At the end of September, the Swiss Confederation made available to the International Committee of the Red Cross the sum of 500,000 Swiss francs for its work in East Pakistan.

The ICRC operations in East Pakistan are conducted by three delegates and are being developed mainly for the tracing of missing persons, for reuniting dispersed families, forwarding family news and visiting detainees.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has nominated Mr. Jean Pictet and Mr. Harald Huber to be Vice-Presidents for 1971 and 1972 as from 1 July 1971.

Reuniting of families.—The ICRC delegates in the Near East arranged the reuniting of a number of families: two persons on 19 November and a further seven on 25 November joined their families in the occupied territory of the Golan Heights. At El Qantara on the Suez Canal an operation on a larger scale took place on 9 December when 90 Palestinians returned to the occupied territory of Gaza-Sinai and 183 other persons rejoined their families in the United Arab Republic.

The twenty-first meeting of the Neutral Commission appointed by the ICRC to examine applications by Polish nationals for compensation in respect of pseudo-medical experiments to which they had been subjected in Nazi concentration camps during World War II was held at ICRC headquarters in Geneva from 14 to 16 October 1971.

On 14 May 1969, the International Committee of the Red Cross, had signed an agreement with the European Economic Community (EEC), under which the latter was to make available various kinds of cereals for the assistance programme in aid of the victims of the Nigeria conflict. After the cessation of hostilities in Nigeria, the relief action was terminated, leaving a surplus of 12,671 tons of cereals.

During his stay in Geneva for the International Labour Conference, H.E. Mr. Léopold Sédar Senghor, President of the Republic of Senegal, visited the ICRC.

The President of the ICRC, Mr. Marcel A. Naville, with members and senior officials of the International Committee, welcomed their distinguished visitor, who was introduced by H. E. Mr. Cissé, Ambassador of Senegal in Geneva. This meeting was attended also by Mr. Henrik Beer, Secretary-General of the League of Red Cross Societies.

Last year the International Review published an article on the Middle East activities of the International Committee of the Red Cross from June 1967 to June 1970, which also dealt with the relief sent or transmitted by the ICRC.

In our last issue we had regretfully to inform our readers of the death of Mr. Martin Bodmer. Now it is the death on 23 April 1971 of Dr. Hans Meuli, another honorary member, which we have the painful duty of announcing.

As already announced in International Review, the ICRC is organizing a second session of the Conference of Government Experts on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts for the spring of 1972, as it had not been found possible to deal fully with all the subjects at the first session and some topics had not even been broached. The experts had, therefore, unanimously recommended that the work begun at the last Conference should be pursued at a further meeting.

In our January issue we announced Mr. Martin Bodmer's resignation from the ICRC, of which he had been a member since 1940, and his election to honorary membership. Now we have regretfully to inform our readers of Mr. Bodmer's death on 22 March 1971. We have already summarized Mr. Bodmer's important work for the Committee over many years. During the funeral, Mr. M. A. Naville, ICRC President, delivered an address; the extracts which are quoted below express better than any other comment the significance of this loss for the International Committee:

The International Committee of the Red Cross also is in mourning. With Martin Bodmer's death it loses a companion of thirty years' standing, a colleague and a friend who, throughout that long period, ceaselessly offered the institution the resources of his culture, loyalty and goodwill and who always assumed his share of the Committee's responsibilities.

Following the events in Ceylon, the International Committee of the Red Cross sent, from 27 April to 12 June 1971, its delegate, Mr. Roger Du Pasquier, who visited there hospitals and places of detention containing respectively the wounded and injured and persons under arrest.

As already stated in our issues of June and July, Mr. Du Pasquier travelled all over the island, accompanied by government officials and members of the National Red Cross Society, and made distributions of relief to detainees. He brought back an interesting record of his mission, in the form of travel jottings, which we give below.

In its issue of October 1970, the International Review stated that 128 States were parties to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949. This number has now risen to 129. The ICRC has recently been informed by the Federal Political Department in Berne that the Swiss authorities received, on 9 August 1971, a letter from the Fijian Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs stating that Fiji considered itself bound to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, under the earlier ratification by the United Kingdom.

The European Economic Community (EEC) has donated to the ICRC for the current year 7,000 tons of cereal products (maize, wheat, barley, oats and millet) to a value of 6 million Swiss francs (including freight and handling costs). After milling, they will produce about 4,200 tons of flour or semolina. This gift will be utilized by the ICRC to provide food aid for various relief actions.

During a plenary session on 10 December 1970, the International Committee, after taking note of the resignations of Mr. Martin Bodmer, Mr. Hans Meuli and Mr. Rodolfo Olgiati, appointed them to honorary membership.

The Neutral Commission appointed by the ICRC to decide on applications by Polish victims of pseudo-medical experiments in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War met from 7 to 9 January 1971 at ICRC headquarters in Geneva. It consisted of Mr. W. Lenoir, President, a judge of the Geneva Court of Justice, Dr. S. Mutrux, assistant director of the Bel-Air psychiatric clinic in Geneva, and Dr. P. Magnenat, professor and assistant at the Nestlé Hospital university clinic in Lausanne.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has elected Mr. Max Petitpierre and Mr. Victor Umbricht to be members of the Presidential Council for 1971 and 1972 as from 1 July 1971; they will sit with the President and the two Vice-Presidents mentioned above, who are ex-officio members of the Council.