The Red Cross Organization

Paper Summary:

The essay by Mark Schapiro argues that with all of the good that it has done, the Red Cross has not accomplished enough. The paper takes examples from the essay to explain and analyze this position, concluding that such an organization faces great difficulty in remaining neutral when encountering the types of war and disasters that unfold in today's world.

From the Paper:

"Schapiro leaves no doubt about the good the ICRC has accomplished since its founding in 1863, nor about the central role which neutrality has played in that accomplishment of good on both (or several) sides of each conflict in which it has been involved. Its neutrality allowed it access to the wounded on all sides and also helped protect its members who were putting their lives on the line in the middle of war. However, because the nature of war itself has changed, the ICRC has recently been forced to rethink its neutrality. Schapiro writes that ICRC's neutrality policy worked without criticism up to World War II, before "traditional" warfare gave way to mass civilian killings, modern weapons of destruction, and the kind of ethnic cleansing the world has witnessed in the war in the former Yugoslavia. With the advent of unspeakably inhumane atrocities, the ICRC still, however, maintained its neutrality. For example, the ICRC was aware of the crimes against Jews carried out by the Nazis, but chose to not speak out publicly against them, choosing instead private and ineffectual pleas to the Germans."

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