The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, and to prevent and alleviate human suffering. Within it there are three distinct organisations that are legally independent from each other, but are united within the movement through common basic principles, objectives, symbols, statutes and governing organisations.
Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotional reasons. One aspect involves voluntary emergency aid overlapping with human rights advocacy, actions taken by governments, development assistance, and domestic philanthropy. Other critical issues include correlation with religious beliefs, motivation of aid between altruism and social control, market affinity, imperialism and neo-colonialism, gender and class relations, and humanitarian agencies. A practitioner is known as a humanitarian.
Humanitarian aid is material and logistic assistance to people who need help. It is usually short-term help until the long-term help by the government and other institutions replaces it. Among the people in need are the homeless, refugees, and victims of natural disasters, wars, and famines. Humanitarian relief efforts are provided for humanitarian purposes and include natural disasters and man-made disasters. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity. It may, therefore, be distinguished from development aid, which seeks to address the underlying socioeconomic factors which may have led to a crisis or emergency. There is a debate on linking humanitarian aid and development efforts, which was reinforced by the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016. However, the conflation is viewed critically by practitioners.
The Canadian Red Cross Society is a Canadian humanitarian charitable organization, and one of 192 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies. The organization receives funding from both private donations and from Canadian government departments.
A humanitarian crisis is defined as a singular event or a series of events that are threatening in terms of health, safety or well-being of a community or large group of people. It may be an internal or external conflict and usually occurs throughout a large land area. Local, national and international responses are necessary in such events.
The Italian Red Cross is the Italian national Red Cross society. The Italian Red Cross was one of the original founding members of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1919.
Henry Pomeroy Davison Sr. was an American banker and philanthropist.
Frederick C. Cuny was an American humanitarian whose work spanned disaster relief, refugee emergency management, recovery from war and civil conflict as well as disaster and emergency preparedness, mitigation and peacebuilding. He was first and foremost a practitioner, but also a prolific author, an educator and a field-based researcher. He has been described as “a great American – a sort of universal Schindler, a man with lists of millions of people in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe whose lives he succored or saved.” Another tribute to Cuny claimed that he “was one of the world’s most accomplished disaster relief experts, both a pioneer and an iconoclast in the field of international humanitarian aid.”
The Philippine Red Cross is a non-profit humanitarian organization and a member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
The American Red Cross (ARC), also known as the American National Red Cross, is a non-profit humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and disaster preparedness education in the United States. It is the designated US affiliate of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the United States movement to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signatories) to the Geneva Convention of 1949 and its Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005 have given the ICRC a mandate to protect victims of international and internal armed conflicts. Such victims include war wounded persons, prisoners, refugees, civilians, and other non-combatants.
The Armenian Relief Society (ARS), is an independent, nonsectarian, philanthropic society serving the humanitarian, social and educational needs of Armenians and non-Armenians alike. It operates as a non-governmental organization and has entities in 27 countries.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is a worldwide humanitarian aid organization that reaches 160 million people each year through its 192-member National Societies. It acts before, during and after disasters and health emergencies to meet the needs and improve the lives of vulnerable people. It does so with impartiality as to nationality, race, gender, religious beliefs, class and political opinions.
New Zealand Red Cross or Ripeka Whero Aotearoa is a humanitarian organisation, which has more than 15,000 members and volunteers. In New Zealand, Red Cross delivers core community services, such as Meals on Wheels, Community Transport, Refugee Services, first aid courses and emergency management operations. Internationally, New Zealand Red Cross sends aid workers overseas to assist in areas where humanitarian assistance is needed; this includes disaster preparedness and response. In 2013, 17 workers were sent to the Philippines in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan and in 2014, 18 New Zealand aid workers responded to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) is an interfaculty Harvard University initiative dedicated to advancing research, practice, and policy in the field of humanitarian assistance. HHI's mission is "to relieve human suffering in war and disaster by advancing the science and practice of humanitarian response worldwide".
The Albanian Red Cross, or ARC, is the national society member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies for Albania. The oldest humanitarian organization in Albania, it was founded on October 4, 1921, and was officially recognized by the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in 1923. Its headquarters are located in the Albanian capital of Tirana, and its 39 branches provide humanitarian assistance across the country in accordance with the Fundamental Principles.
The International Institute of Humanitarian Law (IIHL) is an independent, “non-profit, humanitarian association having social values as its objectives”, founded in 1970 in Sanremo, Italy. Its headquarters are situated in Villa Ormond, while a liaison office of the Institute is established in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Shelter Cluster is an Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) coordination mechanism that supports people affected by disasters and conflicts with the means to live in safe, dignified and appropriate shelter. The Shelter Cluster is one of eleven sectorial coordination groups that are part of the Cluster Approach, that followed the Humanitarian Response Review in 2005. Currently 43 humanitarian organizations are part of the Shelter Cluster at global level, more than 500 organizations coordinate shelter assistance with the support of the Shelter Cluster at country level.
Aline Sybil Atherton-Smith was an English born Quaker, who worked as an International refugee relief worker and writer, focused initially with duties for the British Red Cross, followed by humanitarian aid in France, and subsequently in Central Europe with the Friends' War Victims Relief Committee. She was a member of the Friends Council for International Service. As an activist for peaceful causes, she assisted displaced persons, and aided the Serbs in France in the aftermath of First World War. In 1940, her name appeared on the Nazis' most wanted list drawn up prior to their intended invasion of Britain.
Humanitarian protection is the act of promoting and ensuring the legal rights of people affected by humanitarian crises.
The American Red Cross at work on the grounds, with the leaning tower in the distance.
Workers taking cement slabs from railway station to the ARC village at Pisa.
Workmen leaving the ARC village at Pisa.
Canal, by old aqueduct near Pisa. These boats bring some of the material for building the ARC concrete village.
Workers building the ARC village.
Trucks with material for the ARC village passing the leaning tower.
The first building at the ARC village.
Part of the grounds of the ARC village.
One of the cement buildings partly finished at the ARC village.
Signing the contract by which the American Red Cross agrees to build the village at Pisa housing 2000 refugees. Major Chester Aldrich, Director of Civil Affairs of the ARC, is in the center with the governor of the Province of Pisa and the Pisan contractor.
