To have won the Henry Dunant Medal comes as more than a surprise. It is a great honour, an honour beyond my wildest expectations. I knew, of course, of the nature and origin of the Medal but only as an interesting fact that had nothing to do with me. Therefore, to be personally part of this great Red Cross event makes me feel very grateful and very happy indeed.

It will be recalled that a Conference of Government Experts, convened by the ICRC, met in Geneva from 24 May to 11 June 1971. At the closing meeting, the President of the International Committee announced that the ICRC had decided to convene a second session in the following year.

This session opened in Geneva on 3 May 1972 and closed early in June. It was attended by about 400 experts delegated by seventyseven governments. The Conference was also followed by United Nations observers, nine technical experts in problems of medical transport, ten observers from non-governmental organizations, the League of Red Cross Societies, and several National Societies.

From 24 to 27 April 1972, Mr. Marcel A. Naville, President of the ICRC, and Mr. Claude Pilloud, ICRC Director, were guests of the Iranian Red Lion and Sun Society.

After being received by National Society leaders, the President of the ICRC was granted an audience by H.I.M. Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, Shahinshah of Iran.

The number of States parties to the Geneva Conventions is now 132. In a letter received by the Swiss Federal Council on 4 April 1972, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of Bangladesh declared that that State considered itself bound by the four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 for the Protection of War Victims, by virtue of their previous ratification by Pakistan.

The Neutral Commission appointed by the ICRC to decide on claims made by Polish victims of pseudo-medical experiments carried out in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War, met at ICRC headquarters in Geneva, on 4 and 5 May 1972. It comprised Mr. Lenoir, Chairman of the Commission and Judge at the Geneva Law Courts; Dr. S. Mutrux, Assistant Administrator of the Bel-Air Psychiatric Clinic in Geneva, and Dr. P. Magnenat, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Assistant at the University Clinic of the Nestlé Hospital at Lausanne.

His Holiness Pope Paul VI granted the President of the International Committee a private audience in the Vatican on 12 May 1972.

In the course of the audience, the Holy Father expressed to the President of the ICRC his appreciation of the activities which the ICRC was pursuing and which the Church intended to support to the fullest possible extent.

Mr. Naville referred to the ICRC's tasks in many parts of the world. He described the difficulties which the Red Cross was encountering in its humanitarian action but also recalled the gratifying results of ICRC activities in various countries.

On 10 May 1972, the ICRC issued the following press release:

The International Committee of the Red Cross was asked to act on behalf of the passengers and members of the crew of a Boeing of the Sabena air line held hostage by a Palestinian commando at Tel Aviv airport. With the agreement of the Israeli authorities and of the Palestinian commando and solely with the purpose of coming to the aid of innocent persons threatened with death, it agreed to serve as intermediary between the two parties.

Under the 1955 Agreements, the duties laid upon the International Tracing Service (ITS), at Arolsen, the management of which was entrusted to the International Committee, were defined.

Far from diminishing over the years, the volume of work involved is still very considerable, as will be seen from the information given below:

In 1971, ITS received 127,872 requests, which was 4,543 more than it had received the year before. There was a considerable change in the categories of requests. For the first time, the number of requests for certificates of detention and residence, connected with the law on compensation which in 1953 came into effect in the Federal Republic of Germany, was no longer the largest (48,800 in 1971 as against 71,169 in 1970). There was a corresponding drop in the number of requests for death certificates (4,747 as against 7,173 in 1970) and in the number of requests for documents concerning cases of illness (4,958 as against 6,270 in 1970). On the other hand, the category relating to requests for the preparation of books in memory of victims of deportation, requests submitted by record services, requests from attorneys-general, and requests for information with a view to obtaining annuities and pensions, amounted to 57,914 units, which was more than double the figure for the preceding year. There were 1,315 requests for statistical and historical information, 749 for photocopies, and 708 sundry requests.

During 1971 the International Committee of the Red Cross continued, in Israel, the Occupied Territories and the Arab countries, its activities relating to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. This work consisted mainly in visiting military and civilian prisoners, transmitting family messages, organizing the regrouping of broken families and tracing missing persons.

At a ceremony held in Sana'a towards the end of March 1972, the ICRC formally handed over to the authorities in the Yemen Arab Republic the workshop which it had opened in 1970 for the manufacture of artificial limbs for the war disabled in that country.

Under the responsibility of the Ministry of Health, the Yemeni employees will henceforth use the skill they acquired in the workshop and in which five of them, thanks to grants, received further training at the Teheran specialized centre of the Iranian Red Lion and Sun Society. The orthopaedic technician delegated by the ICRC will stay in Sana'a for another six months, under an agreement with the Yemeni Government and the World Health Organization, which is providing assistance. This decision was reached with a view to easing the transitional phase.