THE HUMANITARIANS

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) coordinates the world’s largest private relief system for conflict situations. Its staff of 2,000 professionals, supported by 10,000 local employees, operates throughout the world. In recent years the ICRC has mounted large operations in the Balkans and Somalia. It also visits more detainees around the world than any other organization, including recently at Guantanamo Bay. Yet despite its very important role, its internal workings are mysterious and often secretive. This book examines the ICRC from its origins in the middle of the nineteenth century up to the present day, and provides a comprehensive overview of a unique organization, whose governing body remains all-Swiss, but which is recognized in international law and in other legal arrangements as if it were an inter-governmental organization. David Forsythe focuses on the policy making and field work of the ICRC, while not ignoring international humanitarian law. He explores how it exercises its independence, impartiality, and neutrality to try to protect prisoners in Iraq, displaced and starving civilians in Somalia, and families separated by conflict in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

DAVID P. FORSYTHE is Charles J. Mach Distinguished Professor and University Professor at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He has published extensively on different aspects of International Relations including Human Rights in International Relations (Cambridge, 2000), which has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Turkish, Korean, and Bulgarian, and most recently, Human Rights and Diversity: Area Studies Revisited (edited with Patrice McMahon, 2004). He is also the general editor of the new edition of The Encyclopedia of Human Rights.

THE HUMANITARIANS

The International Committee of the Red Cross

DAVID P. FORSYTHE

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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© David P. Forsythe 2005

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First published 2005

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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Forsythe, David P., 1941–
The humanitarians: the International Commmittee of the Red Cross / David P. Forsythe.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 84828 8 (alk. paper) – ISBN 0 521 61281 0 (pb.)
1. International Committee of the Red Cross. 2. International Committee of the
Red Cross – History. 3. International relief. I. Title.
HV568.F67 2005
361.7′7 – dc22 2005045782

ISBN-13 978-0-521-84828-8 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-84828-8 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-61281-0 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-61281-0 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For
Pierre Boissier
and
Donald D. Tansley

The work of the ICRC is legendary.

Jennifer Leaning, “When the System Doesn’t Work: Somalia 1992,” in Cahill, ed., A Framework for Survival, 105

There is at the center of the ICRC a type of conviction that we are the best in the world. That comes to us from our long history, and without doubt also from the success of our methods of work . . . I have thus applied myself to try to contest that form of self-satisfaction, that institutional arrogance.

Cornelio Sommaruga, former ICRC President, in Massimo Lorenzi, Le CICR: le cœur et la raison, 89

We’re admired – we’ve won three Nobel Peace Prizes – but we’re not liked.

Urs Boegli, former Head, Washington Office, ICRC, quoted in The New York Times, 20 February 2002, A10.

Yet the International Committee itself remained a curious animal.

Caroline Morehead, Dunant’s Dream, 175

CONTENTS

PREFACE

In 1973 Pierre Boissier, an official of the ICRC and also at that time the Director of the now defunct Henry Dunant Institute, then supposedly the think tank of the Red Cross family, asked me to do some work for him as a research consultant. He was a wonderful and wise mentor, with a vast knowledge of humanitarian affairs. I later discovered that he had recommended me to others, and for certain positions, which shaped my professional life to a great extent. Among these positions was a stint as a consultant on humanitarian protection to Donald Tansley, head of the “Big Study” which led to the “Tansley Report” of 1975 on the reappraisal of the Red Cross Movement. On the basis of this foundation I was able to meet others and observe things which probably gave me a special niche for commenting on the ICRC as an informed outsider. I shall always be grateful for having encountered Pierre Boissier. It was a real tragedy that an accident cut short his life when he had so much to offer.

 I am equally grateful to have worked for Don Tansley and to have experienced up close his caustic skepticism as he prepared to ruffle numerous Red Cross feathers. Being in Geneva more than twenty-five years after the publication of the Tansley Report, to which I made some contribution, I was amazed to see how much it had entered the history of the Red Cross Movement. Some of the changes being undertaken at the ICRC and the Red Cross Federation at the time of writing in 2004 had been recommended by us back in 1975. It is a pity that at least some of our ideas were not addressed with a greater sense of urgency then. But as Tansley was known to remark with tongue firmly in cheek, the Red Cross always moved with such amazing speed.

 In any event, having followed the ICRC since the early 1970s, sometimes with special access and sometimes not, I wanted to make another attempt at a general overview. My first book on the ICRC tried to break new ground in looking at the field operations of the agency and its policy-making process in Geneva.¹ As far as I am aware, that effort was the first independent overview of the organization focusing not on legal rules but on policy questions. Having collected interview findings and other information for over thirty years, it seemed a pity not to review that mass of material. Was anything of importance different about the ICRC as we approach 2007 compared to 1977?

 I write, like before, as a sympathetic but hopefully analytical observer. Within some parts of the ICRC I am known as “a friend of the house,” to quote one document I was not supposed to see. But a real friend does not recoil from turning a critical eye toward some past events in the hope that further reflection might prove beneficial. Some of my friends at the ICRC, both back in the 1970s and again now, think I have been too critical. Having read some of my drafts, one asked, “Why write a book if you are going to be so critical?” That is certainly the wrong question. As Alex de Waal has indicated, “Nobility of aim does not confer immunity from sociological analysis or ethical critique.”² It should also be said that many of these interlocutors – but not all – continued to discuss interpretations with me even when they thought I was being too critical – no doubt in the hope that I would see the error of my ways.

 Many ICRC loyalists still want every comment and publication to be within the framework of advancing the reputation of the ICRC and the respect for IHL. They disregard the warnings of former ICRC Acting President Freymond, who noted that the ICRC did not like outside critiques, fearing that the organization would lose its status as a unique organization; but he went on, defensiveness could slide into a belief in infallibility.³ While greatly sympathetic to the ICRC and humanitarian values, as readers will discover if they stick with my account until the end, I remain an outsider trying to observe with at least some academic detachment. The ICRC will only be fully effective – and fully respected – if it confronts the controversial aspects of its record. My general theme is that whereas in the past the ICRC was in fact not as independent and neutral and effective as was often made out to be the case, in contemporary times the ICRC is a very impressive agency.

 Having had the good fortune at several junctures to live in Geneva, I have supplemented the written record with a broad range of interviews from the top of the organization to the bottom. I had discussions with both Cornelio Sommaruga, ICRC President from 1987 to 1999, and Jakob Kellenberger, President from 2000, just as I had discussions with other presidents such as Marcel Naville, Alexander Hay, and Jacques Freymond (who was Acting President for a time). But I also interviewed a wide range of others, from newly appointed personnel to members of the Committee – the group of Swiss notables who comprise the highest policy-making organ of the organization. In formal session they comprise the Assembly. (So I use “the Committee” and “the Assembly” as synonyms, as compared to the organization as a whole – the ICRC.) At different times I talked a great deal with the various members of the Directorate, the highest rung of the professional staff who actually run the agency on a day to day basis: to use titles current in 2004, the Director-General, the Director of Operations, the Director of Resources and Operational Support, the Director of International Law and Movement Cooperation, and the Director of Communications. I also interviewed a number of persons outside the organization who were well informed about it, such as individuals in the Red Cross Federation, the American Red Cross, the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, and so on.

 To all my interlocutors I express my gratitude for the time and insights given. Some of them were unusually open and helpful (and others decidedly not), but for reasons that should become obvious this is not the place to name names. I encountered at ICRC headquarters more than my share of what one colleague called “courteous stonewalling.”⁴ Some of these folks would make good Cardinals defending the secrets of the Vatican, and understanding the internal workings of the ICRC is probably similar to ferreting out Vatican decision making. This defensiveness by some high ICRC officials, who are very reluctant to speak candidly about personnel and the policy-making process in Geneva, has absolutely nothing to do with protecting the human dignity of victims of conflicts. This trait has everything to do with an irrational and sometimes dysfunctional tendency toward secrecy. Whether this mindless secrecy springs from Swiss society or ICRC organizational culture can be debated. No doubt the two are related.

 But I want to emphasize that this book could not have been written without the candor and cooperation of many ICRC officials. I owe them a profound debt of gratitude. At an earlier stage I accompanied some ICRC delegations in the field to observe first hand how they conducted detention visits, relief efforts, and the tracing of missing persons in trying circumstances. This obviously occurred with the cooperation of the organization. I also attended all four sessions of the 1974–77 diplomatic conference that adopted two protocols additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions for victims of war. In the summer of 2004 senior levels of the organization reviewed a draft copy of the book manuscript, at my initiative, which gave their side a chance to raise comments, and gave me an opportunity to evaluate those comments. In light of their comments and any documentary evidence presented, sometimes I made changes in my draft but sometimes I did not. From my perspective, some of these brutal discussions were about the same as having dental work without a pain killer, but presumably the end justified the means. I should like to stress that all my interlocutors respected my academic freedom.

 Some of my friends would prefer to see this book based entirely on documents rather than additional interviews. But the ICRC archives are closed for the more recent years (the last forty, to be exact). Moreover, some things are not written down in documents. Judgments about the relationship between the President and the Committee, or the President and the Director-General, are not going to rest primarily on documentary evidence. I am aware that some of my interpretations rest on information gained through interviews, and that interviewing is not an exact science. But it is not reliance on mere gossip either, since I try to cross-check my interview findings and to combine interviews with whatever documentary evidence I could come up with.

 I write primarily for those interested in international humanitarian affairs – that is, interested in the fate of individuals in distress. From time to time I draw on more general literature from the social sciences and law, but this is not a book intended for theorists. Moreover, I have tried to write in a style not encumbered by academic jargon. Early drafts reflected what Jacques Meurant has referred to in a different context as “the zest of subjectivity.”⁵ In so far as these drafts indicated a personalized and (attempted) entertaining overview, I was persuaded to make the project more “scholarly.” This change may entail some drawbacks. “The obvious explanation for the lack of appeal of written history [and political science] is the pedestrian way it is presented. Historical writing [and political science] is the preserve of academics whose language is often stuck in a thicket of subordinate clauses.”⁶ Nevertheless, I have provided as much documentation as I can and removed the more light-hearted observations, even if I fully admit that behind most “scholarly” studies in international relations lurks the inevitability of personal judgment.

 It is no doubt the case that at the time of writing there is considerable wariness of American views about international relations, and at times in certain circles a clear anti-American feeling in Europe – including in Switzerland. This is a difficult time for an American author to take a close look at what has historically been a very Swiss organization. I understand this resentment. When the Swiss, both in the government and at the ICRC, dealt with Nazi Germany from 1942 to 1944, they were effectively surrounded by fascists and it was reasonable to think the independent existence of the country was in doubt. After all, the Nazis did have contingency plans for the invasion of Switzerland. By contrast, the United States refused to take in but a trickle of European Jewish refugees during this same time, although it was not under the same kind of external pressures and had plenty of room for them. Against this historical comparison, it can be annoying for Americans to pass judgment on Swiss difficult decisions in the 1940s. I can only say that I am trying to analyze the ICRC record with as much understanding as I can muster. Readers will find that I do not spare other actors like the United States when I analyze international relations (see my discussion about US treatment of “enemy” prisoners after September 11, 2001).

 Writing in the mid-1990s, the British historian Geoffrey Best characterized my publications on the ICRC as “well rounded” and “a fair appraisal of the strengths and limitations” of the organization.⁷ I hope his characterization will also fit this current effort. I suppose Swiss ultra-nationalists and most lawyers will no doubt be glad to learn I have almost – but not quite – said what I have to say about the ICRC.

 Sometimes in the following pages I refer to the Red Cross Movement or to the Red Cross approach or the Red Cross tradition. I mean no disrespect to the Red Crescent and the organizations that use it, nor to the Red Shield of David and the Magen David Adom society that uses it in Israel. I use “Red Cross” sometimes as shorthand for a longer and more cumbersome term. Thus sometimes I refer to the Red Cross Federation as shorthand for the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (which at the time of writing excluded Magen David Adom – and the Palestinian Red Crescent for that matter). I have opted mostly for readability at the expense of legalistic accuracy. I offer my apologies in advance to anyone offended by my choice.

 Likewise, I use “war” as a synonym for “armed conflict,” even though some of my lawyer friends tell me that “war” is no longer a preferred term in international law.

 I am grateful to the University of Nebraska, its Research Council, its Human Rights and Human Diversity Program, and its Political Science Department for research grants at various stages of this enterprise.

 I am also grateful to the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva, which in the fall of 2003 arranged a meeting at which experts in the Geneva area, including several from the ICRC, discussed my views and thus made a valuable contribution to subsequent revisions. In this regard Johanna Grombach Wagner deserves special thanks. Since she later went back to the ICRC, I should make clear that she bears no responsibility for the contents of what follows.

 I am especially indebted to François Bugnion, whose knowledge of the ICRC and IHL is most impressive, and who took time from his pressing duties in the summer of 2004 to give me careful and extensive comments on the entire manuscript. I am also especially indebted to Bill Schabas, who read the entire manuscript with a fine eye for detail.

 I benefited from comments on earlier versions of various chapters from several persons with no position at the ICRC: Adam Roberts, Tom Weiss, Larry Minear, Chris Joyner, John King Gamble, Peter Baehr, Brian Lepard, Danny Warner, Jean Freymond, Jurg Martin Gabriel, Lloyd Ambrosius, David Cahan, Jean Cahan, Joshua Mutuma Ruteere, and Barbara-Ann J. Rieffer. Eric Heinze and Caroline Lyznik helped with research. Jay Ovsiovitch provided many legal materials that I might have otherwise overlooked. Jordan Milliken, an experienced copy-editor, was of great assistance in preparing the final copy, especially in checking the French. Carrie Althoff also helped with manuscript preparation. I benefited from the critiques of several referees arranged by John Haslam of Cambridge University Press. Several of these pushed me into further revisions which markedly improved the manuscript.

 As is customary, I alone am responsible for what follows.

David P. Forsythe
Lincoln, Nebraska
October 2004

ABBREVIATIONS