Jean-Henry Dunant the founder of the Red Cross was born in Geneva, Switzerland to a middle-class Calvinist family on the 8th of May 1828. The World Red Cross Day is celebrated every year on May 8, the birth day of Henry Dunant, to emphasize the hard work that all the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, through its members and volunteers, put in for the relief of the defenseless communities around the world from distress and misery occurring due to disease, famine, disaster or war. Henry Dunant was a participant in the creation of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in 1852 and the World Alliance of YMCAs in 1855. He was also the first Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
World Red Cross Day is celebrated with a view to reach out to all dedicated members and volunteers who involve themselves for the cause of making the world a better place to live in. It is an opportunity to show them due recognition for their selfless endeavor.
International Committee of Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), established in 1863, is an impartial, neutral and independent organization whose exclusively humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity of the victims of armed conflict and other situations of violence and to provide them with assistance. The ICRC also works to prevent sufferings by way of promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles. It directs and coordinates the international activities conducted by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
Origin of World Red Cross Day
In February 1863 the Geneva Public Welfare Society set up a five member committee of Swiss citizens to study the ideas of Henry Dunant in his book Un Souvenir de Solferino. Protection of the sick and wounded during combat was the main subject dealt with in the book. Guillaume Henri Dufour (1787-1875), a general of the Swiss army and a writer of military tracts; Gustave Moynier (1826-1910), a young lawyer and president of the sponsoring Public Welfare Society; Louis Appia (1818-1898) and Theodore Maunoir (1806-1869), both medical doctors; and Henry Dunant himself were the five members in the committee.Guillaume Henri Dufour became the committee's president for its first year and continued as its honorary president thereafter. Gustave Moynier devoted his entire life to Red Cross work from the time he became the member.
An international conference was conducted in October 1863 wherein representatives of sixteen nations participated. In this conference various resolutions were adopted and an international emblem was introduced. All nations were requested to form voluntary organizations to help those wounded in war and support the sick. These organizations later became the National red Cross Societies and the Committee of Five itself eventually became the International Committee of the Red Cross. The 1863 Conference paved way to the idea of getting the Red Cross principles as a part of international law. An international diplomatic meeting was held at Geneva the following year at the invitation of the Swiss government. The Geneva Convention of 1864 was formulated in the Assembly.
This international Convention deals with matters pertaining to the improvement of the "Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field". A red cross in a white background was officially adopted as the identifying emblem. On August 22, 1864, twelve states signed the convention and it was later accepted by almost all nations. Three other conventions extending protection to victims of naval warfare, to prisoners of war, and to civilians were later added to the first. Revisions of these conventions, the most extensive being that of 1949, were made from time to time.
The aftermath of the First World War induced a sense of peace-loving all over the world and in 1922, the National Society in Czechoslovakia proclaimed a three-day truce to promote peace known as the "Red Cross Truce". An eminent government leader of the time summed up the underlying aspirations of that initiative as follows: "Our Red Cross wants to prevent disease so that it will not be obliged to give care; it also wants to encourage our society to prevent wars rather than having to bear the serious consequences involved. We all know the importance of the moral potential it brings into being and extends to all sections of the community. If its annual action could take hold in the whole world, this would certainly be a major contribution to peace " . This was an intimation of what was to become World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day.
Even though the truce was welcomed by the public, some National Society leaders turned sceptic about it. As a result the 14th International Conference of the Red Cross set up an International Commission to study the Red Cross Truce. It presented its report to the 15th International Conference held in Tokyo in 1934 approving the principles of the Truce. It further recommended that the application of the Truce be made more general, from the methodology point of view and the psychology characteristic of different regions be given due consideration. However, only after World War II, the Tokyo proposal was put into effect in 1946. During the fourteenth Session of the Governors of the League of Red Cross Societies a proposal was put up to study the possibility of adopting an international Red Cross Day.
Two years later the General Assembly of the International Federation of Red Cross Societies (formerly the League of Red Cross Societies) approved the proposal and the first Red Cross Day was celebrated throughout the world on 8 May 1948, the anniversary of the birth of Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross. After several changes the name of the day eventually came to be called the World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day in 1984.
Celebration of World Red Cross Day
Particular theme is selected every year on the World Red Cross Day to emphasize the purpose of the celebration. Usually the theme is mainly based on the international Red Cross mission to safeguard human life and health. On World Red Cross Day activities are so arranged that the focus of the celebration is to prevent and lessen human suffering ensuring indiscrimination on the basis of nationality, race, class, religious beliefs. The volunteers and members worldwide are given due recognition and those who died or were killed in the performance of their humanitarian mission are remembered. Small parties are hosted by the volunteers to the inmates of homes for handicapped, orphans and destitute old people.Seminars and lectures relating to the theme of the year are conducted with active participation of volunteers. To uphold the mission of the Red Cross, millions of Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers around the world take up the task of helping refugees, educating young people about dreadful diseases like HIV and AIDS and uniting family members separated by war, just as they do every other day of the year. The cause of the needy is highlighted to the Government agencies to see a possible solution to their problems.