International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

POVERTY WOULD NOT immediately seem to be the focus of the International Red Cross. However, addressing poverty's causes is directly linked to the Red Cross's [Page 569]mission of responding to natural or human-made calamity. Human need in time of catastrophe is the primary focus of the 183 national Red Cross organizations within the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which claims to be the world's largest humanitarian organization. The only larger worldwide organizations of national entities are the United Nations, with 191 member nations, and the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the international soccer governing body, with 207 national member societies.

The Red Cross was started in 1864 by an urgent need to treat battlefield wounded. The focus of the various international Red Cross societies worldwide has expanded over the years, and some of the locally autonomous national member societies have diversified more than others. For example, the American Red Cross provides relief in time of disaster, but also offers first aid and water safety education and is a key administrator of human blood supplies for medical needs—as well as empowerment of the impoverished.

Juan M. Suarez del Toro, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, speaking to the United Nations Economic and Social Council in Geneva on July 1, 2003, stated: “Many of the world's poverty priorities concern crises of direct interest and concern to the International Federation and to over 180 National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in almost every country in the world. They will be central issues for National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies when they conduct their own dialogues with governments and other national partners.

“These issues will be at the heart of the December 2003 International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, which will also address the vital issue of community involvement and local capacity-building. This is the front line of the struggle against poverty and all affronts to human dignity. It is here that the most effective partnerships are formed, most frequently with Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies at the national or local level.”

The founding idea behind the Red Cross was treating wartime wounded as well as protecting those coming to their aid. Prior to that time, armed forces' medical services deployed on the battlefield were not entitled to any form of legal protection. Doctors and nurses, just like the soldiers they cared for, were the direct targets of attack. It was not until 1864, at the instigation of the nations then forming the International Red Cross, that the first Geneva Convention was signed and a universal protective emblem—a red cross on a white background—began to signify noncombatant relief workers on the battlefield.

The international Red Cross movement began when Gustave Moynier, the president Geneva Society for Public Utility (GSPU), received in the mail a book, A Memory of Solferino, by Henri Dunant. As president of the prestigious GSPU, Moynier was accustomed to receiving appeals for various causes, but the graphic depictions of suffering on the battlefields held his attention. Dunant described the bloody carnage at the Battle of Solferino, Italy, in 1859. There, French and Sardinian allies under Napoleon III had fought the Austrian armies of Emperor Francis Joseph. Dunant described young soldiers wounded and abandoned to agonizing death because their armies lacked doctors, nurses, dressings, or field hospitals to stay behind and care for casualties. Dunant appealed for the formation of voluntary aid societies that could furnish supplies and trained medical workers to attend to this humanitarian need.

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