Dunant's Dream: War, Switzerland and The History of the Red Cross Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Dunant's Dream: War, Switzerland and The History of the Red Cross Book

When vacationing Genevan businessman Henri Dunant arrived at the resort community of Solferino, Italy, in June 1859, he certainly did not expect to find the remains of a bloody battle, concluded earlier in the day, between the Austrians and the French. The casualties, over 6,000 of them, horrified Dunant. More shocking were the survivors, left unattended on the bloody battlefield, many of them severely wounded and near death. Overcome by the brutality of the scene before him, Dunant organized and led a team of volunteers that systematically cared for the wounded. Within five years, he and four other prosperous Swiss citizens formed the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded and drafted the first Geneva Convention. Renamed in 1876 the International Committee of the Red Cross, the organization today comprises 137 national societies and 250 million members. The Committee that governs it, however, has changed little since the 1870s. According to Caroline Moorehead, author of Dunant's Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross, the power to monitor and criticize all governments of the world remains "in the hands of a small band of co-opted, elderly Swiss lawyers and bankers." While the International Committee has operated staunchly on its self-prescribed principles throughout the 20th century, many of its decisions, actions, and instances of inaction have been ambiguous and seemingly motivated by politics. In Dunant's Dream, Moorehead, a London-based journalist, presents a scrutinizing yet balanced history of the organization. Despite its length, Dunant's Dream makes no attempt to be comprehensive. Instead, Moorehead, her argument supported by unprecedented access to private Red Cross archives in Geneva, analyzes the conflicts, issues, and moral dilemmas from over 130 years of war and natural disasters that have had the most determining effect on the growth of the modern Red Cross. --Bertina Loeffler SedlackRead More

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  • Product Description

    The International Red Cross was the inspiration - the dream - of Henri Dunant, a 31-year-old businessman appalled by the butchery and lack of medical care for injured soldiers during the battle of Solferino in 1859. With Gustave Moynier, another Swiss, Dunant set out to create an international organization which was not only to alter irrevocably, the fate of all those wounded in every war, but which moved rapidly into international humanitarian law, refugee work, prison conditions and the tracking of people parted by warfare. The original Geneva Convention of 1864, for which the Red Cross was directly responsible, is one of the most important international instruments of humanitarian law ever formulated. Today the Red Cross has 137 national societies and 250 million members. Yet it remains an inscrutable institution - very much the same animal today as in the 1870s - governed by the Swiss alone, but highly dependent for its diplomats and staff on foreigners - all of whom are required to sign a pledge of secrecy. This text traces the origins of the Red Cross, its main areas of work including some of its most difficult and contentious interventions, and its work with refugees. It investigates the secretive paranoia of the headquarters and uncovers some truths about the Red Cross and its relationship with some of the most horrific and barbaric political regimes of the 20th century. It also examines the concept of neutrality - central to the Red Cross - and its feasibility in the modern world.

  • 0002551411
  • 9780002551410
  • Caroline Moorehead
  • 18 May 1998
  • HarperCollins
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 780
  • First Edition. Hardback. Dust Jacket.
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