Two events of current interest give us cause to ponder on the significance of service to the Red Cross, the Red Crescent and the Red Lion and Sun. The first is the adoption by the twenty-third International Red Cross Conference, which met recently in Bucharest, of a resolution on the “Mission of the Red Cross”; the other is the commemoration this year of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Henry Dunant's birth. On this 8th of May, however, World Red Cross Day will not only be devoted as in the past to the memory of Dunant, but also to the activities throughout the world of the voluntary workers in the institution which he founded, and their work for the promotion of peace. The resolution in question underlines the “extreme importance” of the work carried out by National Societies “in the encouragement of social responsibility and voluntary service among their members”.

A ceremony commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Henry Dunant took place on 8 May in Geneva, in the Aula of the University.

Mr. Alexandre Hay, President of the ICRC, Mr. J. A. Adefarasin, President of the League of Red Cross Societies, and Mr. Hans Haug, President of the Swiss Red Cross, delivered addresses. The Swiss Confederation, the Canton and the City of Geneva were represented at the ceremony by Mr. P. Aubert, Federal Councillor, Mr. W. Donzé, President of the Geneva State Council, and Mr. C. Ketterer, Mayor of Geneva, each of whom also addressed the guests invited to the ceremony.

Extracts from the speeches are reproduced in this issue of International Review. A booklet containing the full texts will be issued separately.

In 1976 the League adopted a new constitution. Four years of study, research and discussion were necessary until the special commission, set up by the Board of Governors in 1973, with the co-operation of National Societies, came up with what is to be the charter of the League for years to come.

At the October 1975 meeting of the Council of Delegates of the National Red Cross Societies in Geneva, Professor H. Haug, President of the Swiss Red Cross and Vice-President of the League, had proposed that a declaration should be drawn up, setting out in a condensed form the fundamental rules of humanitarian law, and rendering the lofty ideas underlying humanitarian law clearly discernible and easily understandable.

For a long time it was considered at the ICRC, as in most other international organizations, that the function of an information service was to put out information on the institution's current activities and its general aims. No attention was paid to the true needs of those sections of the public who were at the receiving end, the only concern being the ICRC's short-term interests. This one-way process meant that the people to whom this flow of information was fed received it passively but there were no means of discovering what were their reactions, in other words, there was no feed-back.

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Henry Dunant, the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, a Round Table meeting on peace, organized by the ICRC and the League of Red Cross Societies, was held in Geneva on 27 and 28 April.

The Final Report on the Re-appraisal of the Role of the Red Cross, commonly called the Tansley Report, was the subject of a detailed though not exhaustive study, carried out by the ICRC and League.

The results of this analysis appeared in a document entitled The ICRC, the League and the Tansley Report, dated August 1977, which was circulated at the Twenty-Third International Conference of the Red Cross in Bucharest.

The idea of making an overall revision of the Constitution and Bye-Laws of the League occurred in the context of a major evolution in the activities of the institution, corresponding to the changing needs of its members and of peoples, as a result of the rapid transformations of the modern world.

The Constitution Revision Commission, noting some confusion in the Constitution then in force concerning the power and functions of the League's two most important bodies, the Board of Governors and the Executive Committee, was predominantly concerned with adapting the structure to the specific character of the organization as the international federation of National Societies, and to ensure the greatest possible participation by National Red Cross Societies in the work of the organization by reinforcing the functions of its collective bodies. The Commission also wished to limit the duration of mandates in the organization and to make a rigorous distinction between the functions of the different bodies of the federation.

There emerged at the close of the three years of preparatory work by the Government Experts convened by the ICRC, from 1971 to 1973, a provision that had no counterpart in the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. This was a provision requiring the employment of legal advisers to military Commanders. It was a bold provision, for which the Canadian Experts can claim the credit for its introduction, although the idea went through a number of changes both of substance and presentation in the course of debate.

The Tansley Report does not devote a special heading to the problem of dissemination, its remarks on this subject being scattered in various chapters. In the interest of greater clarity, the ICRC and the Leage felt it would be useful to bring them together, to summarize them, so as to identify the general concepts.

The Report's comments may thus be divided into two groups.

The ICRC and the League share, to a very great extent, the Tansley Report opinions on this important question. Naturally, the planning for relief actions diifers in some respects according to whether it is related to natural disasters or to armed conflicts. However, there are important common elements in this planning which merit development and joint study by the ICRC and the League.

The concepts of assistance and protection are of fundamental significance for the Red Cross and it was therefore appropriate for the Tansley Report to devote nearly two-thirds of its pages to them.

It also seems proper that both questions should be discussed simultaneously, as they are linked in a number of ways, especially in armed conflicts and similar situations. In such situations, assistance activities often assume the character of protection operations and vice versa, to such an extent that they become inseparable. That is one reason why the International Red Cross, in article 6 of its Statutes, entrusted the ICRC with the final responsibility for carrying out the humanitarian work of the Red Cross in the event of armed conflict.

There are very few extant photographs of Henry Dunant. In an article printed in 1959, Bernard Gagnebin gave a list of seven portraits, while Daisy Mercanton in 1971 found there were eleven, plus one painting on enamel by Charles Dunant. Most of them portray Henry Dunant in the last years of his life at Heiden; three on 12 August 1895, two in 1901, and the last in 1908. In fact there are now only five known pictures of Dunant as a young man in the days of his prosperity. Apart from the portrait recently discovered by the Henry Dunant Institute, there are the two photographs taken at the time when the Red Cross was founded, two others in 1855 when Dunant was 27 years old, and only one around 1850, showing Dunant in the company of Jean-Gabriel Eynard and his wife.

In short, while recognizing that the policy of discretion has generally served the interests of the victims, the Tansley Report suggests that in future the ICRC should make this policy more flexible by engaging in certain forms of information activity which would eventually be all the more readily accepted, as they would become an integral part of established doctrine. This development, according to the Tansley Report, could only strengthen the position of the Red Cross in the eyes of authorities which violate with impunity both humane principles and humanitarian law. This change should ultimately be in the interest of the victims.

The question of peace is among the most important problems which the Red Cross has to consider. In this chapter the ICRC and the League set out their own thoughts, which must be read in conjunction. With all due knowledge of and respect for the other's considerations, each Institution attempts to bring its own specific contribution to the study and advancement of that universally cherished aspiration, peace.

Originally, and up to 1949, the law of Geneva protected only victims of wars between States. Article 3, common to the four Conventions of 1949, is applicable to all non-international armed conflicts; the Protocol additional II to these Conventions covers non-international armed conflicts in which hostilities reach a certain degree of intensity; it does not apply to situations of internal disturbances and tensions, such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts of violence and other acts of a similar nature, as not being armed conflicts (Protocol II, art. 1, par. 2).

The Tansley Report gives the following comments under the heading The concept of International Red Cross:

Members of Red Cross have an ambivalent approach to the concept ot and use of the term “International Red Cross”. On some occasions greaf effort is expended to enhance the idea of one Red Cross, of Red Cross moving as a unity, of acting in the name of the International Red Cross. On other occasions equal pains are taken to distinguish between, say, the League and the ICRC, or the ICRC and individual National Societies, and to accentuate the differences in purposes and structure of the various Red Cross organs. Which approach is adopted at any given time seems dependent upon what serves the best immediate need of the Red Cross organ involved…