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Cambridge University Press
0521848288 - The Humanitarians - The International Committee of the Red Cross - by David P. Forsythe
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INTRODUCTION

Yet the International Committee itself remained a curious animal.

Morehead, Dunant's Dream, 175

That the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) remains poorly known attests to the past secrecy and poor communications policy of this important agency that was created in 1863. Despite ameliorative changes in recent years, it is still true to say that in any part of the world, save perhaps Geneva, one can complete a program of advanced study in international relations, even concentrating on international law and organization, and still be ill informed about the ICRC. One can find legal analyses of the Geneva Conventions and other parts of international humanitarian law (IHL - the law dealing with the protection of human dignity in armed conflict), and one can find histories of the evolution of this law. Both bodies of literature contain passing and hence superficial reference to the ICRC. The organization itself has published several accounts of its history and tasks, even if these are not fully candid. But until rather recently one could not find a substantial and significant body of work, in any language, made up of independent and analytical studies concerning what the agency did and how it took its decisions.

One eventually discovered an ICRC that was a private Swiss agency mandated by public international law to undertake certain tasks in war, such as visiting detainees and providing relief. But most outsiders knew very little about what it did or how. One found an organization of about 2,000 professionals, governed at the top by a group of Swiss notables serving in a volunteer capacity, that visited more detainees of various categories (e.g., prisoners of war, civilian detainees in war, detainees in civil wars, "political prisoners") than any other organization. Yet few knew of its efforts, policies, or results. One encountered a very discreet - at times in the past overly secretive - organization that officially coordinated the largest private relief program for conflict situations. There remained confusion, however, about where it fitted in the Red Cross family as well as the larger world of private transnational actors. (See Annexes A, B, C, and D for an indication of ICRC relations with the Red Cross Movement, and for a comparison with some other public and private agencies.) Here was the "guardian" of international humanitarian law. But almost no one understood what was meant by that term.

There were ample reasons for the difficulty in fully understanding the ICRC, for it was an organization replete with paradoxes - and not only because it was, at its core, a private agency with public dimensions. This book will show that the organization displays liberal goals but pursues them through conservative means. That is, the welfare of individuals is the highest value in its mandate, but it proceeds slowly, cautiously, with minimal objectives, and mostly on the basis of the consent of public authorities. Further, it claims to be non-political but is inherently part of humanitarian politics. It professes impartiality and neutrality, but it calculates how to advance humanitarian policies that are in competition with other policies based on national and factional advantage. Also, it promotes IHL but downplays public legal judgments and emphasizes pragmatic - if principled - service. That is, it helps develop IHL mainly for others, while often emphasizing pragmatic, contextual morality itself.

Moreover, the ICRC is a product of, and is generally sustained by, western (Judeo-Christian) culture, although it tries to present itself as a secular Good Samaritan. Its roots are to be found in the notion of Christian charity, but it strives for non-denominational, non-sectarian humanitarianism. Still further, it is part of a universal movement stressing global humanity, but that movement is rent by nationalism, and the ICRC itself has not been immune to the siren call of Swiss nationalism. The ICRC (which remains all-Swiss at the top) has regularly competed with French, Russian, American, Swedish, and other national elements in the Red Cross Movement; and particularly during the Second World War the ICRC sometimes elevated Swiss nationalism over neutral humanitarianism. Finally, the organization has always had a limited humanitarian mandate, but over time it has expanded its activities enormously. Having started with a focus only on the wounded soldier in international war, the ICRC now concerns itself with much more, including some human rights issues that transcend conflict situations.

In a generous accounting, the ICRC has won four Nobel Peace Prizes: 1901, 1917, 1944, and 1963. The first went to the ICRC's founder Henry Dunant (and to the French peace activist Frédéric Passy); the last to the ICRC and the League - now Federation - of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies together. The ICRC was honored in its own right in 1917 and 1944 for its work in the world wars. No other organization has been so honored so many times, yet even in the West the ICRC is hardly well recognized or understood. One insightful observer referred to it as a "clannish sort of freemasonry," such were its secretive ways in the pursuit of doing good for individuals in conflicts.¹

By the early twenty-first century renewed public and private concern with the fate of human beings in conflict situations brought the ICRC more attention. To take but two examples, one could not understand, report on, or make policy for situations like the failed state of Somalia, characterized by massive starvation during 1991-93, without considerable reference to the ICRC. Secondly, wars involving Iraq and Afghanistan between 1991 and 2003 brought ICRC protection efforts for prisoners back into the western press. ICRC visits to the captured Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or to prisoners held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, brought some renewed attention to the organization. Actually, some renewed press attention to humanitarian affairs had started years before, with large ICRC relief operations in Africa in the 1980s (Ethiopia, Angola), then in Asia (Thai-Cambodia border area, Afghanistan-Pakistan area).

As a French author noted, "'L'Humanitaire' has . . . become at one and the same time, from the 1980s, a true phenomenon of society, at least in the countries of the [global] North, and a weighty factor in the game of international relations, with stronger reason since the end of the cold war."²

As a consequence, the ICRC's activity, budgets, and human resources expanded enormously after the Cold War. With humanitarian issues moving at least sometimes from the sidelines to center stage, the ICRC found itself the object of more attention. But much confusion about the agency remained. Even leading western journalists were not always accurate in their reporting on the ICRC in such situations.

By 2004 the ICRC was asking for voluntary budget contributions of 905 million Swiss francs, or about $730 million. In the immediately preceding years ICRC overall expenditures had been in the neighborhood of $600-650 million per annum. (For one point of comparison, in 2002 the US State Department alone spent about $600 million on public diplomacy.³ For a second point of comparison, about $600 million was what the two leading candidates spent for advertising in the US presidential election of 2004.⁴) About 80-85% of this ICRC total budget was provided by governmental voluntary contributions. It employed over 800 persons at its Geneva headquarters, had about 1,200 expatriate professional staff in the field, and hired almost 10,000 local staff in the approximately eighty countries where it operated. The organization ran 200 offices in more than sixty delegations. In 2003 its largest field operations, measured by expenditure, were in Iraq, Israel and the Territories, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Moscow Regional Delegation, Liberia, Colombia, and Angola.

In the larger International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, with the ICRC as founding agency, by 2004 there were 182 National Societies, with more than 97 million members and 300,000 staff members, helping more than 233 million beneficiaries around the world. Many persons who are officially members of, or active in, the Movement, however, have no clear understanding of the ICRC, its history, and its mandate.⁵

It was certainly not always clear to many observers what the ICRC did in the field, how and why. Some of those who took a new look at this old organization got the story, or parts of the story, wrong. Others got it right but focused on only small slices of the story. Still others continued to focus on legal rules rather than the actual protection of persons in conflicts. It remained difficult to find an independent and reasonably complete overview of ICRC decisions and actions in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

What the ICRC actually faced all too often in its humanitarian endeavors was finding the least worst choice that could be made in the context of well-armed brutality, with third parties refusing to commit to inconvenient policies. If third parties should become interested in a conflict's destructive nature, why would they risk blood and treasure to enforce humanitarian norms? If they were to engage, most of the time they would engage to deal with root causes and work for peace - not just for limits on the process of violence. To the extent that third parties would seriously engage at all, logic and experience suggests they would focus on jus ad bellum, law regarding the justification of war, and not just jus in bello, legal limits on the process of war. So the ICRC was often left isolated from power centers in its concern for human dignity in conflicts.

All too often, the precise rules of international humanitarian law were what lawyers talked about in comfortable Geneva. Helping victims in Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, East Timor, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and so on was often as far away from the details of humanitarian law as from Geneva. My focus, as before, remains on humanitarian policy as made in Geneva and as implemented on the ground. For this orientation, IHL is certainly a relevant factor - at least sometimes. But this is not a study of legal technicalities, legal logic, legal obligation. I am less interested in the letter of the law per se, and more interested in what actually happens to ICRC attempts to help victims caught up in conflict situations.

In writing this book about the ICRC I want to know what has changed, if anything, for the organization in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and what are its prospects in the twenty-first? What do we know for sure about the ICRC as an actor in international relations? How does it take its decisions, according to what considerations, with what results? How has it survived for so long, and even expanded, when other organizations - even highly regarded and reputable ones like Swissair - have floundered?⁶ Without pretending to write a complete history or to cover all contemporary issues, I do try to answer these central questions.

Despite the recent expansion of budget and personnel, it is fair to ask if the world is in the process of making the ICRC anachronistic. After all, intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations and NATO, and private organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, pay far more attention, with far more publicity, to victims of war and of similar conflicts than in the past. There are many public and private relief agencies, from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, to UNICEF, to the World Food Program, to Oxfam, to World Vision. The UN has created an office to coordinate humanitarian assistance. There are global and regional international laws against torture and mistreatment of prisoners. UN and European agencies conduct prison visits. Is the "Red Cross" vision of neutral humanitarianism in conflict situations passé ? Is Red Cross neutral humanitarianism a form of "moral bankruptcy"?⁷ Is the ICRC reliance on discretion out of date in a world in which there is much public criticism and debate about human rights and humanitarian affairs? Was its expansion of activity during the 1990s the dying gasp of an agency already in decline? Were its past mistakes, and above all its cautious approach to trying to protect human dignity, proving fatal?

Or, on the contrary, has the ICRC carved out for itself an enduring role that is important and complementary to other actors interested in human dignity in conflict situations? Has the end of the Cold War only highlighted the importance of the traditional roles of the ICRC? Has the agency demonstrated that it still does certain things better than others? Despite expanded attention to humanitarian issues by the United Nations and a bevy of non-governmental organizations, and despite growing attention to justice through criminal proceedings rather than to "charity" through Red Cross endeavors, is the ICRC likely to remain an important humanitarian actor in conflict situations in 2025 or 2050?

In Part One I provide enough history to give a foundation for later discussions. I try to highlight certain events and patterns relevant to contemporary analysis. It should be evident that these chapters do not purport to be a detailed and definitive history of the ICRC. I try to give a readable and interpretive historical introduction, mostly drawing on secondary sources. I do seek original interpretations from the mostly secondary material. I try to spot important developments based on history written by others, developments sometimes not fully drawn out by them. Sometimes I use my own original research in ICRC archives. My approach is roughly chronological, but at the same time thematic. The point is not just to describe, and certainly not to describe in comprehensive fashion, but to emphasize certain developments. If a historical situation was important for the evolution of the organization, or shows well its activity, I included it in my historical survey.

Those who want a more conventional and presumably definitive historical narrative are bound to be disappointed by what follows. I am not a historian, and I have not tried to do the historian's job with systematic archival material, but remain a political scientist with an awareness of the importance of history. No doubt there are historical episodes not covered here that contributed to the ICRC's evolution. Space did not allow coverage of some interesting field work in places like Sri Lanka and Lebanon, among other places. But enough history is presented to give the crucial outlines of organizational development.

There is still something new and important to say about the period from 1859 to 1945, which I address in chapter 1. Chapter 2 summarizes the Cold War period, 1947-91, with much fascinating material about the organization's relief operations, detention visits, tracing of missing persons, and legal development work. I am especially interested in the ICRC during the first decade after the Cold War, which has not been covered systematically yet, and which I address in chapter 3. As I was completing this study in 2004, controversy erupted over US treatment of "enemy" detainees apprehended in its "war" on terrorism. So I decided to cover that episode as best I could, despite a lack of certain documentary evidence, since the ICRC was caught in the middle of that crisis.

After the Cold War, which is to say between 1991 and 2004, did the ICRC contribute to on-going wars and their war economies? Was the ICRC successful in carving out humanitarian space in the midst of conflict? Was its record better or worse than its record in previous eras? How does its record of humanitarian protection compare to other actors during this time, such as the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, or Doctors Without Borders? Was the ICRC naïve in its detention visits, easily manipulated by detaining authorities? How can we tell, given the discretion so favored by the organization and so approved by states? Did its relief, and its entire minimalist approach to human dignity, do anything but guarantee that victims would be adequately fed before being killed? What other protective tasks does the organization execute - such as the tracing of missing persons - and with what results? Did the organization place more emphasis on an integrated Red Cross Movement, compared to its go-it-alone orientation during much of the past?

In Part Two, I further draw out important points noted in ICRC history. My policy analysis begins in chapter 5, where I start with a discussion of the ICRC and peace. I then focus on certain ideas important to ICRC humanitarian protection: independence, neutrality, and impartiality. These principles, complex and sometimes misunderstood, greatly affect the decisions of the organization. They also serve as benchmarks for its evaluation. Even after all of this time, there remains debate about each. What is humanitarian protection, and is it different from assistance? What exactly is the difference between impartiality and neutrality? Can there really be neutral humanitarianism in conflict situations? How often has the ICRC yielded its independence to Swiss national interests as defined in Berne? Was the ICRC really the humanitarian arm of Swiss foreign policy?

Afterwards, in chapter 6, in one of the most difficult sections to research and analyze, I focus on ICRC structure and policy making, looking at the evolution and current status of the office of President, the Assembly, the Directorate, and the professional staff. (See Annexe E for the organizational chart of the agency.) The ICRC is still not fully transparent with regard to the exercise of influence inside the house. On the basis primarily of many interviews over many years, I address certain questions. How have these units of the organization interacted in the past to make policy in the name of the ICRC? How do they interact in the first decade of the twenty-first century? What can we say about the quality of the decisions that result from this interplay? Why has the ICRC appeared to be in a state of constant flux with regard to its policy-making process? Can we reasonably expect more of the same? Does the ICRC face a crisis about the quality of its staff? Is not the ICRC necessarily going to reopen the long debate about internationalizing its all-Swiss Assembly? Is the ICRC becoming too large and bureaucratic, sacrificing its flexibility in the field as a result? Is it a good idea to bureaucratize the Good Samaritan?⁸ Is it like herding cats to emphasize creativity in the field but systematic management at headquarters? Is the ICRC characterized by civil war between the lawyers and the operations staff?

In chapter 7 I turn to IHL, with an emphasis on the role of the ICRC in developing, disseminating, and applying that law. Given the vast number of studies about the Geneva Conventions from 1949 and the two additional Protocols from 1977, I do not emphasize the technical details of IHL. Law professors have given us plenty of scholarship of that type. I want primarily to show the ICRC's role in contributing to the law as it now exists. I want to emphasize, despite the objections of many at the ICRC, that even without IHL, the organization would be doing more or less the same thing it does now. That is to say, contrary to all the emphasis by those with a legal bent who stress the Geneva or Red Cross legal tradition, most of what the ICRC does is based on moral reasoning and historical practice, and would largely continue without treaty law. One can see this most clearly in the organization's work in complex emergencies and domestic troubles and tensions, where IHL's application is contested. In these situations the ICRC acts basically the same as in war, minus appeals to IHL. Still, at least some of the time, it is better to have IHL than not, even if on a daily basis the ICRC may not emphasize the letter of the law. I also note some of the situations where the ICRC deemphasizes IHL because it is an impediment to actually helping victims.

Finally, in chapter 8, I present a general understanding of the contemporary ICRC - no easy task - and where it is likely headed in the future.

My general thesis, mentioned in the Preface, is that the ICRC in the past was not as independent, impartial, neutral, and effective as often pictured; but after about 1970, it has made great improvements. In other words, up until about 1970, the ICRC was a "totally unprofessional" organization,⁹ but since that time it has become highly professional. In the last analysis, the ICRC today is a much more impressive organization than ever before, even if debate remains about some of its aspects.