Henry Pomeroy Davison

Henry Pomeroy Davison (June 12, 1867 in Troy, Pennsylvania - May 6, 1922 in Locust Valley, New York) was an American banker and philanthropist. The oldest of the four children of George B. and Henrietta Davison, Henry's mother died when he was just eight years old. After completing his education he became a bookkeeper in a bank managed by one of his relatives, and at age 21 he gained employment at a bank in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the hometown of his wife Kate Trubee. Three years later he moved to New York City where he was employed by the Astor Place Bank, and sometime later became president of the Liberty National Bank. Several years later he was involved in the founding and formation of the Bankers Trust Company. In 1909 he became a senior partner at JP Morgan & Company, and in 1910 he was a participant in the secretive meeting on Jekyll Island, Georgia that may have led to the creation of the Federal Reserve and has generated much speculation over the years.

Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale was born on 12 May 1820 at the Villa La Columbia in Florence; she was named after the city of her birth. Her father, William Edward Nightingale (1794-1874), was son of William Shore, a Sheffield banker. When Nightingale came of age on 21 February 1815 he inherited the Derbyshire estates at Lea Hurst and Wood end in Derbyshire from, and assumed the surname of Peter Nightingale, his mother's uncle. On 1 June 1818 he married Frances Smith, a strong supporter of the abolition of slavery. They had two daughters, Parthenope and Florence. "Parthe" was given the classical name of Naples where she was born.

Florence Nightingale was brought up at Lea Hall; in 1825 the family moved to Lea Hurst which Nightingale had just built. In 1826 he also bought Embley Park, in Hampshire and in1828 he became High Sheriff of the county. The family invariably spent the summer at Lea Hurst and the winter at Embley Park, occasionally visiting London. Florence Nightingale had a broad education and came to dislike the lack of opportunity for females in her social circle. She began to visit the poor but became very interested in looking after those who were ill. She visited hospitals in London and around the country to investigate possible occupations for women there. However, nursing was seen as employment that needed neither study nor intelligence; nurses were considered to be little less than prostitutes at that time.

Crimean War

Crimean War (1853-1856) was a battle that occurred between the Russian empire against the allies of France, the United Kingdom, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and Ottoman Empire. Most conflicts occurred in the Crimea peninsula, with other battles occurred in western Turkey and the Baltic sea. Crimean War is sometimes considered as the first modern conflicts that affect the war in the future. 

Krimean War was known by different names. In Russia known as the "Oriental War" (Russian: Восточная война, Vostochnaya Voina), and in Britain at that time is sometimes known as "Russia's War." 

Crimean War famous for its logistical and tactical mistakes on both sides. However, it is considered to be war "modern" first, such as "introduced technical changes which affect the future governance of war," including the first tactical use of railways and telegraph. It is also famous for the work of Florence Nightingale, who pioneered modern nursing practice when caring for a wounded British soldier.

From Solferino To The Birth Of Contemporary International Humanitarian Law

The early history of most institutions has been blurred by the passage of time. Even when their initial form can be clearly discerned, it often bears little resemblance to the institution as we know it today. The Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a striking exception - it can be traced back to a precise date, and its origins are relatively well known. This first phase is worth considering in detail, because it casts light on the entire subsequent development of the Red Cross.

On 24 June 1859 the armies of France and Sardinia engaged Austrian forces near the northern Italian village of Solferino. This decisive battle in the struggle for Italian unity was also the most horrific bloodbath Europe had known since Waterloo: in ten hours of fierce fighting, more than 6,000 soldiers were killed and more than 30,000 wounded.

The medical services of the Franco-Sardinian armies were totally overwhelmed, exposing the negligence of the supply corps: the French army had more veterinary surgeons than doctors; transport was woefully inadequate; crates of field dressings were dumped far from the front line and sent back to Paris, unopened, at the end of the campaign. General de la Bollardière, French Quartermaster-General, reported that it took six days to bring in 10,212 wounded from the field.

Henry Dunant – the destiny of the founder of the Red Cross

Jean-Henri Dunant was born on 8 May 1828 in Geneva to a middle-class Calvinist family. His early initiatives included participating in the creation of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in 1852 and the World Alliance of YMCAs in 1855.

He was employed by the private bank Lullin et Sautter and in 1853 became involved in projects to develop farmland in Algeria. In June 1859, because of financial difficulties linked to these enterprises, he decided to appeal directly to Napoleon III. However, the emperor was in the field directing a military campaign against the Austrian army in northern Italy. Dunant therefore set out for Italy with the intention of putting his complaints against French colonial bureaucracy to the sovereign.

The turning point: Solferino

Dunant was deeply shocked by the sight of the battlefield on 24 June 1859, where he witnessed suffering, blood and death. The clash between the French and Sardinian forces on one side, and the Austrian army on the other, had been fierce. The casualties were staggering: 40,000 dead and wounded. The medical services were totally overwhelmed: there was just one surgeon for every 1,000 men, the stretcher bearers were poorly trained and boxes of medicines and bandages left at the rear never reached the front lines.

From the battle of Solferino to the eve of the First World War

On 24 June 1859, during the War of Italian Unification, Franco-Sardinian forces clashed with Austrian troops near the small town of Solferino in northern Italy. On that day, a citizen of Geneva, Switzerland, Henry Dunant, was travelling to the area to meet Napoleon III on personal matters. On the evening of the battle, Dunant arrived in the village of Castiglione, where more than 9,000 wounded had taken refuge. In the main church, the Chiesa Maggiore, where thousands were lying unattended, Dunant and the local women strove for several days and nights to give them water, wash and dress their wounds and hand out tobacco, tea and fruit.

History of the emblems

The Red Cross

The Red Cross emblem was officially approved in Geneva in 1863.

The Red Cross flag is not to be confused with the St George's Cross which is the flag of England, Barcelona, Freiburg, and several other places. In order to avoid this confusion the protected symbol is sometimes referred to as the "Greek Red Cross"; that term is also used in United States law to describe the Red Cross. The red cross of the St George cross extends to the edge of the flag, whereas the red cross on the Red Cross flag does not.

The Red Cross flag is often confused with the Flag of Switzerland which is the opposite of it. In 1906, to put an end to the argument of Turkey that the flag took its roots from Christianity, it was decided to promote officially the idea that the Red Cross flag had been formed by reversing the federal colours of Switzerland, although no clear evidence of this origin had ever been found

Thing To Remember

Presidents of the Federation
As of November 2009, the president of the IFRC is Tadateru Konoe (Japanese Red Cross). The vice presidents are Paul Bierch (Kenya), Jaslin Uriah Salmon (Jamaica), Mohamed El Maadid (Qatar) and Bengt Westerberg (Sweden).

Former presidents (until 1977 titled "Chairman") have been:
    * 1919 – 1922: Henry Davison (United States)
    * 1922 – 1935: John Barton Payne (U.S.)
    * 1935 – 1938: Cary Travers Grayson (U.S.)
    * 1938 – 1944: Norman Davis (U.S.)
    * 1944 – 1945: Jean de Muralt (Switzerland)
    * 1945 – 1950: Basil O'Connor (U.S.)
    * 1950 – 1959: Emil Sandström (Sweden)
    * 1959 – 1965: John MacAulay (Canada)
    * 1965 – 1977: José Barroso Chávez (Mexico)
    * 1977 – 1981: Adetunji Adefarasin (Nigeria)

    * 1981 – 1987: Enrique de la Mata (Spain)

    * 1987 – 1997: Mario Enrique Villarroel Lander (Venezuela)

    * 1997 – 2000: Astrid Nøklebye Heiberg (Norway)

    * 2001 - 2009: Juan Manuel del Toro y Rivera (Spain)

    * 2009 - : Tadateru Konoé (Japan)

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

In 1919, representatives from the national Red Cross societies of Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the US came together in Paris to found the "League of Red Cross Societies". The original idea was Henry Davison's, then president of the American Red Cross. This move, led by the American Red Cross, expanded the international activities of the Red Cross movement beyond the strict mission of the ICRC to include relief assistance in response to emergency situations which were not caused by war (such as man-made or natural disasters). The ARC already had great disaster relief mission experience extending back to its foundation.

The formation of the League, as an additional international Red Cross organization alongside the ICRC, was not without controversy for a number of reasons. The ICRC had, to some extent, valid concerns about a possible rivalry between both organizations. The foundation of the League was seen as an attempt to undermine the leadership position of the ICRC within the movement and to gradually transfer most of its tasks and competencies to a multilateral institution. In addition to that, all founding members of the League were national societies from countries of the Entente or from associated partners of the Entente.

The ICRC after the Second World War

On August 12, 1949, further revisions to the existing two Geneva Conventions were adopted. An additional convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea", now called the second Geneva Convention, was brought under the Geneva Convention umbrella as a successor to the 1907 Hague Convention X. The 1929 Geneva convention "relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War" may have been the second Geneva Convention from a historical point of view (because it was actually formulated in Geneva), but after 1949 it came to be called the third Convention because it came later chronologically than the Hague Convention. Reacting to the experience of World War II, the Fourth Geneva Convention, a new Convention "relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War," was established. Also, the additional protocols of June 8, 1977 were intended to make the conventions apply to internal conflicts such as civil wars.
Today, the four conventions and their added protocols contain more than 600 articles, a remarkable expansion when compared to the mere 10 articles in the first 1864 convention.

The ICRC and World War II

The legal basis of the work of the ICRC during World War II were the Geneva Conventions in their 1929 revision. The activities of the Committee were similar to those during World War I: visiting and monitoring POW camps, organizing relief assistance for civilian populations, and administering the exchange of messages regarding prisoners and missing persons. By the end of the war, 179 delegates had conducted 12,750 visits to POW camps in 41 countries. The Central Information Agency on Prisoners-of-War (Zentralauskunftsstelle für Kriegsgefangene) had a staff of 3,000, the card index tracking prisoners contained 45 million cards, and 120 million messages were exchanged by the Agency. One major obstacle was that the Nazi-controlled German Red Cross refused to cooperate with the Geneva statutes including blatant violations such as the deportation of Jews from Germany and the mass murders conducted in the Nazi concentration camps. Moreover, two other main parties to the conflict, the Soviet Union and Japan, were not party to the 1929 Geneva Conventions and were not legally required to follow the rules of the conventions.

The ICRC during World War I

With the outbreak of World War I, the ICRC found itself confronted with enormous challenges that it could handle only by working closely with the national Red Cross societies. Red Cross nurses from around the world, including the United States and Japan, came to support the medical services of the armed forces of the European countries involved in the war. On October 15, 1914, immediately after the start of the war, the ICRC set up its International Prisoners-of-War (POW) Agency, which had about 1,200 mostly volunteer staff members by the end of 1914. By the end of the war, the Agency had transferred about 20 million letters and messages, 1.9 million parcels, and about 18 million Swiss francs in monetary donations to POWs of all affected countries. Furthermore, due to the intervention of the Agency, about 200,000 prisoners were exchanged between the warring parties, released from captivity and returned to their home country. The organizational card index of the Agency accumulated about 7 million records from 1914 to 1923, each card representing an individual prisoner or missing person.

The card index led to the identification of about 2 million POWs and the ability to contact their families. The complete index is on loan today from the ICRC to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva. The right to access the index is still strictly restricted to the ICRC.

The International Committee of the Red Cross

Solferino, Henry Dunant and the foundation of the ICRC

Until the middle of the 19th century, there were no organized and well-established army nursing systems for casualties and no safe and protected institutions to accommodate and treat those who were wounded on the battlefield. In June 1859, the Swiss businessman Henry Dunant traveled to Italy to meet French emperor Napoléon III with the intention of discussing difficulties in conducting business in Algeria, at that time occupied by France. When he arrived in the small town of Solferino on the evening of June 24, he witnessed the Battle of Solferino, an engagement in the Austro-Sardinian War. In a single day, about 40,000 soldiers on both sides died or were left wounded on the field. Henry Dunant was shocked by the terrible aftermath of the battle, the suffering of the wounded soldiers, and the near-total lack of medical attendance and basic care. He completely abandoned the original intent of his trip and for several days he devoted himself to helping with the treatment and care for the wounded. He succeeded in organizing an overwhelming level of relief assistance by motivating the local population to aid without discrimination.
Back in his home in Geneva, he decided to write a book entitled A Memory of Solferino which he published with his own money in 1862. He sent copies of the book to leading political and military figures throughout Europe. In addition to penning a vivid description of his experiences in Solferino in 1859, he explicitly advocated the formation of national voluntary relief organizations to help nurse wounded soldiers in the case of war. In addition, he called for the development of international treaties to guarantee the protection of neutral medics and field hospitals for soldiers wounded on the battlefield.

ICRC and Red Crescent Movement

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is an international humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers worldwide[1] which started to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for the human being, and to prevent and alleviate human suffering, without any discrimination based on nationality, race, sex, religious beliefs, class or political opinions.

The often-heard term International Red Cross is actually a misnomer, as no official organization as such exists bearing that name. In reality, the movement consists of several distinct organizations that are legally independent from each other, but are united within the Movement through common basic principles, objectives, symbols, statutes and governing organs. The Movement's parts:

History of Organization

Since the Red Cross has figured four times in the award of the Nobel Peace Prize (1917, 1944, and 1963), as well as in the award to Henri Dunant (1901), and has therefore been made the subject of various presentation speeches and Nobel lectures which give details of its inception, history, and activities, the following brief summary of its origins and present organization is intended as a frame of reference for all four of these awards rather than as the typical history ordinarily included for each award to an organization.

Origins

In February of 1863 in Geneva, Switzerland, the Société genevoise d'utilité publique [Geneva Public Welfare Society] set up a committee of five Swiss citizens to look into the ideas offered by Henri Dunant in his book Un Souvenir de Solferino - ideas dealing with protection of the sick and wounded during combat. The committee had as its members: Guillaume Henri Dufour (1787-1875), a general of the Swiss army and a writer of military tracts who became the committee's president for its first year and its honorary president thereafter; Gustave Moynier (1826-1910), a young lawyer and president of the sponsoring Public Welfare Society, who from this time on devoted his life to Red Cross work; Louis Appia (1818-1898) and Theodore Maunoir (1806-1869), both medical doctors; and Henri Dunant himself.

Guided by Moynier's talent for organization, the committee called an international conference for October of 1863 which, with sixteen nations represented, adopted various pertinent resolutions and principles, along with an international emblem, and appealed to all nations to form voluntary units to help wartime sick and wounded. These units eventually became the National Red Cross Societies, and the Committee of Five itself eventually became the International Committee of the Red Cross, with Gustave ldoynier as its president (1864-1910) both before and after it took this name.

A Memory Of Solferino (Complete)

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International Committee of the Red Cross

ICRC publication 1986  ref. 0361 by Henry Dunant
A Memory of Solferino
Complete text

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Foreword

Ever since its inception over a century ago, the Red Cross has been providing protection and assistance to those in distress.

In normal circumstances, in the organized society in which he usually lives, man is protected by laws and finds sustenance close at hand. But there are also situations, such as armed conflicts or natural disasters, when society is thrown out of kilter, laws are violated, man's natural environment is turned into chaos, and his safety, health and very survival are threatened: in times like those the Red Cross strives to help and protect the victims.

Code of Conduct

for The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief

Introduction
The Code of Conduct for The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief, was developed and agreed upon by eight of the world's largest disaster response agencies in the summer of 1994 and represents a huge leap forward in setting standards for disaster response. It is being used by the International Federation to monitor its own standards of relief delivery and to encourage other agencies to set similar standards.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s there has been a steady growth in the number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), both national and international, involved in disaster relief. In the autumn of 1994 there were over 120 NGOs registered in Kigali, the war ravaged capital of Rwanda.

Many of these agencies, including National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the church agencies, Oxfam, the Save the Children Fund or CARE, have a history going back many decades and have gained a reputation for effective work. Others, more recently formed, such as Médecins Sans Frontières, have rapidly evolved to become respected operators. Along with these large and well-known agencies there are today a multitude of small, newly-formed groups, often coming into existence to assist in one specific disaster or in a specialised field of work.

Henry Dunant – the destiny of the founder of the Red Cross

Jean-Henri Dunant was born on 8 May 1828 in Geneva to a middle-class Calvinist family. His early initiatives included participating in the creation of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in 1852 and the World Alliance of YMCAs in 1855.

He was employed by the private bank Lullin et Sautter and in 1853 became involved in projects to develop farmland in Algeria. In June 1859, because of financial difficulties linked to these enterprises, he decided to appeal directly to Napoleon III. However, the emperor was in the field directing a military campaign against the Austrian army in northern Italy. Dunant therefore set out for Italy with the intention of putting his complaints against French colonial bureaucracy to the sovereign.

The turning point: Solferino

Dunant was deeply shocked by the sight of the battlefield on 24 June 1859, where he witnessed suffering, blood and death. The clash between the French and Sardinian forces on one side, and the Austrian army on the other, had been fierce. The casualties were staggering: 40,000 dead and wounded. The medical services were totally overwhelmed: there was just one surgeon for every 1,000 men, the stretcher bearers were poorly trained and boxes of medicines and bandages left at the rear never reached the front lines.

From Solferino to the birth of contemporary international humanitarian law

The early history of most institutions has been blurred by the passage of time. Even when their initial form can be clearly discerned, it often bears little resemblance to the institution as we know it today. The Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a striking exception - it can be traced back to a precise date, and its origins are relatively well known. This first phase is worth considering in detail, because it casts light on the entire subsequent development of the Red Cross.

On 24 June 1859 the armies of France and Sardinia engaged Austrian forces near the northern Italian village of Solferino. This decisive battle in the struggle for Italian unity was also the most horrific bloodbath Europe had known since Waterloo: in ten hours of fierce fighting, more than 6,000 soldiers were killed and more than 30,000 wounded.


The medical services of the Franco-Sardinian armies were totally overwhelmed, exposing the negligence of the supply corps: the French army had more veterinary surgeons than doctors; transport was woefully inadequate; crates of field dressings were dumped far from the front line and sent back to Paris, unopened, at the end of the campaign. General de la Bollardière, French Quartermaster-General, reported that it took six days to bring in 10,212 wounded from the field.

From the battle of Solferino to the eve of the First World War

On 24 June 1859, during the War of Italian Unification, Franco-Sardinian forces clashed with Austrian troops near the small town of Solferino in northern Italy. On that day, a citizen of Geneva, Switzerland, Henry Dunant, was travelling to the area to meet Napoleon III on personal matters. On the evening of the battle, Dunant arrived in the village of Castiglione, where more than 9,000 wounded had taken refuge. In the main church, the Chiesa Maggiore, where thousands were lying unattended, Dunant and the local women strove for several days and nights to give them water, wash and dress their wounds and hand out tobacco, tea and fruit.

Dunant remained in Castiglione until 27 June and then set out again, returning to Geneva on 11 July. He was beset by financial difficulties, but could not forget what he had seen, and in 1862 he published a work entitled A Memory of Solferino. In it he described the battle and the wounded of the Chiesa Maggiore, concluding with a question: