Founding of the Red Cross (1863) and First Geneva Convention

The founding of the Red Cross took place in Geneva in 1863, when a small committee of citizens set out to improve care for soldiers wounded in war. Inspired by Henri Dunant’s account of the Battle of Solferino, the committee organised an international conference that year and persuaded governments to sign the first Geneva Convention on 22 August 1864. Together these steps created both the Red Cross movement and modern international humanitarian law.

Background: wounded soldiers in nineteenth-century war

In the mid-nineteenth century, armies had few doctors and little transport for the wounded. After large battles, thousands of injured men could lie untreated for days, and medical staff and field hospitals had no legal protection from attack or capture.

The Crimean War had drawn public attention to this problem through newspaper reports and the work of Florence Nightingale and others. But there was no permanent system to provide help, and no international rule requiring armies to care for enemy wounded.

Dunant was not the first to suggest such measures. In earlier centuries, commanders had sometimes agreed local truces to spare each other’s hospitals, and during the Crimean War Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna organised a community of nursing sisters for the Russian army. In 1861 the Neapolitan surgeon Ferdinando Palasciano argued that wounded soldiers should be treated as neutral. What was new in Geneva was the combination of a permanent organisation and a binding treaty open to all states.

Henri Dunant and Solferino

Henri Dunant was a Genevan businessman who travelled to northern Italy in June 1859, hoping to meet Napoleon III about a business venture in French-ruled Algeria. He arrived just after the Battle of Solferino, where some 35,000-40,000 men had been killed, wounded or gone missing in a single day.

In the town of Castiglione delle Stiviere, Dunant helped local people care for thousands of wounded soldiers of all nations. Back in Geneva he wrote A Memory of Solferino, published at his own expense in November 1862. The book described the battle and its aftermath in vivid detail and made two proposals: permanent volunteer relief societies in every country, trained in peacetime to help army medical services in war, and an international agreement to protect the wounded and those who cared for them.

The book was widely read and translated, and it reached rulers, generals and reformers across Europe.

The Committee of Five

Gustave Moynier, a lawyer and president of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare, took up Dunant’s ideas. On 9 February 1863 the society appointed a committee of five to study them: Dunant, Moynier, General Guillaume-Henri Dufour, a respected Swiss army commander, and two doctors, Louis Appia and Théodore Maunoir.

The committee held its first meeting on 17 February 1863 and called itself the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded. Dufour served as its first president, with Moynier and Dunant doing much of the practical work. In 1876 it adopted the name International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The 1863 conference

The committee invited governments and private individuals to a conference in Geneva, held from 26 to 29 October 1863. Representatives from more than a dozen states attended, together with private delegates.

The conference adopted resolutions calling for national relief committees in each country, volunteer nurses to work under military command, and a common distinctive sign: a white armband with a red cross. It also expressed the wish that governments would declare medical personnel and the wounded to be neutral. National societies soon began to form, starting with Württemberg in late 1863.

The Geneva Convention of 1864

At the committee’s urging, the Swiss Federal Council convened a diplomatic conference in Geneva in August 1864. On 22 August 1864, twelve states signed the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field: Baden, Belgium, Denmark, France, Hesse, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia, Spain, Switzerland and Württemberg.

The convention had just ten articles. Its main principles were:

• Military ambulances and hospitals were to be recognised as neutral and protected while they held wounded or sick soldiers.
• Medical staff and chaplains were protected while carrying out their duties.
• Local civilians who helped the wounded were to be respected.
• Wounded and sick soldiers were to be collected and cared for, whatever their nationality.
• A red cross on a white ground was adopted as the protective emblem for hospitals, ambulances and personnel.

The emblem

The choice of a red cross on a white background was practical: it was simple, visible at a distance and easy to make. The 1863 and 1864 texts did not explain its origin. The Geneva Convention of 1906 later stated that the emblem was formed by reversing the federal colours of Switzerland as a compliment to that country.

The emblem was never intended to be a Christian symbol, but it was sometimes seen that way, which led to the adoption of the red crescent by the Ottoman Empire and, for a time, the red lion and sun by Persia. In 2005 a further emblem without religious associations, the red crystal, was added by a protocol to the Geneva Conventions.

Misuse of the emblem has been a concern since the beginning, because its protective value depends on it being respected and used only by authorised medical services and Red Cross bodies.

Key people

• Henri Dunant provided the original vision through his book and campaigning.
• Gustave Moynier organised the committee and led the ICRC for decades as its president from 1864 to 1910.
• Guillaume-Henri Dufour lent the project military credibility and chaired the 1864 conference.
• Louis Appia and Théodore Maunoir were Geneva doctors; Appia served as one of the first ICRC delegates in war.

Early tests and growth

The new system was tested almost at once. During the Second Schleswig War of 1864 between Denmark and Prussia and Austria, Appia and the Dutch officer Charles van de Velde went to the front as the committee’s first delegates. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, national societies played a large role.

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1876-1878 the Ottoman Empire used a red crescent instead of a cross, an emblem later recognised under the conventions. The United States joined the convention in 1882 after a campaign by Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross.

Dunant’s own fortunes collapsed. After his business ventures failed he was declared bankrupt in 1867, left Geneva and fell out with Moynier and the committee. He lived for years in poverty and obscurity until a journalist rediscovered him in the 1890s. In 1901 he shared the first Nobel Peace Prize with Frédéric Passy.

Timeline

• 1859, 24 June: Battle of Solferino; Dunant helps care for the wounded at Castiglione.
• 1862, November: A Memory of Solferino is published in Geneva.
• 1863, 9 February: The Geneva Society for Public Welfare appoints the committee of five.
• 1863, 17 February: First meeting of the committee.
• 1863, 26-29 October: International conference in Geneva adopts the red cross emblem.
• 1864, 22 August: Twelve states sign the first Geneva Convention.
• 1876: The committee takes the name International Committee of the Red Cross.
• 1901: Dunant shares the first Nobel Peace Prize.

Why it matters

The founding of the Red Cross created the world’s largest humanitarian network, today active in nearly every country. The 1864 Geneva Convention was the first general treaty to limit the suffering of war, and it grew into the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 that still form the core of international humanitarian law.