The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) coordinates the world's largest private relief system for conflict situations. Its staff operates throughout the world, and in recent years the ...ICRC has mounted large operations in the Balkans and Somalia. Yet despite its very important role its internal workings are mysterious and often secretive. This book examines the ICRC from its origins in the mid-nineteenth century up to the present day, and provides a comprehensive overview of a unique private organisation, whose governing body remains all-Swiss, but which is recognized in international law as if it were an inter-governmental organization. David Forsythe focuses on the policy making and field work of the ICRC, while not ignoring international humanitarian law. He explores how it exercises its independence, impartiality, and neutrality to try to protect prisoners in Iraq, displaced and starving civilians in Somalia, and families separated by conflict in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
David Forsythe received the Distinguished Scholar Award for 2007 from the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association.
In dark skirts and bloodied boots, Clara Barton fearlessly ventured on to Civil War battlefields to tend to wounded soldiers. She later worked with civilians in Europe during the Franco-Prussian War, ...lobbied legislators to ratify the Geneva conventions, and founded and ran the American Red Cross. The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal tells the story of the charitable organization from its start in 1881, through its humanitarian aid during wars, natural disasters, and the Depression, to its relief efforts of the 1930s.
Marian Moser Jones illustrates the tension between the organization’s founding principles of humanity and neutrality and the political, economic, and moral pressures that sometimes caused it to favor one group at the expense of another.
This expansive book narrates the stories of:
• U.S. natural disasters such as the Jacksonville yellow fever epidemic of 1888, the Sea Islands hurricane of 1893, and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
• crises abroad, including the 1892 Russian famine and the Armenian massacres of 1895–96
• efforts to help civilians affected by the civil war in Cuba
• power struggles within the American Red Cross leadership and subsequent alliances with the American government
• the organization's expansion during World War I
• race riots in East St. Louis, Chicago, and Tulsa between 1917 and 1921
• help for African American and white Southerners after the Mississippi flood of 1927
• relief projects during the Dust Bowl and after the New Deal
An epilogue relates the history of the American Red Cross since the beginning of World War II and illuminates the organization's current practices as well as its international reputation.
InThe Battle for AlgeriaJennifer Johnson reinterprets one of the most violent wars of decolonization: the Algerian War (1954-1962). Johnson argues that the conflict was about who-France or the ...National Liberation Front (FLN)-would exercise sovereignty of Algeria. The fight between the two sides was not simply a military affair; it also involved diverse and competing claims about who was positioned to better care for the Algerian people's health and welfare. Johnson focuses on French and Algerian efforts to engage one another off the physical battlefield and highlights the social dimensions of the FLN's winning strategy, which targeted the local and international arenas. Relying on Algerian sources, which make clear the centrality of health and humanitarianism to the nationalists' war effort, Johnson shows how the FLN leadership constructed national health care institutions that provided critical care for the population and functioned as a protostate. Moreover, Johnson demonstrates how the FLN's representatives used postwar rhetoric about rights and national self-determination to legitimize their claims, which led to international recognition of Algerian sovereignty.
By examining the local context of the war as well as its international dimensions, Johnson deprovincializes North Africa and proposes a new way to analyze how newly independent countries and nationalist movements engage with the international order. The Algerian case exposed the hypocrisy of selectively applying universal discourse and provided a blueprint for claim-making that nonstate actors and anticolonial leaders throughout the Third World emulated. Consequently,The Battle for Algeriaexplains the FLN's broad appeal and offers new directions for studying nationalism, decolonization, human rights, public health movements, and concepts of sovereignty.
This article examines the creation of the Shôken Fund and its impact on the evolution of the Red Cross movement globally, with a focus on the first quarter of the twentieth century and post-First ...World War European reconstruction. The Shôken Fund was an initiation of the Japanese Red Cross Society in 1912 to support Red Cross activities in peacetime, administered by the International Committee of the Red Cross. It came into effect in 1920 and the first grants were allocated to Red Cross Societies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1921. The article contributes to the historiography of the Red Cross movement and twentieth century humanitarianism by arguing that the Japanese Red Cross Society, through its Shôken Fund, played an important but little known role in the transformation of the Red Cross within the first years of the post-First World War period, as it helped to facilitate a shift in focus for the ICRC from war only to one that included peacetime activities such as those advocated by the newly created League of Red Cross Societies.
The League of Red Cross Societies (LRCS) - known as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) since 1991 - has received little historical attention despite ...representing the world's largest volunteer network and being an integral part of the Red Cross Movement. Formed in the aftermath of the First World War by the national Red Cross Societies of the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan, the LRCS aspired to lead in the promotion of global public health and welfare during peacetime. Through the lens of assemblage thinking and the five assemblage elements of exteriority, capacity to evolve, internal machinery, open systems, and desire, the paper seeks to understand the longevity and resilient humanitarianism of the LRCS. In doing so, the paper provides a new conceptualisation of the LRCS that helps to explain how it survived in the rapidly changing and increasingly contested international humanitarian environment of the twentieth century.
The International Committee of the Red Cross from Geneva and its activities in the circumstances of the Second World War has been exclusively humanitarian, and the ICRC based it on the then ...applicable provisions and regulations of the International Law of War (the Law of Armed Conflict). In the aftermath of the Second World War, sporadic allegations began to arise on the ICRC's activities in the war’s circumstances, from 1939 to 1945. These allegations focused in particular on the ICRC's relations with the Authorities of the German Reich, and on the ICRC's activities in favor of the Jews during the war. Initially, the ICRC and its leadership has been facing sporadic accusations from various organizations or individuals, as well as accusations from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), that had no official relations with the ICRC, and shown open hostilities towards the ICRC in the aftermath of the Second World War. In mid-1946, the representatives of Yugoslav authorities accused the ICRC of protecting collaborators and war criminals and further aggravated the situation. The reason for the outbreak of the conflict was the issue of displaced persons, among other. The Yugoslav Red Cross started the conflict that continued through the official Yugoslav press, with the support of the Yugoslav authorities. Soon, both the Yugoslav Red Cross and the Yugoslav authorities extended their allegations towards the ICRC to the entire ICRC’s activities carried out during the war. Based on original archival sources, published sources and literature, the author presents the genesis of the conflict.
▶ The Red Cross uses social media to build relations with volunteers, community and media. ▶ Social media's two-way dialogue creates faster service, media coverage, and feedback. ▶ The Red Cross’ ...social media exhibits dialogic principles, communality and control mutuality. ▶ Barriers to use social media are staff, time, managing content and publics’ abilities.
Forty individuals from the American Red Cross were interviewed to explore the use of social media in communicating with key publics. Results show that practicing public relations through social media is effective and necessary in the emerging digital age, as shown through the Red Cross’ development of a two-way dialogue with younger constituents, the media, and the community. This two-way dialogue has been accomplished primarily through Twitter and Facebook, with barriers such as lack of staff and time, and opportunities to improve National Headquarters and local chapter relations. The insights shared by the American Red Cross are useful for both public relations scholars and professionals to help them understand and apply social media practices to build strong, lasting relationships.
Cryoprecipitate (cryo) is a plasma-derived blood product utilized during trauma resuscitation, surgery, and other major bleeding. Although local quality control metrics exist, inherent donor ...variability, and processing may confer differences in hemostatic effect between sources. The purposes of this study were to quantify procoagulant content in three global sources of cryo and evaluate their functional hemostatic effect. In this Institutional Review Board exempt study, 24 units of group A cryo from three different sources, American Red Cross single donor and pooled donor, Australian Red Cross single donor, Southwestern United States single donor, and Southwest pooled donor, were evaluated. Procoagulant factors were quantified from each source using ELISA and automated clot-based assays. Functional hemostasis was evaluated using rotational Thromboelastometry (ROTEM). Microparticles isolated from cryo units were enumerated and evaluated for cellular origin by flow cytometry, as well as their capacity to support thrombin generation. Southwestern United States single donor units demonstrated highest levels of fibrinogen, fibronectin, factor VIII, and von Willebrand factor in the selected units. In the coagulopathy model, successive doses from all cryo units were significantly correlated to decreasing coagulation time (P = 0.0100), and increasing maximum clot firmness (P = 0.0002) and alpha angle (P = 0.0009). Southwest pooled donor demonstrated significantly shorter coagulation time at all three doses (P = 0.02) than other sources. Microparticles support prothrombinase activity and thrombin generation. In this study of global cryo sources, procoagulant activity and in-vitro clot formation varied by source. This could be explained by variance in production and storage protocols. Further study is warranted to assess functional variance in cryo to optimize and standardize the use of cryo products.
The Russian Red Cross Society was abolished in Soviet Russia in January 1918, but the Soviet Red Cross was created only in 1923. Part of the Russian Red Cross Society (RRCS) staff was able to ...emigrate and continue its activities abroad, aimed at helping and supporting Russian emigration. The article investigates the role of the RRCS in emigration; analyzes the number of people who had received assistance, including medical aid; and states, in which European countries the RRCS was most active. The chapters of the International Red Cross rendered prodigious assistance to the Russian emigration: in particular, the American Red Cross financed a sanitarium for emigrants with tuberculosis, and provided assistance to an orphanage in Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak Red Cross, both directly and through the structures of the so-called Committee of Zemstvos and Towns for Assistance to Russian Citizens Abroad (Zemgor), participated in supporting emigration: it financed the stay of students in sanitariums and hospitals, and allocated funds for the functioning of the division of medical assistance at the Zemgor. Despite the fact that the Czechoslovak Red Cross was formed just in 1919, on account of the active actions of its chairman, Alice Masaryk (the daughter of the Czechoslovak President), it was able to attract financial resources and organize assistance to people, including Russian emigrants.
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Aquest article examina l’articulació del principi humanitari de neutralitat i la llengua com a vehicle d’aquest posicionament polític en el Comitè Internacional de la Creu Roja (CICR). El CICR és un ...actor humanitari neutral reconegut per les Convencions de Ginebra i històricament vinculat a la neutralitat política i al multilingüisme suïssos. A través d’entrevistes, grups de discussió i documents institucionals, analitzem la negociació lingüística de la neutralitat per part dels delegats del CICR en trobades humanitàries. Basant-se en el procés semiòtic d’iconització (Gal i Irvine, 2000) amb un enfocament en la política de corporització (Bucholtz i Hall, 2016), l’anàlisi revela que les ideologies raciolingüístiques reforcen el domini de l’anglès (Footitt et al., 2020) i la figura imaginada de l’humanitari europeu, home i blanc (Fassin, 2012) que no parla llengües locals ni regionals com ara l’àrab. La neutralitat sorgeix com a concepte contextual i relacional basat en una negociació en termes de possessió d’un repertori lingüístic, corporització racialitzada i proximitat cultural. A l’Orient Mitjà i el nord d’Àfrica, això es tradueix en la percepció per part dels grups d’interès d’una menor neutralitat vinculada als “occidentals” i “àrabs” que parlen àrab, els quals desestabilitzen la figura humanitària imaginada i vinculada a la neutralitat.
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