Geneva's Committee of Five: Turning a Relief Proposal into an Organization

On June 24, 1859, French, Sardinian, and Austrian armies fought around Solferino in northern Italy. Wounded men poured into nearby Castiglione, where churches and houses became temporary shelters. Geneva businessman Henry Dunant, passing through the area, joined residents in finding water, preparing dressings, and tending the injured. Assistance from local women showed him how civilian effort could fill gaps in military medical services, but also how aid without advance preparation arrived too late.

Dunant published Un Souvenir de Solférino at his own expense in Geneva in 1862. The book went beyond describing battlefield suffering to propose volunteer relief societies established in peacetime and internationally recognized principles protecting relief work. The first required training, supplies, and sustained organization; the second required agreements among governments. Forming a committee and promoting a treaty later addressed these distinct but interdependent tasks.

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Gustave Moynier, president of the Geneva Public Welfare Society, encouraged it to examine Dunant's proposals. In February 1863, the society appointed five members: Dunant, Moynier, General Guillaume-Henri Dufour, and physicians Louis Appia and Théodore Maunoir. Legal, philanthropic, military, and medical experience met around one table, enabling discussion not only of donations but of how relief workers could enter the sphere of military operations.

The first meeting on February 17 was originally intended to prepare proposals for a philanthropic congress planned in Berlin. Its minutes show that members went further, deciding to constitute themselves as a permanent international committee, with Dunant as secretary. Identifying volunteers, securing military acceptance, and obtaining neutral protection all entered the agenda. This was the origin of today's International Committee of the Red Cross, although the five-person body then focused specifically on aiding wounded soldiers.

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When the planned Berlin congress did not take place, the committee did not shelve its plans but organized an international conference itself. In September 1863, it sent invitations and a draft for discussion to European governments and military, medical, and philanthropic figures. Dunant also used visits in Germany to promote neutrality for relief personnel. Implementation depended both on people in different countries being willing to organize volunteers and on governments and armies accepting them.

From October 26 to 29, the conference met at Geneva's Palais de l'Athénée, attended by government-appointed delegates, representatives of private associations, and individuals. Its mixed composition mattered: voluntary bodies could raise resources, military participants could explain battlefield needs, and governments held the key to legal recognition. The conference principally discussed supplementing military medical services. It could not itself turn aspirations for neutral protection into a treaty binding states.

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The ten resolutions adopted by the conference left considerable autonomy to local organizations while setting common tasks. Each country should have a central committee to assist army medical services when needed, establish local branches if appropriate, and contact its government early. Peacetime responsibilities included preparing relief supplies and recruiting and training volunteer medical personnel. Charity's starting point thus moved from fundraising after news of war toward routine training and stockpiling.

The resolutions also required volunteers sent to the battlefield to have military invitation or consent and submit to military command. A common white armband bearing a red cross would identify relief workers, and communications among national committees would provisionally pass through the Geneva committee. This was decentralized organization with shared coordination: Geneva did not directly command every country's volunteers but provided common rules, channels of contact, and a center for promoting action.

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The conference separately made recommendations to governments, seeking protection for hospitals, medical units, medical personnel, and residents assisting the wounded, together with a common identifying emblem. Distinguishing these recommendations from organizational resolutions shows awareness of the limits of a nongovernmental conference. Without belligerents' recognition, the red cross emblem could not by itself prevent arrest or attack; without military coordination, volunteers might not reach the wounded.

The immediate achievement of 1863 was a committee capable of maintaining contact and a plan for establishing national relief societies. The Swiss government subsequently helped convene a diplomatic conference, and the first Geneva Convention followed in 1864. The committee of five's contribution can thus be understood concretely as turning personal observation into an institution with assigned responsibilities: preparing people and supplies in peacetime, supplementing medical services in war, and seeking common legal protection for that work.

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