Naming and shaming: The ethics of ICRC discretion

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 461-474

  Forsythe, David P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA LINCOLN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33645276276     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/03058298060340022301     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. Jakob Kellenberger, 'Speaking Out or Remaining Silent in Humanitarian Work,' International Review of the Red Cross 86, no. 855 (2004): 593-609.
2. My analysis of events in 1942 is based on ICRC archives, now open to researchers after a 40 year time lag. For greater detail, see my book, The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
3. It did not bind Germany vis-á-vis the Soviet Union.
4. For more on this, see Jean-Claude Favez, The Red Cross and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), ch. 3.
5. See further Andre Durand, History of the International Committee of the Red Cross: From Sarajevo to Hiroshima (Geneva: ICRC, 1984). Neither Durand nor the ICRC has ever fully explained the reasons for this shift.
6. Technically the ICRC is a Swiss private association. But it is recognised and given duties in public international law, and increasingly it is treated by the Swiss government and other governments as if it were a public international organisation. From the view of governments, it has a status different from NGOs such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch.
7. Confidential source.
8. Afsané Bassir Pour 'Louise Arbour, justice sans frontières', Le Monde, 22 April 2005 [http://www.lemonde.fr/web/ article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-641876@51-635324,0.html] (18 November 2005).
9. Among other sources see Iain Guest, Behind the Disappearances: Argentina's Dirty War Against Human Rights and the United Nations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990). Guest does not have hard evidence of US pressure at the level of Perez de Cuellar to get rid of van Boven. It is likely that the US did not attempt to influence de Cueller directly; confidential source. There could, however, have been US pressure on his advisors.
10. Jakob Kellenberger, International Review of the Red Cross 86, no. 855 (2004): 597.
11. The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, December 2001, Canadian International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada, 2001. Former ICRC President Cornelio Sommaruga was a member of this panel.
12. See Max Huber, The Red Cross: Principles and Problems (Geneva: ICRC, no date), 77 and passim.
13. As fate would have it, a new version of Doctrine number 15 was approved by the ICRC Assembly in the summer of 2005, just as controversy was erupting again over the subject of public disclosure. The new version had been in the works for several years. It stated clearly that the organisation would consider various approaches to protecting human dignity; that confidential information might be shared discreetly with various third parties in the interest of humanitarian values; and that public declarations and even public denunciations would be considered, even in internal situations of violence outside the bounds of international humanitarian law for armed conflicts. The ICRC would take into account important violations of 'fundamental rules' protecting human dignity, not just international humanitarian law narrowly construed. The new public version was eventually published, see 'Action by the International Committee of the Red Cross in the event of violations of international humanitarian law or of other fundamental rules protecting persons in situations of violence', International Review of the Red Cross vol 87, no. 858 (June 2005), 393-400.
14. An essential source for the history of ICRC practice for situations of war, but not internal troubles and tensions, is Francois Bugnion, The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Protection of War Victims (Geneva: ICRC, 2003).
15. This English book is based on an earlier French version. For a thorough if sanitised review of ICRC procedure for detention visits in general, see Alain Aeschlimann, 'Protection of Detainees: ICRC Action Behind Bars', International Review of the Red Cross, 87, no. 857 (2005): 83-123.
16. See further Forsythe, The Humanitarians, 15-16.
17. The leak came from the French Ministry of Justice. See International Review of the Red Cross, no. 856 (2004): 943, note 44.
18. Raymond R. Probst, 'Good Offices' in the Light of Swiss International Practice and Experience (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1989).
19. See further Jurg Martin Gabriel and Thomas Fischer, eds., Swiss Foreign Policy in a Changing World (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
20. Kellenberger was the top civil servant in the foreign ministry, Cornelio Sommaruga was the secretary of state for trade, and Alexander Hay was president of the Swiss national bank.
21. For more on this see Simone Delorenzi, ICRC Policy Since The End Of The Cold War (Geneva: ICRC, 1999).
22. See especially Michael Ignatieff, 'The Stories We Tell: Television and Humanitarian Aid', in Jonathan Moore, ed., Hard Choices: Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian Intervention (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 287-303. This book was published with the cooperation of the ICRC, which did not try to block what Ignatieff wrote.
23. Personal interviews by author, Geneva, 2004.
24. ICRC press release 655, 30 May 2005. The ICRC referred only to those 'arrested in connection with the events', which is typical of its antiseptic language. But congressional staffers, State Department officials, NGO researchers, etc. understood.
25. At the time of Kellenberger's visit to Washington in January 2004, the ICRC issued a press release (number 04/03, January 16, 2004) that paid much attention to Guantanamo. Afghanistan was also mentioned. Iraq was not. There were references to the ICRC's continuing work "elsewhere." These and other relevant press releases are available on the ICRC web site, [www.icrc.org]. My analysis is also based on confidential sources.
26. As President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger tried to pursue détente with the Soviet Union, particularly Senator Jackson wanted to focus on Soviet (and East Bloc) violations of human rights, such as denial of reasonable emigration, to undercut détente. So Senator Jackson and Representative Vanik successfully sponsored legislation denying 'Most Favored Nation' trading status to European communist countries that refused to allow dissenters, and particularly Jewish dissenters, to leave those countries. The Soviet Union and its East European allies wanted to show that they could not be pressured by the United States, so they curtailed migration to the West, even as they lost desired trading status. In the short term, the congressional attempt to openly pressure the Soviet Union and its allies was counter productive. (In the long term particularly Romanian emigration increased.)
27. International Review of the Red Cross, op. cit., 606-7.
28. Alexander G. Higgins, for the Associated Press, 'International Red Cross says U.S. cooperation good on Guantanamo despite critics', 17 June 2005, [http://0-web.lexisnexis.com.library.unl.edu/universe/ documents?_m=c5313ea15785a028d] (18 November 2005).
29. To date the best source on this subject is Roland Siegrist, The Protection of Political Detainees: The International Committee of the Red Cross in Greece (1967-1971) (Montreux: Corbaz, 1985).
30. For a short journalistic summary regarding Algeria, see Caroline Morehead, 'Crisis of Confidence', Financial Times, 17 June 2005.
31. For the same regarding Israel, but without any mention of the ICRC, see Joseph Lelyveld, 'Interrogating Ourselves: What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Torture', New York Times Magazine, 12 June 2005, starting at 36.
32. See Forsythe, The Humanitarians, 265.
33. The source for this statement is an ICRC official, as reported in Le Monde, 21 May 2005 and confirmed by confidential sources. So here we have a rare event: a question from a journalist prompting a statement about the details of what ICRC delegates have seen in an on-going controversy. This is not what Doctrine number 15 anticipates, but it is within the bounds of Doctrine number 58. This ICRC public comment brought an attack by one part of the Republican Party in the United States: 'Are American Interests Being Disserved by the International Committee of the Red Cross', 13 June 2005, a statement by the Republican Policy Committee in Congress. So while Warner finds that the ICRC says too little, another circle of opinion finds the ICRC says too much.
34. The axiom derives from ICRC consultations with Mandela about suspending its visits to Robben Island prison. Mandela told Jacques Moreillon, the ICRC delegate, not to do it.