Dunant's Dream

Book excerpt: The International Red Cross was the inspiration - the dream - of Henri Dunant, a 31 year old Swiss businessman appalled by the butchery and lack of medical care for injured soldiers during the battle of Solferino in 1859. He 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. 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.