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Can the Red Cross contribute to safeguarding peace?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2010

Hans Haug
Hans Haug*
Affiliation:
Member of the International Committee of the Red Cross
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Extract

Can the Red Cross help to maintain peace and should it not, alongside its humanitarian role, also fulfil a mission of peace? This is far from being a new consideration, raised by recent developments in the peace movement and by demonstrations in favour of peace.

Whether the Red Cross, by its very nature, is a factor for peace; whether its humanitarian work should finally result in eliminating war, are questions as old as the idea of the Red Cross itself. Very early on, Henry Dunant declared that it was not enough to relieve the suffering of victims of war but that war itself should be banned.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of the Red Cross (1961 - 1997) , Volume 24 , Issue 240 , June 1984 , pp. 127 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 1984

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Footnotes

1

Paper read on 22 September 1983 at Kiel to the Schleswig-Holstein section of the German Red Cross and the Swiss colony of Kiel.

References

page 130 note 1 Quotation from «Der Rotkreuzgedanke», Vermischte Schriften, Vol. IV. Zurich, 1957.Google Scholar

page 135 note 1 In his Final Report on the Study of the Re-appraisal of the Role of the Red Cross (Geneva, 1975)Google Scholar Donald D. Tansley writes: “Such action as the naming of aggressors and injustices will not be viewed as non-political, impartial, neutral and humanitarian, regardless of the good intentions of those advocating that type of Red Cross action for peace. Any such action can only damage and probably destroy the useful protection and assistance activity”” (page 40). In its comments on the Report on the Reappraisal of the Role of the Red Cross, the ICRC expresses the following view: “By entering the arena of conflicting interests and opinions which divide the world and align peoples against one another, the Red Cross would be rushing headlong towards its own destruction. However slightly it might venture upon this slippery path, it would not be able to stop.” ( International Review of the Red Cross, 03–04 1978, p. 82).Google Scholar

page 138 note 1 Published in Die Friedenswarte, Vol. 53, 1956 Google Scholar, and in Vermischte Schriften, Vol. IV, Zurich, 1957.Google Scholar

page 138 note 2 Schweitzer, Albert, Das Problem des Friedens in der heutigen Welt, C. H. Beck, Munich, 1954.Google Scholar

page 138 note 3 Jaspers, Karl, Wahrheit, Freiheit und Friede, R. Piper, Munich, 1958.Google Scholar