A Twilight Zone? Diplomacy and the International Committee of the Red Cross

Abstract

The Red Cross emerged from the battlefields of Europe in 1863, at a time when information was scarce and obligations were narrow. It operated at the heart of conflict and in the shady halls of government, but rarely more widely or more publicly than that. Its objective was simple: to minimise human suffering by persuading warring parties to allow it access to zones of conflict, so that it might provide medicine and emergency relief with impunity. If the presence of the Red Cross neither helped nor hindered either side, so the argument went, its services would be to everyone’s advantage — and so it has been for almost a century and a half.

Neither in the 1860s nor today are the causes of a war, or its legality, challenged by the International Committee. It is the way that war is conducted that matters, the way in which the men and women waging it behave towards their enemies, and the necessity of drawing up rules and codes that all those who adhere to the Conventions will respect themselves and monitor in others.

(Moorehead, 1998: 29)