Pergamon 0277-9536(95)00142-5

Soc. Sea. Med. Vol. 41. No 12. pp 1623-1624. 1995 Elsevier Sc'tc'nc¢ Lid Pnnled m Great Britain

COMMENTS

ON PROVIDING A TRULY INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

DAVID WYATT

I have read with interest the text of Ren~e C. Fox's opening address to the XIlIth International Conference on the Social Sciences and Medicine.

1 found her account of the origins and inspiration of what she calls the "'sansfronti~risme movement" at once informative and illuminating.

Where however I must take issue with her is in her gratuitous and questionable comments about the Red Cross Movement; gratuitous because I see no need to danm the Red Cross in order to praise Doctors Without Borders/Doctors of the World; questionable as i will scck to show below.

Professor Fox claims (p. 9) that "'the form and spirit of the action in which Doctors Without Borders and Doctors of the World mobilized themselves to engage was intended to break through, and stand above what they critically view as the constraints, compromises and vested interests of the 'classical humanitarian aid" dispensed by more traditional, bureaucratized and partisan voluntary agencies and "charities'--most notably by the Red Cross."

llad Professor Fox visited the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Federation. or National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the field she would surely have met not bureaucrats but would rather have discovered-- as others have--that Rcd Cross/Red Crescent institutions also rely on "the idealism of most of their volunteers, their youthful adventuresomeness, courage and resiliency" which she detects in Doctors Without Borders and Doctors of the World (p. 24).

I must also take issue with thc unqualified alle- gation that it is a "fact that the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was allowed by Nazi Germany to dcliver food and mcdicine to people in concentration camps during World War !I. did not speak out against the atrocities taking place in those camps. Rather. the Red Cross maintained an established policy of silence to protect what they defined as their neutrality, and their permission to continue doing relief work in that holocaust setting" (p. 9-10).

The Red Cross is not. and cannot be, neutral between torturers and victims, nor has it any policy of silence to protect such supposed neutrality. The

Red Cross is always on the side of the victims and has spoken out on behalf of victims whenever and wherever this will help them.

As regards concentration camps, the ICRC was able to deliver relief parcels to certain categories of detainees from 1943 on. Even within the narrow constraints imposed by the Nazi regime there is no doubt that this saved the lives of thousands of inmates who without it would have died. With only very rare exceptions the ICRC did not actually obtain access to the concentration camps until the last weeks of the war.

In 1942 the ICRC had considered issuing a public appeal on behalf of civilians including hostages and deportees. At that time the information about the Holocaust was mostly indirect and incomplete, though the ICRC did share with some Allied auth- orities such information about the camps as it had succeeded in gathering. The [CRC concluded that any public denunciation would not have deterred the Nazi regime but would have jeopardized the limited relief operation for detainees as well as the major relief operation for Allied prisoners of war in Germany and for the civilian population in occupied Europe.

The issues raised by these events are complex. The ICRC has itself permitted independent scholars to examine its actions in relation to the Holocaust (e.g. see 'Mission Impossible? Le CICR et les camps de concentration Nazis" by J.-C. Favez [1988]) and its officials have accepted that in certain ways it could have done more. What surprises me is that Professor Fox seems sure what was the right answer at the time in the terrible dilemma of whether to bear possibly futile witness to a great crime, or to go on trying to help at least some of the victims of that crime.

What is sad about such polemics is that they promote a spirit of distrust and competition between humanitarian organizations. The predictable conse- quence is that every agency wants and needs to be present where the T.V. cameras are rolling while the victims of other armed conflicts and natural disasters remain unattended because unreported. Fortunately, Doctors Without Borders regularly shows its willing- ness to cooperate in the field (as in lraq. in Somalia

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1624 Medical humanitarianism and human rights--Comments

and in Rwanda) with an organization which in Professor Fox's paper is reported as being bound by constraints, compromises and vested interests.

In Baghdad throughout the Gulf War despite Coalition bombing and other threats, in Somalia throughout 1991-1993 despite terrible insecurity, in Bosnia and in Rwanda, the Red Cross has remained--sometimes as the only international

humanitarian organization. It will continue to do its duty today and in the future.

International Adviser to the Director General British Red Cross Society 9 Grosvenor Crescent London S W I X 7ET England