The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), founded in 1863 for protection and assistance of war victims, is one of the oldest humanitarian organizations. Despite its origin as a Swiss private organization, the ICRC has metamorphosed into an institution of global repute. With over one-fifty years of field level experience, the ICRC is recognized as the guardian of the international humanitarian law and has a specific responsibility to provide humanitarian assistance in armed conflicts. Initially, the ICRC was primarily involved in interstate conflicts. This approach is evident in the minutes of the second meeting of the International Committee for the Relief of the Wounded (ICRW), the progenitor of the ICRC. It said: âthe Committee agreed, first and foremost, that, in its opinion, no action should be contemplated during civil wars, and the [national] Committees should concern themselves only with European warsâ (International Review of the Red Cross 1963: 67).
However, over time, with a shift in the nature of armed conflicts including a distinct increase in various types of intra-state conflicts, the ICRC has had to adapt and reorient its operational procedures to be able to continue its work in such situations. Interestingly, in the post-Cold War period, internal armed conflicts became the central focus of the organization. It had been involved in a wide range of conflicts from the Balkans (1991â1995) to Ukraine (2013). At present, the ICRC is working in more than 80 countries, and half of them are internal armed conflicts. Throughout the 150 years of its existence, the ICRC has faced many challenges in preserving neutrality both in principle and practice. The most significant challenge has come in cases of internal armed conflicts, where neutrality is almost relatively difficult to maintain due to the asymmetric nature of the conflicts. This peculiar set of challenges has resulted in the emergence of a new debate on the possibility of neutrality and the necessity of being political in such conflicts. This was evident in the words of the ICRC President, Peter Maurer that one of the significant challenges to the organization is âto affirm and define its action and cooperation with others [as to] what neutral, independent, and impartial humanitarian action [is]â (Maurer 2012).
The ICRCâs operations in the field are guided chiefly by three main principlesâimpartiality, neutrality, and confidentiality, which are, in many ways, responsible for the autonomy that the organization enjoys vis-a-vis warring parties. Impartiality and neutrality denote non-discrimination between belligerents and not taking side with any of the conflicting parties. Confidentiality aims to get the consent and trust of the belligerents, an essential pre-requisite for humanitarian operations. However, with the changing character of armed conflicts, especially from interstate to intrastate, the possibility of being neutral between conflicting parties has become thin. For instance, to assist the victims and provide aid in internal armed conflicts, humanitarian organizations need the permission of the State, which also happens to be one of the conflicting parties. Besides, the State, at all times, retains the right to shut down the activities of the humanitarian organizations on its territory. This raises a few significant questions regarding the neutrality of humanitarian organizations; how these organizations can be independent and neutral since they need the consent of one of the conflicting parties, the State, and how the authority and domestic structure of the State influence the operations of such organizations in the field.
Taking the experiences of the ICRC in Sri Lanka (conflict between government forces and the LTTE) and Sudan (Darfur conflict), this book critically examines the possible dilution of the neutrality principle of the international humanitarian organizations in internal armed conflicts. The ICRC is one of the most appropriate institutions to test this challenge of neutrality. Its complex character as an international non-governmental organization with a public mandate helps the organization being somewhat autonomous from the states. Nonetheless, the Sri Lankan and Sudanese cases show that even the ICRC with greater autonomy has been forced to compromise its principles under the Stateâs influence. Regarding operations, both Sri Lanka and Sudan are among the ten biggest and largest operations of the ICRC in the past decade. These cases help us to understand how the organization had operated in two different settings: Sri Lanka, with a very restricted space for humanitarian activities because of the Governmentâs intervention, and Sudan, with diffused power centers leaving more leeway for humanitarian activities.
The book begins with the proposition that the intervention of ICRC in internal armed conflicts led to compromises in neutrality and raised questions pertaining to the autonomy and independence of the organization. Then, it argues that the field operations of the international humanitarian organizations in internal armed conflicts are dependent on the authority exercised by the state on whose territory the conflict persists. The ICRCâs involvement in Sri Lanka and Sudan provides empirical support to validate these propositions and arguments. The cases show that for the ICRC, it is hard to be neutral in situations of internal armed conflicts and such conflicts present formidable challenges to maintain its autonomy as well.
This introductory chapter has four sections. The first section briefly introduces the organization under study, the ICRC, its formation, mandate, status and principles. Second section analyses the impacts of changing character of armed conflicts in humanitarian organizations. The third section discusses the methodology employed in this book. The final part discusses the structure of the book.
1.1 The ICRC: Origin, Mandate and Principles
The ICRC was founded in 1863 as an afterthought of the Battle of Solferino, fought between Franco-Sardinian alliance under Napoleon III and Austria under Franz Joseph. The war brought a massive humanitarian catastrophe, over 40,000 killed or wounded and around 11,000 captured or missing (Tuel 2012; Brooks and Dennis 2009). Consequently, it became a milestone in the history of humanitarianism, when Henry Dunant, a Swiss businessman documented these experiences of dreadful conditions of the dead and injured in his book, A Memory of Solferino in 1862. The book not only changed the course of his life but also contributed to the beginning of a new era in the history of humanitarianism.
After the war, Dunant started campaigns for giving care to wounded soldiers. His contemporaries and prominent Genevan philanthropists, namely Gustave Moynier, Louis Appia, Theodore Maunior, and Henry Dufour, also helped him in this endeavour. In the course of the 1860s, this âgroup of fiveâ, also known as âthe Committee of Fiveâ, came up with the idea of creation of relief agencies and medical societies relying on private support for assisting the wounded in war (International Review of Red Cross 1963; Hutchinson 1996; Bugnion 2012). The International Committee for Aid to Wounded in Situations of War was the outcome of these efforts. Here, it is significant to mention the contributions of the Geneva Society of Public Utility, an organization that devoted itself to the spread of philanthropic and humanitarian ideas and work. It was the Geneva Society that sent out invitations for a conference in Geneva in October 1863. This conference laid the foundation for the creation of an International Committee for Aid to Wounded in Situations of War which in the course of time led to the establishment of the ICRC.
The ICRC is one of the components of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Other than the ICRC, the Movement includes the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and National Societies (Ratner 2011: 463). Structurally, the ICRC is âa strange hybrid of private and public international organizationâ (Barnett 2011: 91). It is a âprivate Swiss organization with a cosmopolitan focusâ (Wong 2012: 164). There are many studies on Swiss political culture and its impact on the ICRC (Sommaruga 1992; Gasser 2003; Forsythe 2005). Formally, the ICRC is a private organization under Swiss law. The organization is designed by Articles 60â79 of the Swiss Civil Code, which provides rules for setting up and governing non-governmental organizations in Switzerland (Statute of the ICRC 1986: Article 2; International Review of the Red Cross 1998).
However, the ICRC claims the status of an international organization through its mandates derived from Geneva Conventions (Ratner 2011). The State Parties to these conventions conclude many agreements with the ICRC on the status of its delegations. States often invite and rely on the ICRC to carry out humanitarian tasks (Gasser 2003: 108). These requests by governments highlight the legitimacy and acceptability of ICRC among states. Moreover, State Parties to the Geneva Conventions are members of the International Conference of the Red Cross Movement. The granting of observer status to the ICRC by the UN General Assembly in 1990 also reaffirms the international/public standing of the organization (GA Res. 1990).
Though the scholars do not have a consensus about the status of the ICRC, they acknowledged the hybrid and unique nature of the organization. According to Francois Bugnion, the very nature of the ICRC seems to be a contradiction and paradox. He noted that the organization âwas established as a private body, but derives its mandate from international law; its activities are based on international treaties to which it is not itself partyâ (Bugnion 2003: 28). Hans-Peter Gasser...
