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1 - “Rights, not charity”: René Cassin and war victims

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

Bruno Cabanes
Bruno Cabanes
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
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Summary

“The war left deep and permanent scars on me, and on many of my comrades…I could not accept the idea that national solidarity towards disabled veterans would be restricted to a kind of charitable handout.”

René Cassin, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, Oslo, December 10, 1968

At the end of World War I, an entire generation of veterans struggled to return to civilian life. Their ranks had been decimated by the considerable losses sustained during the conflict. In Europe, 10 million men lost their lives in combat; 20 million were wounded; 8 million suffered from various kinds of disabilities. The families who welcomed them home were often at a loss to cope with the severity of the soldiers’ injuries and trauma, with their own inability to care for them, and with the impossibility of returning to pre-war life. These psychological problems were compounded by economic difficulties when a demobilized soldier was disabled, or when a family's principal provider had been killed in action. Widows, often young, numbered in the millions. There were nearly 6 million orphans when the Armistice was signed, and likely 3 million more in the years that followed, as veterans died from the consequences of their injuries.

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The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924 , pp. 18 - 75
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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