The Red Cross

Today we took a tour of the Museum of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The museum here in Geneva is really special- absolutely everything in this museum is dripping with symbolism, from the height of the walls to the unfinished ceiling, from the way it's hidden underground to the various rooms and cells you can explore. The museum itself is a piece of art- it is incredibly stylized, and everything holds meaning.
What is so special about the Red Cross? Before coming to Europe, I would have said it was an aid organization just like any other, perhaps older. But the Red Cross is so much more than that- I feel that it is safe to say that the Red Cross pioneered modern forms of humanitarianism. It is also treated almost like an entity, with an international respect and deference that a regular NGO doesn't receive.
The battle of Solferino (Italy and France v Austria) in 1859 yielded over 20 km of horrifically maimed and injured bodies. A wealthy, industrious Swiss businessman named Henri Dunant came to the battlefront seeking permission from Napolean III to access some French resources; upon seeing the traumatic battlefront, Henri's life completely changed. He returned to Geneva a new man, sending his account of the battle to leaders around the world, calling for a meeting on the horrors of war. From his ensuing lifetime of charity, hard work, and motivation stemmed the organization of the Red Cross, and, in my opinion more importantly, the Geneva Conventions themselves. He died running from debt collectors, denying the prize money he was awarded by the Nobel Peace Prize, among others, and sending the money instead to the Red Cross.
The Geneva Conventions are one of the main reasons the Red Cross stands apart from other aid agencies. The Red Cross essentially created the Geneva conventions, triggering countries to respect medical workers, armies, navies, prisoners of war, and civilians during times of war. Today the Geneva conventions are often treated like the grand rules- perhaps the U.S. and other nations break them from time to time, but it is generally agreed that they shouldn't be broken. The international legitimacy of the Red Cross has gained it a special place in terms of the international criminal court: no Red Cross member can be forced to testify. Today the Red Cross's neutrality grants it access to prisoner camps, prisons, and other sites around the world that no other human rights organization has access to. Even Nazi Germany eventually allowed the Red Cross access to its death camps- on the condition that they could not leave until the end of the war. Gallantly, 10 Red Cross delegates went to the death camps anyway.
The Red Cross, aside from providing essential medical care, documents the conditions of POW's, sends them supplemental food, has prison conditioned improved, connects victims of war with their families and loved ones, etc etc etc. They provide medical aid, but also mental aid, repairing families and creating new ones. After Rwanda, they connected thousands of lost children with their families and with adoptive parents, and those who were still unclaimed were assisted in forming families with each other.


Neutrality in an aid organization is a touchy issue for me. For the Red Cross, they focus on helping everyone regardless of their demographics or politics, and they remain more or less silent about who is right or wrong. This enables them to enter into places where no other aid agencies can go, which is important for accessing victims who are otherwise out of sight. My issue with organizations like the Red Cross, or like Doctors without Borders, is that they say they want to help without pointing out who is wrong, without substituting for what government should be doing on its own, without shooting for big changes.
Well, I would say this accomplishes very little in the big picture. Yes, they are keeping people from enduring torturous conditions they would have faced otherwise, and yes they are helping individuals find their families, and yes, they are providing proper medical care for wounded people. But they are, to me, cleaning up a mess, not asking why the mess is there in the first place.
For example, we talked to some people from the UN about malnutrition the other day. They said they like to distribute the food aid necessary to help children overcome malnutrition to keep them alive, and THATS ALL. The rest of the job- finding them jobs, finding a stable food source, etc, that's the government's role. I think that in cases where children are malnourished, where medical care is not provided for citizens, etc, it is already the case that the government cannot or will not do its job, and by keeping people on the brink of life rather than letting them die, the problem is only exasperated. It may even, in fact, compound the problem by leaving more jobless, hungry, resentful people in a country that is not functioning. I'm not saying that aid agencies should let people die, obviously, nor do I think they should attempt to tell the government how to behave to save its own people.

Instead, I feel that aid agencies should address the root causes of disease, hunger, and poverty with grassroots solutions. People are starving. Okay, well instead of asking government to form better political and economic strategies, instead of giving the worst cases just enough care to keep them from dying, why don't agencies focus on providing people with the tools, the animals, the seeds, the education, the technology to feed themselves?
There are not two ways of going about change- band aids or government restructuring. Pilot programs implemented on a small household or village basis have the ability to actually work, be manageable, be implemented without needing a government okay, and are self propagating, spreading if they are successful.
Should we let that starving child die? Well no, not if we can help it, but so many agencies seem to focus on that state of emergency at the expense of structural change rather than incorporating the two. So far, Medecins du Monde is the only organization we have explored that really addressing the short term and the long term in a way that is truly beneficial to people living in developing nations as a whole. Perhaps I am not compassionate enough about individual people? Maybe I still have more to learn.

The red cross is not a normal NGO- while others are worried about impartiality and effectiveness, about getting money without accepting association with a country, the Red Cross seems to have a status more like that of an IO like the UN or WTO: it is an entity that affects politics on a different scale than groups like Amnesty International.