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International Committee of the Red Cross
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History

Comité International de la Croix Rouge - History



1970-1979


-Since 1970, Jordan: ten days before organizing a medical mission during the uprising of Palestinian refugees against the regime of King Hussein I, the ICRC is required to act as mediator with the pirates responsible for hijacking three airplanes belonging to TWA (Trans World Airlines), Swiss Air and BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation). However, the Committee refuses to negotiate the sole release of non-Israeli passengers and withdraws from the discussions when the hijackers of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) take their last hostages to hidden sanctuaries that are eventually stormed by the Jordanian army. When the civil war breaks out on 17 September 1970, the ICRC returns to more traditional relief operations. Although its delegation in Amman is caught in the midst of fighting and cut off from the outside world, a medical team is able to travel to provide medical care to the injured on both sides. The ICRC also sends supplies distributed by the Jordanian and Palestinian Red Crescents in November and December. From 1971, it is permitted to visit political prisoners held by the monarchy. Finally, Geneva conducts larger-scale operations during the first Gulf crisis, mainly to assist Asian immigrants who fled Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion in August 1990. Up until November, the ICRC teams and the Jordanian Red Crescent provide aid to approximately 300,000 people in transit. They build camps to provide shelter to up to 35,000 refugees, for example at the frontier post of Rwaished. Handed over to the local Red Crescent, one of the sites is soon required to move because it was set up too hastily on the Azraq groundwater basin, which supplies Amman with drinking water.

-1971-1972, Bangladesh: following the Biafran secession, the ICRC intervenes in the Eastern part of Pakistan fighting for independence and establishes a safe haven to shelter civilians in Dacca. As in Nigeria, the Committee encounters considerable difficulties in seeking to negotiate access to the rebels after dispatching a plane to Karachi without official authorization. Initially on site to distribute aid to flood victims, the ICRC also suffers a number of accidents, for example when one of its aircrafts crashes in Dacca on 30 November 1970, killing all four crew members (Jean-Paul Tompers of Luxemburg and Omar Tomasson, Birgir Orn Jonsson and Stefan Olafsson of Iceland). Following the internationalization of the conflict as a result of the intervention of the Indian army in favor of the secessionists, the Committee becomes involved in operations aimed at releasing prisoners of war. However, the ICRC’s relations with New Delhi and Islamabad are poor. India subjects Pakistani prisoners of war to abuse and ill treatment, while prison guards kill detainees who attempt to escape. In March, October and November 1972, New Delhi is unable to prevent riots in the camps under its responsibility, eventually driving out a Committee delegate following the publication of an ICRC report by Pakistan. India deliberately delays the repatriation of Pakistani prisoners of war after the end of the conflict and the independence of Bangladesh in December 1971. The intention of New Delhi is to release them in exchange for recognition of the new state by Islamabad. Despite these obstacles, the ICRC is able to protect the Bihar minority, some 700,000 people evacuated to Pakistan, and facilitates the repatriation of several tens of millions of Bengali refugees from India. The Bihari, who are Pakistani citizens, are unpopular because of their support for Islamabad, their resistance to the secession and their contempt of Bangladeshis. In the suburbs of Dacca, they refuse to participate to the construction of their own refugee camps, and the ICRC is forced to pay Bengalis to service the area. Laurent Marti, a Committee delegate, uses the opportunity to organize unofficial distributions of aid in the surrounding villages, where the natives are just as destitute as the Bihari. Pushed by the LRCS, which had intervened during the 1970 floods and had asked to replace the ICRC following the return to peace, the Committee eventually decides to leave the country, handing over its equipment and resources to the new Bangladesh Red Cross.

-Since 1972, Burundi: in a country where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees opened its first office in Sub-Saharan Africa in 1962, the ICRC intervenes to assist the Hutu victims of pogroms carried out by the ruling Tutsi. The Committee is soon forced to suspend operations as a result of being prevented by the government from supervising the distribution of aid. The ICRC repatriates its delegates in July 1972 and hands over its programs to the LRCS and the local Red Cross, dominated by Tutsis close to the government and keen to reserve relief supplies for so-called ‘deserving’ communities. The Committee subsequently returns to the country during fighting in Ntega and Marangara in August 1988. But it is unable to rely on the local Red Cross, which continues to misappropriate relief to the benefit of the Tutsi-dominated authorities: in 1993, note for example Jean-Hervé Bradol and Claudine Vidal, the organization seizes the majority of the supplies aimed at Burundian Hutu refugee camps in Rwanda, where mortality rates are high. The assassination of the president-elect in April 1994 plunges the country into chaos and places considerable restrictions on humanitarian interventions. In 1995, the ICRC is denied access to the Burundian provinces of Bubanza in August and Cibitoke following the assassination of a local employee caught in an ambush on 6 November. The Committee is also forced to suspend operations in the capital city, where confrontations with the rebels result in significant damage to one of the hospitals in Bujumbura on 8 December, killing seven nurses and injuring twenty patients. The institution eventually withdraws from the country after the death of three of its delegates in the province of Cibitoke on 4 June 1996 (Cédric Martin, Reto Neuenschwander and Juan Pastor Ruffino) in an ambush probably carried out by the army in an attempt to eliminate witnesses while soldiers carry out massacres in villages. The ICRC is only able to resume the provision of aid to displaced people and to gain access to prisoners three years later, in March 1999, at the risk of funding the renovation of prisons in Burundi. Working conditions remain difficult. Four months after its return to the capital, the institution is no longer authorized to travel by road, and is forced to fly by plane to go to rural areas. As a result of failing to secure free access to the victims of a drought in 2001, the ICRC teams decide to suspend the distribution of aid. However, humanitarian workers remain subject to violence, as illustrated by an attack against the Committee’s offices in Gitega in 2002, an operation in which one guard is killed and another injured. The ICRC also has difficult relations with the medical and political authorities, where the Hutu are better represented since the signature of peace agreements in Arusha in August 2000. The Burundi Red Cross is particularly unreliable and Geneva withdraws its funding in December 1993 as a result of continued infighting between the rival factions of the president of the society, Doctor François-Xavier Buyoya, and the new Health minister, Doctor Jean Kamana, who is keen to dismiss most of the Tutsi personnel and to replace them with Hutu employees. Now in the hands of former Hutu rebels, the government is no more conciliatory than the Tutsi-dominated junta of 1996-2002. In May 2005, it threatens to expel the ICRC and the UNHCR, accused of sheltering Rwandese refugees whom President Domitien Ndayizeye is keen to deport to satisfy the demands of his counterpart Paul Kagame, in power in Kigali.

-Since 1973, Iran: the twenty-second International Red Cross Conference, held in Tehran from 8 to 15 November 1973, is attended by delegates from 78 governments and 98 national societies. Placed under the auspices of the Shah, the event is hosted by the Red Lion and Sun Society, an organization founded in January 1923 and recognized by Geneva despite its refusal to bear the emblem of the movement. The ICRC has relatively good relations with the government, an ally of the United States. In March 1974, the Committee is authorized to work from Iran to provide assistance to Kurds of Iraq despite the opposition of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad. However, it is soon forced to suspend its cross-border operations when the two countries reconcile and sign an agreement in Algiers to delimit the frontier along the Shatt-El-Arab in March 1975. The ICRC remains in Iran to visit political prisoners, who are becoming increasingly numerous as the regime of the Shah encounters mounting resistance and multiplies repressive measures. The Committee, which secures access to the prisons of the capital in April 1977, is able to extend its activities in the provinces when martial law is declared in September 1978. After overturning the Shah in February 1980, the Islamists allow the ICRC to continue to assist political prisoners until September 1981. However, in December 1979, the new government quotes the most unfavorable extracts from ICRC reports to further discredit the former regime. As a result, the Committee is forced to issue a press statement on 9 January 1980 emphasizing that the visits conducted on 21 June 1977, 22 February 1978 and 17 October 1978 showed that the pressures exerted by Geneva had been successful in reducing the level of physical abuse inflicted on prisoners. The situation changes significantly after the outbreak of the war with Iraq in September 1980. The ICRC struggles to gain access to camps in Parandak, Heshmatiyeh, Mehrabad, Gorgan, Davoudieh, Bandar-e-Anzali and Karak, where Iraqi prisoners of war are held. Having failed to obtain the right to conduct unsupervised interviews with detainees, Geneva is forced to suspend its visits on several occasions – between August and October 1981, November 1981 and January 1982, April 1982 and February 1983, March 1983 and June 1983, July 1983 and September 1984, and October 1984 and December 1986. Following a number of serious incidents in the Mehrabad camp in 1983, the Committee is accused of causing trouble during a riot that results in several deaths in Gorgan and the expulsion of an ICRC delegate in October 1984. Subsequently, the ICRC is only able to access roughly fifteen camps and is forced to withdraw from the country altogether for almost three years between 1987 and 1989. Meanwhile, the president of the ICRC, Alexandre Hay, publicly denounces international humanitarian law violations by Iran, particularly the ill treatment and ideological indoctrination of Iraqi prisoners of war on 23 November 1984 and the recruitment of child soldiers and the bombing of civilian populations on 28 May 1985. The implementation of a ceasefire in August 1988 fails to resolve the issue. Iraqi prisoners of war are neither released nor counted for identification purposes. Despite a slight rapprochement between Iran and the West during the first Gulf crisis in 1991, when the United States launch an attack on the regime in Baghdad and liberate Kuwait, the ICRC is still prevented from conducting unsupervised interviews with prisoners to prepare voluntary repatriation operations. After returning to the camps in January 1992, the Committee is immediately accused of overstepping its mandate and expelled from the country two months later. With the exception of very brief visits in November 1993, the ICRC is denied access to some 19,000 Iraqi prisoners of war still detained in Iran. The limited number of repatriations which begin in April 1998 are initially conducted without the supervision or assistance of Geneva, which is forced to wait until February 2004 to re-open a delegation in Tehran, sign a formal agreement and obtain information about the last remaining Iraqi prisoners of war that have yet to be identified, often released in Iran without the means or the desire to return to their country. In the meantime, the Committee sets up camps in the provinces of Khuzestan and Bakhtaran in order to provide shelter to some 50,000 Shiite Iraqi refugees who fled to Khorramshahr, Abadan and Bustan to escape the predominantly Sunnite regime of Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf crisis in 1991. During the same period, the ICRC also provides aid to Kurdish refugees on oversized sites in Saveh and Oshnavieh in the provinces of Kurdistan and Azerbaijan. To ensure a rapid provision of relief, its equipment is pre-positioned in a base in Orumiyeh, where the Committee is authorized to land airplanes and to import unused logistical resources from Syria, Jordan and Bahrain, at the risk of spending more funds than if the supplies were transported directly from Europe. Between December 2001 and August 2002, the ICRC returns briefly to Iran to deal with the repatriation of Afghan refugees in Mashhad. The Committee remains in the country longer than initially planned since a significant exodus of Iraqis is predicted following the US military intervention against Saddam Hussein in March 2003. Based in Kermanshah, the ICRC is thus in a position to rescue the victims of an earthquake in Bam the following December. Combined with the repatriation of a small number of Iranian civilians caught by the war in Iraq, the aid provided by the Committee enables Geneva to consolidate its presence in Tehran, despite still being unable to visit political prisoners.

-Since 1974, Ethiopia: the Marxist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who overthrew the Negus monarchy in Addis Ababa in September 1974, prevents the ICRC from intervening in Eritrea, where secessionist movements are fighting to secure independence. Keen to starve the region in order to dislodge the rebels, the authorities refuse to recognize the crisis. Departing from its basic principles, the ICRC decides to deal directly with the insurgents from Sudan, where it is already involved in assisting Eritrean refugees in the regions of Kassala and Port Sudan. The challenge is to distribute the aid fairly between the various guerrilla forces: the predominantly Christian Marxists of the EPLF (Eritrean People’s Liberation Front) and the predominantly Muslim nationalists of the ELF (Eritrean Liberation Front), each with its own humanitarian branch, the ERA (Eritrean Relief Association) and the Eritrean Red Crescent respectively. Between 1978 and 1982, the Committee funds approximately one quarter of the operations carried out by ERA. The ICRC also provides supplies on a more sporadic basis to the Eritrean Red Crescent, amounting to just half of the tonnage given to the ERA in 1979. However, the Committee fails to secure the full and complete trust of the EPLF. The Marxist-inspired movement soon crushes its ELF rivals and prevents the humanitarian institution from accessing its prisoners of war, using defense security as an argument, in the absence of reciprocity on the Ethiopian side, and because of the refusal of Geneva to denounce the abuses committed by Mengistu Haile Mariam. Allied with the EPLF, the TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) and its humanitarian branch, REST (Relief Society of Tigray), are no more open to aid, and no attempt is made by the Committee to negotiate access to prisoners. Paradoxically, the ICRC is more successful in dealing with the dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam in Addis Ababa. In March 1978, October 1979, April and October 1980 and February 1981, the Committee is able to visit a small number of soldiers caught during an armed conflict between Ethiopia and Somalia over the region of Ogaden from July 1977. As noted by David Kline, the issue is that ICRC supplies are not distributed free but used to pay the work required of Somali prisoners of war, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The Ethiopian government is quick to reconsider its decision, and prohibits access to detention centers in July 1981. However, the following December, the ICRC signs an agreement that allows Geneva to establish permanent delegates to ensure the provision of aid to Somali prisoners. The Committee also manages a rehabilitation center for disabled veterans in Debre Zeyit between January 1979 and December 1982. In 1983, the ICRC secures the right to distribute aid in the region of Tigray, both on the government side (from Addis-Ababa) and on the rebel side (from Port Sudan). The challenge is the significant logistical and political cost of the operation, conducted along the Sudanese border. Keen to preserve its neutrality and to avoid any dependence on REST, the Committee sends its own teams into the field, chartering a fleet of trucks in its name and concealing the Red Cross emblem targeted by the Ethiopian army, whose air force attacks ICRC convoys in 1985. To avoid compromising the pursuit of its operations, no attempt is made by Geneva to denounce the deportations carried out by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam in order to empty the north of the country and to deprive the guerrillas of the support of the peasantry during the 1984 famine. After the expulsion of MSF teams in December 1985, the ICRC decides in March 1986 to repatriate its head of mission in Addis-Ababa, Leon de Riedmatten, who had protested against the expulsions to the south and the use of blackmail in negotiations over the survival of famine victims in the Tigray. Unlike most of the NGOs still present in the area, Geneva abstains from taking part in deportations arbitrarily described as resettlements on the grounds of agricultural development. Having suspended all operations between December 1986 and May 1987, the Committee refuses to bow to the new orders of the regime and to be placed under the authority of the Ethiopian Red Cross and its president Dawit Zawde, both under the control of the dictatorship. In a press statement issued on 12 February 1987, the ICRC denounces the government blockades and is forced to stop its cross-border operations between Sudan, Tigray, and Eritrea the following May. The ICRC is finally expelled in June 1988, but is able to facilitate the repatriation of Somali prisoners of war after the signature of a peace agreement between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa on 3 April 1988. The IFRC takes over by complying with the injunctions of the authorities, which prohibit the distribution of supplies in the rebel-controlled area in the north. Before re-entering the country, the ICRC is forced to wait until the guerrillas are able to make some headway, particularly in Eritrea, where the resumption of fighting announces the imminent collapse of the dictatorship of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam. The ICRC is subsequently allowed to send supplies to Asmara by plane since it is no longer able to travel by road from the port of Massawa, fallen to the pro-independence movement in February 1990. In Addis Ababa, the Committee retakes control of Bacha hospital, where Soviet Red Cross teams continue to provide care until the very last days of the dictatorship in May 1991. The ICRC continues nevertheless to encounter significant administrative obstacles after the victory of the TPLF and the EPLF, which initially force the institution out of the country the following June. Until February 1992, Geneva is not authorized to visit prisoners detained by the new authorities and is only able to facilitate the repatriation of 248,568 soldiers demobilized in Tigray and Eritrea and regrouped in camps in Tole, Hurso and Tetek from January 1992. The ICRC returns to Addis-Ababa during the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea over a disputed border in June 1998-July 2000. Once again, the Committee is required to obtain specific authorizations from the belligerents. In Asmara, where it opens a delegation in August 1998, the Committee is eventually allowed to provide assistance to Ethiopian prisoners of war after Eritrea signs up to the Geneva Conventions in August 2000, i.e. after the end of the conflict. As well as visiting 4,300 civilians grouped in camps and 1,200 detainees held in prisons or police stations, the ICRC facilitates the return of 12,000 Eritrean nationals and of 300 Ethiopians detained in Asmara. In Addis Ababa, access to prisoners of war is easier, and the final repatriations on both sides are conducted in 2002. The provision of aid to civilian victims of the conflict is a far more complicated issue. Between February and August 1999, the ICRC is forced to suspend operations targeting displaced populations in the Tigray and is expelled along with all of the other humanitarian organizations operating in the region. While it is allowed to provide assistance to the inhabitants of Senafe occupied by the Ethiopian army after the resumption of fighting in May 2000, the Committee is forced to wait until the end of the war to resettle the families evacuated during the conflict, particularly in the border town of Zalambessa. Access to other regions with latent insurgencies is also limited. In Somali-dominated Ogaden in particular, the ICRC is forced to suspend its operations on a number of occasions because of the prevailing insecurity. Six local employees are captured on the Gode-Jijiga road on 25 June 1998 before being released on 10 July. In September 2006, an Irish collaborator, Donal O’Suilleabhain, and an Ethiopian, Hadis Ahmed Samatar, are kidnapped approximately fifty kilometers north of Gode and released five days later by the UWSLF (United Western Somali Liberation Front), which had mistaken them for staff working for an oil company. The situation is further complicated by the attitude of the authorities. Accused of collaborating with the enemy and disseminating false information, the ICRC is expelled from Ogaden in July 2007 because rebels denounce the Ethiopian blockades preventing the arrival of basic foodstuffs. The Committee is also subject to significant restrictions in the capital Addis-Ababa, where it had begun to support the reform of the Ethiopian prison system in 2004 after securing the right to assist some 8,000 political detainees held in police stations in 2000. Following the unrest caused by the fraudulent elections of May 2005, the government suspends access to federal prisons in December 2005 and to police stations in April 2006.

-Since 1975, Cambodia: the ICRC encounters increasing difficulties as the fighting intensifies between the Khmer Rouge guerrilla forces of Pol Pot and the soldiers of General Lon Nol, in power in Phnom Penh with the support of the United States. The Committee is unable to secure the trust of the rebels, who are generally wary of Western organizations and who blame Geneva for only inviting the Cambodian government to international Red Cross conferences. The ICRC also incurs the anger of King Norodom Sihanouk, who was overthrown by the coup d’état of Lon Nol in 1970 and formed an alliance with the Khmer Rouge while in exile. The coalition of rebels forming the GRUNK (Gouvernement Royal d’Union Nationale du Kampuchéa) accuses the Committee of interfering and orders it to leave the country on 15 March 1975. On 16 April, they refuse the offer of surrender of the Prime Minister in Office, Long Boret, communicated by the ICRC. On entering the capital the following day, the communists violate the neutral area established by the Committee at the Phnom Hotel. After its forced departure, Geneva loses all contact with the country and is unable to continue working with the Cambodian Red Cross chaired by Ieng Thirith, the wife of the new Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, who will be subsequently arrested for crimes against humanity. Accused of inertia by the Daily Mirror correspondent John Pilger, who blames the organization for failing to denounce a genocide, the ICRC is slow to uncover the scale of the massacres committed by the Pol Pot regime. The Committee is forced to wait until the dictatorship is overthrown by the Vietnamese army in December 1978 to begin sending supplies to survivors. Its operations are impeded by the ill will of the occupying power. Demanding 150,000 dollars for flying over the southern part of their territory, the authorities in Hanoi force the ICRC to transport its relief supplies from Thailand in Western military aircrafts lent and piloted by American veterans of the Vietnam War. Put in place by the occupying forces, the Heng Samrin government in power in Phnom Penh opposes the provision of relief supplies to the hinterland and to Cambodian refugees at the Thai border. The government decides to expel the ICRC in September 1979. While waiting for a written order that fails to materialize, the Geneva Committee remains present in the capital without renewing its staff because of a lack of visas. By sheer patience and dogged determination, the ICRC is eventually able to convince the authorities of Kampuchea that their obstruction will not prevent humanitarian organizations in Thailand from providing relief supplies to the refugee camps infiltrated by the Khmer Rouge, who continue to fight against the Vietnamese Army. As part of an agreement signed on 13 October 1979, Geneva is authorized to set up an airlift from Bangkok via Saigon. Under the pressure of UN agencies, local authorities, the US embassy in Thailand and NGOs such as World Relief, the ICRC begins to distribute seeds aimed at facilitating the reconstruction of the Cambodian countryside and at ensuring self-sufficiency in rural areas. However, the operation begins too late, just as the rainy season makes the roads impassable and prevents the transportation of supplies. In addition, the ICRC is not authorized to monitor the distribution of seeds and is forced to rely on the reports supplied in theory by the Kampuchea Red Cross but never delivered. The Kampuchea Red Cross is in fact a political organization aimed primarily at claiming the seats still held by Pol Pot’s representatives at the United Nations and the League of Red Cross Societies. Chaired by a woman who was a victim of the Khmer Rouge, Pech Pirun, its objective is not to prevent the authorities from laying their hands on humanitarian aid. Returning from a trip to Cambodia in November 1979, the head of ICRC operations Jean-Pierre Hocke reports that 97% of the 50,000 tons of supplies transported from Thailand are rotting in warehouses in Phnom Penh and the docks of Kompong Som. Heng Samrin’s government prefers to consolidate its social base through food aid and the local currency, i.e. rice, used to pay civil servants since the country was demonetized by Pol Pot. As noted by the journalist William Shawcross, misappropriations are widespread at all levels. For example, keen to control all humanitarian supplies and organizations, the Cambodian army uses ICRC vehicles under the pretext of escorting expatriates and guaranteeing their security. In 1985, the military expel the Swiss Red Cross, which works in the Kampong Cham hospital since 1981 and which is accused of providing intelligence to the American secret services on the grounds that one of their surgeons had asked a Vietnamese officer to leave the operating room because he was smoking a cigarette. While it is able to access a small number of prisoners of war in 1990, the ICRC is unable to conduct large-scale operations before a ceasefire is signed between the government and the armed resistance movements on 1 May 1991. While it begins to work in the regions of Pursat in 1988 and Battambang and Banteay Meanchey in 1989, the organization is forced to wait until 1992 to access border areas in the north of the country, where the Khmer Rouge are established in Pailin and Sisophon. The peace agreements of 23 October 1991 enable the Committee to cover the entire country just as the United Nations send Blue Helmets to monitor the elections that are due to be held in May 1993. The ICRC delegations in Bangkok and Phnom Penh are authorized to communicate by radio and to cross the border by land via Poipet on a road linking Aranyaprathet in Thailand and Sisophon in Cambodia after being reopened for the first time since 1975. Invited to take part in the repatriation of refugees, the Geneva Committee is also rewarded for its thirteen years of efforts by an agreement reached on 11 January 1992 allowing it to visit both military and civilian detainees, an authorization subsequently extended in March 1998 to include military camps, gendarmeries and police stations.

-Since 1976, Lebanon: the ICRC, which had already intervened briefly during a Druze rebellion in August 1958, sets up relief operations amid the escalating civil war. Despite the reluctance of Geneva, the Committee delegate in Beirut, Laurent Marti, commits funds as a preventive measure justified by the end of yet another ceasefire in January 1976. The following August, the institution negotiates a truce to evacuate the injured from the Palestinian refugee camp of Tall-al-Zaatar near Beirut. However, one of its teams is attacked by snipers. In addition, the militias disregard the Red Cross emblem in the Bekaa plain, where the ICRC is forced to suspend its medical operations between March and August 1976. Ever increasing numbers of vehicles, food, and medicine are stolen. The ICRC, one of whose drivers was seriously injured during a heavy attack on a medical convoy on 23 May 1975, is soon faced with a general deterioration of security. On 29 March 1978, one of its expatriates, Louis Gaulis, is killed in an ambush on his car. The Lebanese Red Cross is even more severely affected: two first-aid workers and one nurse are killed when their ambulance is caught in the midst of fighting in Zahlé on 3 April 1981. According to Daphne Reid and Patrick Gilbo, the total number of casualties suffered by the society amount to 11 deaths and 81 injured throughout the period. The difficulty for the ICRC is also to protect its neutrality in the eyes of the belligerents, particularly in the capital, where the Christians of the east are in conflict with the Muslims of the west. With its delegation in West Beirut, the Committee is forced to maintain a presence in all camps and rebalances its position by opening offices in the district of Achrafieh in the East, where the fighting reaches a peak in September 1978. On the Muslim side dominated by a Sunni majority, the ICRC is forced to provide special care to the Shiite minority following the closure of a field hospital specifically set up for this community in Southern Beirut in February 1976 and transferred in June to safer neighborhoods in the western part of the city. In June 1982, ‘Operation Peace for Galilee’ compels Geneva to negotiate access with the Israeli army, which forms an alliance with the Christian militias and invades Lebanon in order to force the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) out of Beirut. Adopted by the United Nations Security Council on 19 June and 29 July 1982, Resolutions 512 and 513 request the free passage of ICRC convoys and the end of the Beirut blockade. However, such commitments fail to prevent significant violations of international humanitarian law. The Israelis continue to attack civilians. One of their shells kills a member of the crew on Flora, an ICRC ship evacuating injured PLO fighters in the port of Jounieh in August 1982. The Christian Phalangists massacre the medical staff of two hospitals of the Palestinian Red Crescent in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, where the Geneva Committee finds some 2,000 bodies in September 1982. With two first-aid workers killed in 1985, two in 1986 and one in 1987, the Lebanese Red Cross is also not immune to attacks. One collaborator is killed during a medical evacuation in Beirut on 7 February 1984, while three injured patients are executed in one of its ambulances on 8 April 1988. Although the Israeli army begins to withdraw from the capital in September 1983, the situation remains tense. In November and December 1983, the escalating fighting between Lebanese factions forces the ICRC to establish a safe haven in Tripoli and to organize the evacuation toward Beirut and Saida of the Christians who sought refuge in Deir el Qamar to escape Druze attacks in the Chouf. Amid such tension, the Committee refuses to engage in any operations beyond its official mandate. Called on to negotiate with hijackers who diverted a TWA (Trans World Airlines) plane toward Beirut airport on 14 June 1985, Geneva abstains from engaging in a politically-charged process of mediation. Nonetheless, a number of ICRC delegates board the plane to obtain the release of three hostages and provide medical care to other passengers during a stopover in Algiers. In Lebanon, the prevailing insecurity forces the Committee to take all necessary precautions as two of its vehicles are bombed on 11 June 1983 and another is destroyed by a mine on 23 December 1983, without casualties. Poor traffic conditions also cause a number of serious car accidents, for example killing one nurse, Pernette Zehnder, in Beirut on 18 October 1987. After the brief kidnapping of three delegates in 1985, expatriates continue to receive death threats. On 18 November 1988, Peter Winkler is captured in Saida, probably in retaliation against the imprisonment by Switzerland of a terrorist, Ali Mohamed Hariri, who had hijacked a plane and killed one passenger before being arrested in Geneva. The ICRC therefore decides to entrust its operations to local employees and withdraws its seventeen delegates stationed in Lebanon. Despite the release of Peter Winkler after thirty days of detention, the situation barely improves after the return of the Committee in February 1989. On 6 October 1989, two employees, Emmanuel Christen and Elio Erriquez, are kidnapped in Saida. Performing a symbolic withdrawal, the ICRC denies that it is prepared to pay a ransom or to negotiate an exchange. However, the liberation of its two expatriates on 8 and 13 August 1990 coincides with the release by the French government, on 27 July 1990, of Anis Naccache, who had killed two people while attempting to assassinate the former Iranian Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar in Paris. Southern Lebanon, where all of the kidnappings occur, remains one of the most inaccessible regions for the ICRC. Still occupied by the Israeli army (Tsahal), it is largely unaffected by the Taef agreements signed in October 1989 that pacify the rest of the country. The fighting continues to oppose the Shiites of the ‘Party of God’, Hezbollah, supported by Iran, and the Christians of the SLA (South Lebanon Army), backed by Israel. Until the withdrawal of Tsahal in May 2000, tensions remain high and are further revived by the ‘Operation Grapes of Wrath’ in April 1996. Access to victims remains difficult. The ICRC is forced to wait ten years before entering the Khiam detention center, created in 1984 and held by SLA auxiliaries. The Hezbollah fighters are barely more open to dialogue or negotiation. While it is able to conduct unsupervised interviews with a handful of SLA militiamen held by militants of the Party of God before the withdrawal of Tsahal, the Geneva Committee is denied access to three Israeli soldiers and one civilian caught by the movement in October 2000. The release of the civilian and the return of the bodies of the three soldiers are only achieved as a result of a mediation by the German government three years later. The ICRC is also denied access to two Israeli soldiers imprisoned by the Hezbollah in July 2006, whose kidnapping triggers a war between the two countries the following month. The situation is marginally better in other regions of Lebanon, where a decree passed in October 2002 officially confirms the right of the Geneva Committee to visit all prisoners held by the government. After having repatriated a small number of Lebanese prisoners of war and civilians from Israel, the ICRC negotiates a truce to evacuate the civilian victims of a conflict with an Islamist group, Fatah Al-Islam, in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr Al-Bared near Tripoli in May 2007. However, two volunteers of the Lebanese Red Cross, Boulos Maamari and Haitham Suleiman, are killed by Fatah Al-Islam mortar fire on 11 June 2007. Seeking to mediate between the army and the militiamen, a Muslim religious official, Sheikh Mohammed Hajj, is injured when the Palestinian Red Crescent vehicle in which he was traveling is targeted within the camp.

-1977, Switzerland: the ICRC supervises the revision of the Geneva Conventions with the adoption, on 8 June 1977, of two additional protocols concerning the protection ‘of victims of international armed conflicts’ and ‘victims of non-international armed conflicts’. The humanitarian institution was initially reluctant to endorse a project that might have enabled states to challenge the provisions of 1949, to politicize the debate and to be discharged of their obligations by transferring them to the Committee. As a result, during discussions beginning in February 1974, the ICRC refused to act as a substitute to compel governments to provide a minimum level of protection to foreign nationals from an enemy country. In the absence of a Convention dealing specifically with prisoners of conscience, the Committee opted to work on the addition of specific objectives such as the prohibition of the deportation of civilians and attacks against non-military targets. Therefore no attempt was made by the negotiators to extend international humanitarian law to forbid the use of nuclear weapons. In the same vein, they dismissed two draft articles providing for the creation of information centers about missing civilians. The ICRC was in fact unable to resolve the differences between the representatives of the 121 governments invited to Geneva along with eleven national liberation movements, including three movements accredited by the League of Arab States and the Organization of African Unity. The United States, in particular, refuse to ratify the second Protocol. According to them, it favors terrorists and guerrilla fighters at the expense of government forces, who are still required to wear uniforms to distinguish themselves from civilian populations. In theory, insurgents may invoke the protection provided by the Geneva Conventions if they are captured bearing weapons and provided they are operating under the orders of a chain of command and belong to an organization that complies with the laws of war. In practice, however, the process of identifying such combatants represents an extremely complex process compared to common law criminals. The additional protocols mainly have the advantage of ratifying the increased responsibilities of the ICRC in favor of detainees held during internal conflicts. Endorsed at the twenty-third International Red Cross conference held in Bucharest from 15 to 21 October 1977, the new mandate of the Committee is largely based on the early experiences of the Geneva Committee in Russia in 1918, Hungary in 1919 and Ireland in 1923. While prison visits are hardly a novelty for the ICRC, they have increased significantly over time – with 215 visits in 1970 compared to just 30 in 1962 and 40 in 1958. In total, the Geneva delegates were able to assist 170,000 prisoners of conscience between 1970 and 1973, almost twice the number of prisoners (100,000) visited between 1958 and 1970. The activities of the Committee in this area developed significantly as a result of the situation in Latin America, a continent largely unknown to the ICRC in the early days of the organization. After gaining selective access to political detainees on an ad hoc basis in Guatemala and Colombia during unrest in July 1954 and May 1969 respectively, the humanitarian institution intervened in Bolivia in February 1970. In the wake of the coup d’état of Colonel Hugo Banzer Suárez in La Paz, the ICRC was even authorized between August 1971 and October 1972 to assist prisoners of conscience undergoing interrogations and before sentencing, when the risk of torture was highest. In Argentina, the organization also began to visit political detainees on a regular basis from July 1971. But unlike Chile, where it was quickly authorized to provide aid to prisoners of conscience after the putsch of General Augusto Pinochet, the ICRC had to wait for nine months before gaining unsupervised access to opponents detained following the coup d’état of General Jorge Rafael Videla in March 1976. It took another year until the Committee could effectively conduct new inspections in the prisons of La Planta, Rawson, Villa Devoto and Caseros in December 1977, before eventually suspending all operations between December 1978 and February 1979.

-1978-1991, Nicaragua: on a continent that it knows little about, the ICRC begins to set up an airlift and to transport relief supplies in a country where it had already visited political prisoners in April 1971, February 1967, June 1959 and January 1955. During an operation in which two local Red Cross volunteers are killed on 14 September 1978, the Committee takes care of the injured, buries the dead, provides medical supplies to hospitals and assists civilians in combat zones opposing the Sandinistas guerrillas and the government of Anastasio Somoza in Leone and Esteli. Violations of international humanitarian law are rife on both sides. Chaired by Ismael Reyes, who succeeded a bishop from Giru Mons, Mgr Donaldo Chavez Nunez, the CRN (Cruz Roja Nicaraguense) suffers the loss of 17 first aid workers until the fall of the dictatorship on 19 July 1979. The victory of the Sandinistas fails to resolve the matter. Detained until their release as a result of amnesties granted in March 1989 and February 1990, the former soldiers of the National Guard accuse the ICRC of handing them over to the enemy when it asked them to put down their arms to gain access to safe havens created at the initiative of the Nicaraguan Red Cross and neutralized by Geneva in hospitals, churches, embassies and the free trade zone of the airport in Managua. The conflict with the Sandinistas soon resumes. After fighting in Zelaya Department in February 1982, the ICRC is authorized in November to provide assistance to the Miskito Indians expelled from the border regions of Honduras and grouped in the Tasba Pri camps. In the rest of the country, the organization is forced to limit its activities to visiting political prisoners brought to justice, and is unable to access suspects temporarily detained in police stations or military barracks, where the risk of abuse and torture is highest. Under the chairmanship of the cardiologist Gonzalo Ramirez Morales between 1984 and 1988, the Nicaraguan Red Cross also seeks to help victims and becomes involved in the national reconciliation commission established by the government in September 1987 to initiate negotiations with the armed opposition. The situation subsequently improves following the peace agreements of August 1989 and the multi-party elections held in February 1990. The ICRC finally closes its delegation in Managua in December 1991.

-Since 1978, Chad: a new delegate, Laurent Marti, is dispatched to Ndjamena by the ICRC to assist the victims of the escalating civil war. In the north of the country, the Geneva envoy meets with the rebels of Goukouni Oueddei and gains their trust by inviting twenty armed fighters to board a Committee aircraft on the Faya-Largeau airstrip. Between February and April 1978, Laurent Marti is able to secure the release and transportation of approximately 2,500 government soldiers caught by the guerrilla forces. As the fighting nears the capital city, the ICRC is forced to negotiate a truce to send supplies to hospitals and to provide assistance to the injured in Ndjamena in February 1979. The Committee also convinces rival factions to agree to the release of prisoners of war and civilian detainees. However, the operations are postponed sine die. While the forces under the control of Goukouni Oueddei and Hissène Habré fight for power and devastate the capital city in March 1980, Laurent Marti returns to Chad to establish a safe haven in Ndjamena and to negotiate the distribution of relief supplies in both camps. However, his efforts are unsuccessful. Attacked by rivals, the ICRC sides with Goukouni Oueddei and must wait until September to enter the areas where the forces of Hissène Habré are surrounded and defeated. Because of the general ill will of all parties, the Committee is forced to suspend its operations between October and December 1980 before reopening its delegation in Ndjamena in March 1981 and resuming operations within the country. In a moment of respite, the ICRC eventually decides to withdraw from Chad after concluding that the situation is a matter of development rather than emergency aid. The organization begins to hand over its medical programs to Catholic missions and to organizations such as Médecins sans Frontières in October 1981. However, in June 1982, the ICRC returns to Chad when fighting resumes and the victorious forces of Hissène Habré enter Ndjamena. On this occasion, the Committee seeks to provide assistance to the victims of a war that eventually escalates in December 1986 into an international conflict following the military intervention of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi alongside the GUNT (Gouvernement d’union nationale de transition) led by Goukouni Oueddei in the north, on the Libyan border. The warring factions fail once again to comply with the Geneva Conventions. In the north, the GUNT and Libya prevent the ICRC from accessing all prisoners of war. Opened in November 1983, the Committee delegation in Bardaï is soon forced to suspend its operations in May 1984. The situation is no better in Ndjamena. Because Colonel Muammar Gaddafi denies having sent his army to Chad, Hissène Habré’s government decides not to grant a prisoner of war status to captured Libyan soldiers. In addition, it does not inform Geneva about the 2,000 Libyan fighters in its hold, over half of whom are repatriated after the fall of the regime in December 1990. Last but not least, Hissène Habré’s government impedes the Committee’s relief operations on a number of occasions, especially between August 1983 and February 1984. From October 1987, Ndjamena prevents the institution from accessing the northern regions of Fada, Faya-Largeau and Tibesti, which continue to be affected by fighting with GUNT rebels. When the situation changes following the exile of Hissène Habré and the accession to power of Idriss Déby in 1990, the ICRC is only able to gain access to political prisoners in 1995. The Committee subsequently returns to the eastern part of the country to assist Sudanese refugees fleeing the conflict that began in Darfur in 2003. The situation remains volatile and the Committee is forced to suspend its operations after the kidnapping of a French agronomist working for the ICRC, Laurent Maurice, in the village of Kawa on 9 November 2009. After being detained in Darfur by a group known as the African Eagles of Liberation (Aigles de Libération de l’Afrique), the prisoner is eventually released on 6 February 2010.

-1979-1980, Thailand: the ICRC assists Cambodians crossing the border in order to escape the fall of the Pol Pot regime and the invasion of their country by Vietnamese forces. The refugees are recruited by the Khmer Rouge and rejected by the Thai army, which turn back 43,000 of them in Preah Vihear. With the agreement of his superiors, the ICRC delegate in Bangkok, Francis Amar, protests against these expulsions. However, he is quickly summoned to return to Geneva in June 1979 since the Committee is keen to spare Thailand, a country that supports the Khmer Rouge to maintain a buffer zone against the Vietnamese occupying forces in Cambodia. The aim of the ICRC is also to soften the authorities of Kampuchea, which oppose the distribution of food aid to refugees turned guerrillas. On 26 September 1979, the Committee and UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) announce too hastily that they have reached an agreement to begin relief operations on both sides of the border. Their press release draws the ire of the Heng Samrin regime in power in Phnom Penh, which immediately denies the authorization. The same day, a Hanoi daily newspaper, Nhan Dan, denounces ‘the badly intended interpretation whereby ICRC and UNICEF said that PRK (People’s Republic of Kampuchea) accepted the principle of "aid to both sides". The imperialists and international reactionaries have been resorting to a new calumniating trick against the PRK charging the latter with refusing or hampering humanitarian assistance to the Kampuchean people. Trying to show off themselves as humane, they put out the so called "assistance to both sides"… But all these allegations are in fact nothing but a smoke screen to… deceive world public opinion at large… legalize the supply of the Pol Pot remnants… and interfere in the internal affairs of the Kampuchean people’. As a result, the ICRC seeks to keep a low profile to avoid compromising the pursuit of its operations in Cambodia. Hence the Committee conceals the declarations of a defector of the Heng Samrin regime, Hieng Mea Nuont, who, once in exile in Thailand, denounces the misappropriation of Western relief supplies by the Vietnamese occupying forces – a problem with which he is familiar having chaired a government committee set up to receive humanitarian aid in Phnom Penh. Worse still, the ICRC fuels the dynamics of war by supplying refugee camps run by the various rival factions: the Khmer Rouge in Sa Kaeo, Nong Pu, Ta Prik, Phnom Chat, Klong Kai Theong then Khao Din; the Sihanoukists of the National Liberation Movement of Kampuchea under the control of Kong Sileah in Nong Chan; and the partisans of Lon Nol with the Khmer Angkor Movement of Commander In Sakhan in Nong Samet. Although the Geneva Committee requests the containment of armed groups in separate bases, the distinction between civilians and combatants is impossible to draw. In addition, the organization is not always able to control the distribution of supplies, a task sometimes entrusted to vague representatives of ‘cooperatives’ in the Khmer Rouge camps, where the ICRC has no access to the Cambodian side of the border. Because they cannot be resold on the black market in regions with no cash economy, food rations are primarily used to feed combatants who tax and racket the population on the grounds of providing protection against the Vietnamese. The controversy is further complicated by the fact that the Khmer Rouge, who committed a genocide, are the only force truly fighting against Hanoi and hold the most heavily militarized camps. However, other sites in Thailand are also under the control of mafias and commanders who use them to develop a black market and to resell the supplies provided by the World Food Program. For example, Mak Moun is ruled by a warlord, Van Saren, who made his fortune smuggling teak and is eventually assassinated by the Thai army in April 1980. In a camp numbering between 50,000 and 150,000 refugees, the ICRC distributes food to 300,000 people in November 1979, with the surplus falling into the hands of traffickers. According to internal reports quoted by Linda Mason and Roger Brown, 89% of the rice and 89% of the oil destined for Mak Moun are misappropriated. At Nong Chan, 49% of the rice and 46% of the water are directly levied by the combatants. The effect of such misappropriations is not merely to extend the war since their economic and military impact also causes significant conflicts between the camps. For example, on 30 December 1979, the men of Van Saren, deprived of aid, attack refugees in Nong Chan, where the distribution of free food resulted in a drop in the price of rice. The provision of supplies to combatants draws the attention of the Vietnamese, who cross the border on 22 June 1980, bomb a Red Cross hospital and briefly kidnap an ICRC employee, Pierre Perrin, on 26 June. The subsequent fighting between the Thai army and the Khmer Rouge results in the death of 400 refugees. Overwhelmed by the events, the ICRC decides in July 1980 to refocus its activities on the provision of medical aid. Unable to distinguish between combatants and civilians, the Committee suspends all food distributions in the Khmer Rouge camps, in particular in Sa Kaeo, where UNICEF provides only basic relief to women and children under the age of sixteen. In April 1980, Geneva officially stops supplying Mak Moun, where an operation to move all occupants to Khao-I-Dang begins in December 1979. However, there remain significant difficulties. Determined to help their Khmer Rouge allies against the Vietnamese, the Thai authorities threaten to retaliate by prohibiting all humanitarian operations in the camps, while Phnom Penh continues to oppose the principle of cross-border operations. The outcome is generally negative. Linda Mason and Roger Brown note that ‘neither ICRC or UNICEF had expertise in large-scale food distribution… The power that allowed to construct empires resulted directly from the mismanaged distribution system which reinforced the strength of the most irresponsible leaders at the border. The behaviour of Van Saren and In Sakhan was a predictable outgrowth of a system devoid of accountability and control… The Joint Mission unsuccessfully attempted to reform the distribution system on a number of occasions. Each attempt was staged in isolation. Upon the failure of one attempt, months would pass before the next. The efforts were not well planned and seemed designed to fail… With every failure, relief workers became more discouraged and less capable of seeing the problem as being rooted in the system itself rather than in the corrupt Khmer military leaders who exploited the system. Many became bitter and outwardly hostile toward the Khmer leadership. Their bitterness and suspicion included not only the powerful soldiers, but all Khmer people in positions of authority. As a result, relief workers grew unwilling to entrust Khmer workers with responsibility. Relief workers tried to squeeze the military and civilian leaders out of the relief program instead of implementing systems which would use their resources yet make them accountable’. The ICRC was ultimately never able to prevent Thai soldiers and Cambodian armed groups from controlling aid and its recipients. At the time of the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia in October 1989, the resumption of fighting will indicate that the Khmer Rouge have lost none of their hold over refugees, who will often be compelled by military force to return to their country. After the Paris peace agreements of October 1991 and the official closure of the Site 8 and Khao-I-Dang camps in January and March 1993 respectively, the ICRC will eventually facilitate the repatriation of Cambodians and make plans to leave Thailand.