The Red Cross
Solferino, Geneva
Key figures: Henry Dunant, Gustave Moynier, Guillaume-Henri Dufour, Louis Appia, Théodore Maunoir
HLS (German): Red Cross
Solferino (24 June 1859). Henry Dunant, a Geneva businessman, is in the Lombard plain on the day of the Battle of Solferino between the French and Piedmontese on one side and the Austrians on the other. He is shocked and outraged by the abandonment of thousands of wounded and tries to organise relief on the spot with the people of the nearby villages. In 1862 he publishes Un souvenir de Solférino, which is a great success in Europe and contains two proposals: to make medical personnel “neutral” and to set up relief societies for the war wounded in every country.
The Committee of Five (1863). Another Genevan, Gustave Moynier, presents Dunant’s ideas to the Geneva Society for Public Welfare. In February 1863 a five-member commission, Moynier, General Guillaume-Henri Dufour (see the Sonderbund stage), Dunant and the doctors Louis Appia and Théodore Maunoir, forms an “International Committee for Relief to the Wounded”, the future International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In October 1863 the committee brings together in Geneva experts and representatives of several governments, who adopt ten resolutions: they are the basis of the future national Red Cross societies.
The first Geneva Convention (1864). At the committee’s request, the Federal Council convenes a diplomatic conference in Geneva: on 22 August 1864 the first Geneva Convention for the protection of wounded soldiers is signed. Hospitals, ambulances and medical staff become neutral and must be respected by all belligerents. It is the birth certificate of international humanitarian law, which the ICRC will later extend to war at sea (1899), prisoners of war (1929) and civilians (1949).
A symbol to protect. To recognise those who bring help, a sign visible from afar is needed. In 1863 a red cross on a white ground is proposed, the Swiss flag with its colours reversed, and adopted the following year. In 1876 the Ottoman Empire adopts the red crescent, officially recognised in 1929; from 1929 to 1980 Iran’s red lion and sun is also admitted. To avoid any religious connotation, a third emblem, the red crystal, is added in 2005.
Dunant, Moynier and the ICRC. The founders soon go their separate ways: Moynier leads the committee from 1864 to 1910, while Dunant, ruined by the failure of his business, leaves Geneva in 1867 and lives for years in poverty. Rediscovered in Heiden in 1895, in 1901 he receives the first Nobel Peace Prize, together with the French pacifist Frédéric Passy. As early as 1870 the ICRC opens an agency in Basel for the wounded of the Franco-Prussian War, and in the First World War its Agency for Prisoners of War employs up to 1,200 people. In the Second World War the ICRC helps millions of prisoners, but according to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland it fails to prevent the genocide of the Jews, and its policy towards the Nazis has been judged too timid. The Swiss Red Cross is founded in 1866.
Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, photograph
Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Telemaco Signorini, Un episodio della battaglia di Solferino, 1859
Wikimedia Commons, public domain
The first page of the handwritten minutes of the diplomatic conference in Geneva, opened on 8 August 1864, which led to the first Convention, ICRC Library
Photo Roman Deckert, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The three emblems of the Movement: the red cross (1864), the red crescent (adopted 1876, recognised 1929) and the red crystal (2005)
Graphic: Artistwall, from public-domain symbols
Gustave Moynier, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross from 1864 to 1910
Wikimedia Commons, public domain
The first page of Henry Dunant’s Un souvenir de Solférino, 1862
Wikimedia Commons, public domain
The original of the first Geneva Convention of 22 August 1864, International Red Cross Museum, Geneva
Photo Benoît Prieur, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0
The flag of a French Red Cross ambulance used in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, International Red Cross Museum, Geneva
Photo Benoît Prieur, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0