In the decades after the death of Iosif Stalin in 1953, Soviet foreign policy shifted away from isolationism to knowledge transfer and competition with the West, as well as robust engagement with the decolonising and non-aligned world. A core component of this reorientation was the reversal of the USSR’s temporary withdrawal from international organisations. This article explores the Soviet Red Cross’s involvement in the League of Red Cross Societies and argues that the two organisations engaged in a mutually beneficial partnership that was built upon shared visions of humanitarianism and development. In this period, the Soviet Red Cross co-hosted major international seminars and conferences with the League, helped to channel humanitarian relief to conflict zones, and supported the League’s development initiatives in the Global South. In return, the League offered the Soviets opportunities to forge links with newly independent countries of the decolonising world and advance narratives about Soviet superiority to international and domestic audiences.

Although the South African War was a colonial war, it aroused great interest abroad as a test of international morality. Both the Boer republics were signatories to the Geneva Convention of 1864, as was Britain, but the resources of these small countries were limited, for their populations were small and, before the discovery of gold in 1884, government revenues were trifling. It was some time before they could put even the most rudimentary organization in place. In Europe, public support from pro-Boers enabled National Red Cross Societies from such countries as the Netherlands, France, Germany, Russia and Belgium to send ambulances and medical aid to the Boers. The British military spurned such aid, but the tide of public opinion and the hospitals that the aid provided laid the foundations for similar voluntary aid in the First World War. Until the fall of Pretoria in June 1900, the war had taken the conventional course of pitched battles and sieges. Although the capitals of both the Boer republics had fallen to the British by June 1900, the Boer leaders decided to continue the conflict. The Boer military system, based on locally recruited, compulsory commando service, was ideally suited to guerrilla warfare, and it was another two years before the Boers finally surrendered. During this period of conflict, about 30,000 farms were burnt and the country was reduced to a wasteland. Women and children, black and white, were installed in camps which were initially ill-conceived and badly managed, giving rise to high mortality, especially of the children. As the scandal of the camps became known, European humanitarian aid shifted to the provision of comforts for women and children. While the more formal aid organizations, initiated by men, preferred to raise funds for post-war reconstruction, charitable relief for the camps was often provided by informal women's organizations. These ranged from church groups to personal friends of the Boers, to women who wished to be associated with the work of their menfolk.

Social media is becoming the first source of information and also the first way to communicate messages. Because social media users will take action based on the information they are seeing, it is important that organizations like the Red Cross be active in the social space. We describe the American Red Cross’s concept for a Digital Operations Center (DigiDOC) that we believe should become an essential part of all emergency operations centers and a key piece of all agencies that operate in disasters. The American Red Cross approach is a practical and logical approach that other agencies can use as a model.(Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2014;8:445-451)

The trauma of coming face to face with the horrors of a battlefield and witnessing first-hand the abandonment of the war-wounded led Henry Dunant to two ingenious concepts: the creation of permanent volunteer relief societies and the adoption of a treaty to protect wounded soldiers and all who endeavour to come to their aid. On the initiative of Gustave Moynier, a committee was established in Geneva to implement Dunant's proposals. That committee – which soon took the name ‘International Committee of the Red Cross’ (ICRC) – convened two international conferences, the first of which laid the foundation for the future relief societies while the second adopted the initial Geneva Convention. This article considers the circumstances that led to the founding of the ICRC and then to that of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, starting with Solferino and culminating in the adoption of the Geneva Convention.

In the early morning of Thursday 8 December 2005, a Diplomatic Conference of the States Parties to the Geneva Conventions, convened in Geneva, adopted the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, relating to the Adoption of an Additional Distinctive Emblem (hereinafter, Third Protocol). The Third Protocol creates an additional emblem alongside the existing emblems recognised by the Geneva Conventions. It represents a landmark solution of long-standing problems regarding the use of distinctive emblems for the protection of war victims and the universality of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (hereinafter, Movement). Yet, the failure to adopt the Third Protocol by consensus was a disappointment to many, even those familiar with the controversies of the question of the emblem.

Since the nineteenth century, the emblems recognised by the consecutive Geneva Conventions have served both as protective emblems for national military and civilian medical services in times of war and as distinctive signs for National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Almost since their adoption, however, the emblems have been a source of recurrent difficulties and the subject of almost continuous discussion. The two emblems that in effect have been in use over the past decades – the red cross and the red crescent – have increasingly been perceived not as neutral and impartial but as having religious, cultural or political connotations. This has negatively affected respect for the emblems and diminished the protection they offer to victims and to humanitarian and medical personnel. Solving this problem was one of the two main reasons for adopting an additional emblem.