The first Statutes of the International Red Cross date back to 1928. Until then, the International Red Cross had no constitution.

It should not be deduced from this that the subject had not been considered. The First International Conference of the Red Cross (Paris, 1867) and the Second (Berlin, 1869) studied the question of the international organization of the Red Cross. Deferring consideration of the topic to a later session, they confirmed the ICRC in the tasks assigned it by Article 10 of the Resolutions of the 1963 Conference:

“The exchange of communications between the Committees of the various countries shall be made for the time being through the intermediary of the Geneva Committee.”

On 30 June, the ICRC, acting as a neutral intermediary at the request of all the interested parties, arranged for 55 persons held by UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) to leave Angola on board an aircraft chartered for the purpose. This group consisted of 45 Czechoslovaks (including 38 women and children) and 10 Portuguese citizens; they had all been taken prisoner in March at Alto Catumbela, near the country's Atlantic coast. The Portuguese citizens were handed over to their diplomatic representatives in Johannesburg (South Africa) and the Czechoslovaks were flown on board another ICRC aircraft to Kinshasa (Zaire), where they were handed over to the consular authorities of their country. Before the transfer, three ICRC delegates, accompanied by a nurse and a doctor, spent a week at a UNITA base in southern Angola, where they gave medical care, distributed food, clothing and transmitted family messages to the detainees.