Red Cross

A red cross on a white background is one of the world's most renowned symbols. It demarcates a global network of organizations that provide relief in time of need. The Red Cross is also a unique idea about war and neutrality that was turned into a relief agency in the 1860s. This initiative has since then grown and proliferated to such an extent that it today better fits the description of a complex global network of organizations working in the service of humankind. The red cross, as both an emblem and organizational name, is nevertheless a topic so controversial it took more than a century before it was decided that the different bodies of the Red Cross movement could choose a red cross, a red crescent, or a more neutral hollow red crystal as an emblem.

At the moment, the Red Cross is represented in 186 countries; encompasses close to 100 million members and volunteers; employs more than 300,000 persons; and has an aggregated annual budget that exceeds US$1 billion. All its work is supposed to follow seven fundamental principles: humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity, and universality. Its contemporary operations can roughly be divided into the following core areas: promotion and observance of humanitarian law and principles; community health care; and disaster preparedness and response.

The development of the Red Cross is linked to some larger social processes that have profoundly altered both our perspectives of the world and our own position within it. Thus, it is particularly interesting to consider the Red Cross movement and its development in relation to globalization. One example of this concerns how the Red Cross has developed in parallel with the major conflicts and atrocities during the 20th century; another is how it has provided momentum to the global advancement of such typical modern ideas as human rights and international humanitarian law.

This entry provides some key data regarding primarily the formative years of the Red Cross and its further developments during the 20th century. This overview is combined with brief descriptions of both contemporary operations, governance structures, and a short discussion of the emblem issue. The underlying theme connecting these parts concerns how a global civil society organization, such as the Red Cross, over time and space, can embody and handle the somewhat ambiguous truism of globalization—act local, think global. Although the Red Cross has always strived to maintain its independence and neutrality as well as to [Page 1440]create a global unity through an internal collective identity spanning across geographical, political, and ethnical borders, it is also a highly diversified organization profoundly dependent on the many nation-states in which it exists and works. The proximity to national governments and their agendas is attributed partly to the Geneva conventions and partly to the many existing national Red Cross societies and their semipublic relationship with state authorities in their respective countries. This scenario produces a situation requiring a constant and delicate balancing act between the acceptance and handling of national and subnational divergences in all operations and the simultaneous (re)creation of common principles, ideas, and a more general agenda as well as a specific and global organizational identity and culture.

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