Founding of the Red Cross

Henry Dunant of Geneva helped wounded soldiers at the battle of Solferino in 1859 and came away lobbying political leaders to do more for the victims of war. In 1862 he set out two proposals in his book A Souvenir of Solferino: a treaty that would oblige armies to care for all wounded soldiers, and national societies of volunteers to help military medical services.

In February 1863 the Geneva Public Welfare Society took up the ideas and appointed a committee of five Swiss citizens. General Guillaume Henri Dufour of the Swiss army chaired it in its first year. Gustave Moynier, a young lawyer who headed the Welfare Society, supplied the organizing drive and presided over the committee from 1864 until 1910. The other members were two physicians, Louis Appia and Théodore Maunoir, and Dunant, its secretary.

An international conference followed in October 1863, with sixteen nations taking part. The delegates urged every country to form volunteer units for sick and wounded soldiers and agreed on a common sign for medical personnel, a red cross on a white background. The first national society was founded that November in the German state of Württemberg.

Law came next. At the Swiss government's invitation a diplomatic conference met in Geneva the following year, and on 22 August 1864 twelve states signed the first Geneva Convention. It required armies to care for wounded soldiers whatever side they were on, guaranteed the neutrality of medical personnel and equipment, and made the red cross their official emblem. In 1864 the committee also sent its first delegates into a war, to each side of the front in the fighting between Germany and Denmark.

In the 1870s the Ottoman Empire adopted a red crescent in place of the cross. Later conventions extended protection to victims of war at sea, to prisoners of war and to civilians.