a colonel, Raúl Duarte Cabarrão, from September 1981 to January 1986, a rear admiral, Doctor Luiz Gonzaga Pinto Canedo Soares Ribeiro from January 1986 to April 1993, and an army health services director, Professor José Manuel Carrilho Ribeiro, from July 1993 to July 1997. Civilians take control of the institution only lately. The first, a woman, is Maria de Jesus Simões Barroso Soares, from July 1997 to July 2003. Today, the CVP is presided by professional managers:  Luís Nogueira de Brito from July 2003 to March 2005 and Luís Eduardo da Silva Barbosa since June 2005.
 
-1888, Switzerland:  The ICRC officially adopts the motto Inter Arma Caritas, “Amidst War, Charity”. However, it experiences great difficulty in re-establishing dialogue between national societies since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Up until 1884, it was forced to repeatedly postpone holding an international conference of the Red Cross for fear that states would renege on pledges made in the Geneva Conventions of 1864 and 1868. The French and German relief committees had almost no contact with each other, while the British and American Red Crosses got independent and barely responded to letters sent by Geneva. In an attempt to remedy the situation, Gustaver Moynier, president of the ICRC, sets up a Standing Commission that brings together representatives from national societies and takes decisions by majority vote. From 1928 onwards, this group will also integrate a member of the board of the League of Red Crosses (where the Geneva Committee has no representative). Today known as the Council of Delegates, it aims to settle internal matters, such as the standardisation of the emblem and operating procedures.
 
-1889-1909, Congo-Kinshasa: An avid supporter of Belgium’s King Léopold II and his “Congo Free State”, Gustave Moynier serves as its consul to Geneva and recognises the existence of a “Congolese and African Association of the Red Cross” on behalf of the ICRC in 1889. But the new organisation elicits protests from colonial Portugal, which contests the name “African” because it seems to cover all the continent. Composed of Europeans, the association is eventually dissolved when the “Congo Free State” is transfered to Belgium in 1909. However, a local chapter of the Belgian Red Cross is later formed in 1923. Indeed, from 1901 onwards, the ICRC authorises the establishment in the colonies of “autonomous” branches that are considered as “correspondents”. Consequently, a South African Red Cross is set up in Cape Town in 1913, the first of a sery of many provincial organisations that develop in an independent fashion, each with its own budget and no central committee at the national level. On the African continent, the LNRCS (Liberian National Red Cross Society) also appears in 1919. As for the Ethiopian Red Cross, which is set up when the Negus signs the Geneva Convention in June 1935, it is simply an offshoot of the ICRC, a bit like the Montenegrin Red Cross in January 1876. Called Kay Mascal in Amharic, the organisation has only Western doctors. Except for its president Blatten Geta Hervy Woldeselassie, who is the Ethiopian Minister of Foreign Affairs, its leader is a protestant missionary, Thomas Lambie, and seven out of fifteen members of its board are European expatriates. Officially launched by a royal decree of 8 July 1935 and recognised by the ICRC the following 26 September, the organisation will not last long. Designed to supply an army that has only one doctor for 5,000 soldiers, as against 200 on the Italian side, the Ethiopian Red Cross will disappear when the Fascists invade Addis-Ababa in July 1936. Compelled to deny his allegations on Italian violations of the International Humanitarian Law, Thomas Lambie will then betray his organisation and blame its inexperience.