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Florence Nightingale, The Geneva Conventions and the International Red Cross |
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Florence Nightingale inspired international humanitarian efforts and global health policies in her time.
Florence Nightingale, The Geneva Conventions and the International Red Cross
by Barbara Dossey, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAN
As the NIGH team gears up to bring our focused input and proposed draft UN Resolutions — on behalf of 20,000 participants from 106 UN Member States — to the 2009 UN Economic and Social Council in Geneva and the United Nations in New York City, we are remembering that Florence Nightingale brought similar input to make significant contributions to the formulation of global health and humanitarian policy in her time.
Inspired by Nightingale and her heroic Crimean War experience, a Swiss banker and philanthropist named Jean Henri Dunant had determined to launch a broader humanitarian mission. In June 1859, he traveled to Italy to suggest such a mission to Napoleon III of France, and witnessed the bloody Battle of Solferino, one of the decisive battles in the Italian War of Independence. France was a secret ally of Piedmont, and entered the war when the Austrians, blatantly provoked, attacked the Italian kingdom – a series of events all orchestrated by the great Piedmont foreign minister, Count Camilo di Cavour, a man whom Nightingale greatly admired.
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| Henry Dunant (1828–1910): Swiss philanthropist and co-founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross; Nobel Peace Prize laureate 1901 |
Dunant was appalled that only two physicians were behind the front lines and that medical and nursing services were unavailable, forcing him to enlist local people to help the 6, 000 wounded. After this event, Dunant appealed to the leading European governments to establish an international organization that would provide medical and nursing aid to the wounded on the battlefields.
For the next several years, Dunant devoted himself to promoting humanitarian efforts to care for the wounded. In 1862, he published his famous Recollections of Solferino (Un Souvenir de Solfèrino), which included his plan for the international organization he had named the Red Cross. In 1863, he presented his ideas to the Society of Public Utility in Geneva.
Finally, after five intense years of Dunant's hard work, the first international congress convened in Geneva on August 22, 1864. Representatives from twelve governments laid out the best way to organize volunteers to serve in future wars. Nightingale’s European reputation and Crimean experiences allowed her another opportunity to work for the War Office when Britain was preparing for the Geneva Convention. In July 1864, Lord de Grey called on her to help draft related position papers for the British War Office. These papers were presented at the Geneva Convention by the British delegates, noted professors of military surgery at the Army Medical School, Dr. Thomas Longmore and Dr. Rutherford.
Nightingale supported the neutralization principle of the Geneva Convention, but objected to the focus on voluntary efforts for the sick and wounded. She believed that it would be an error to revert to a voluntary system or to weaken the military character of the present system by introducing voluntary effort, unless such effort were to attain military status in its organization. Since the Crimean War, she had looked upon each government as responsible for its own sick, wounded, and injured; she feared that the emphasis on voluntary measures might relax the government’s responsibilities.
These twelve governments signed the Treaty of Geneva at the first Geneva Convention, establishing the neutral status of the wounded under the Red Cross, affirming that any soldier regardless of nationality would receive medical treatment. The international symbol, a simple red cross on a white background (in Muslim countries, a red crescent on a white background) became the emblem of neutrality in time of war, protecting hospitals, ambulances, doctors, nurses, and volunteers, both professional and nonprofessional. These guidelines also established how volunteers could offer humanitarian aid to either side.
Dr. Longmore had sent Nightingale Dunant’s pamphlet, and she wrote Longmore about her concerns: “It is like an opera chorus, and if the principal European characters sing, ‘We will never be cruel again’, I am sure if England likes to sing too, ‘I never will be cruel more,’ I see no objection. But it is like vows: people who keep a vow would do the same without the vow, and if people will not do it without the vow, they will not do it with. England and France will not be more humane to the enemy’s wounded for having signed the convention, and the convention will not keep semi-barbarous nations … from being inhumane… ”
In 1869, Dr. Longmore further participated in a conference in Berlin when the war between France and Germany was imminent. He wrote to Nightingale that the people on the Continent were interested in the popular aid to the sick and wounded, though, like Nightingale, he was skeptical of governments taking responsibility in a plan of neutralization which at the time was still a visionary concept. That was the beginning of another humanitarian venture for Nightingale.
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The original document of the first Geneva Convention from 1864
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During the Franco-Prussian War over the next two years, nurses were needed on the Continent, and Nightingale was asked to be an advisor to the British Army Medical Services. She also acted as an advisor to the National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded, which was part of the endeavor to launch the British Red Cross Society. Because of her involvement on the Continent, there were assertions in the newspapers that Nightingale was supporting the Prussians. On August 7, 1870, she wrote to the wife of the organizer of war relief in northern France, about her position on those assertions and on the Red Cross. Recalling her own earlier work, at the top of the letter she wrote,
“It is 14 years today since I came back from the Crimea…. You will have seen by this time that, if I was represented as acting only for the Prussian ‘wounded’, that was a false accusation. I joined the Ladies’ Association you saw in the ‘Times,’ with the express understanding that the funds raised were to be ‘common’, i.e. impartially distributed where most wanted among belligerents (which they have been) for the relief of the Sick & Wounded. And I so joined because that Association was first in the field.… And all our interest will be given to sick and wounded soldiers as such, irrespective of nationality. France & Prussia will receive our funds alike.... They must be neutralized, as the Ambulances are neutralized. And we must all be placed under the ‘Red Cross’... O that I could go out myself to the Seat of War to work, instead of all this writing, writing, writing! But that is an unresigned wish!”
Soon, Nightingale was also sending nurses to help France as well, and by November 1870, she was giving advice to both the French and the Germans about hospital construction, administration, medical aid, technical support, nurses, supplies, and various other details. With her activities leading her to reflect back on Scutari, she wrote to her friend and colleague, Benjamin Jowett, English scholar and Master of Balliol College, Oxford:
“On this day, 16 years ago, I landed at Scutari — God Be thanked! Who would have thought that I should have lived to see the horrors of a war compared with those which were mere child’s play?.…Is it not quite unknown in history that a philosophical, a deep thinking [people], the most highly and widely educated nation in Europe, these Germans, should plunge, head foremost, into this gulf and abyss, called military despotism, that they should not see...that the real Devil, the true Mephistopheles is: Bismarck.”
But Nightingale's political opinions did not stand in the way of her aid to the wounded. Around this time, besieged with visitors and dignitaries, Nightingale began enforcing a rule that she would not see kings, queens, and princesses unless they were involved in a practical cause or with hospitals. She insisted that her meetings with dignitaries were not to be treated as ceremonial occasions, but just as one woman interested in sanitation and nursing talking to another. In July 1871, she had just such a meeting: The Crown Princess Victoria of Prussia arrived to discuss her own hospital plans with Nightingale, seeking her opinion on the design.
Nightingale’s influence in Germany was most evident in the formation of the Victoria Sisters, who began nursing in municipal hospitals. After the war, both countries recognized her humanitarian contributions; she received the Prussian Cross of Merit from His Majesty the Emperor and King and the Bronze Cross from the French Société de Secours aux Blesses.
Not until 1870 did England finally sign the Geneva Treaty. The United States Congress ratified the Treaty in 1882 with the efforts from Clara Barton, recognized as the founder of the American Red Cross. When a letter of Nightingale’s was read at a public meeting of the National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War, later the British Red Cross, Jowett wrote to her: “I would have been sorry if you had not taken part in the Relief Fund. I have no doubt that your knowledge & experience has soothed the hours of many an unconscious sufferer.”
On August 7, 1872, as reported in the Times, a paper that Henri Dunant read in London acknowledged his debt to Nightingale: “Though I am known as the founder of the Red Cross and the originator of the Convention of Geneva, it is to an Englishwoman that all the honour of that Convention is due. What inspired me to go to Italy during the war of 1859 was the work of Miss Florence Nightingale in the Crimea.”
Since this time, three additional Geneva Conventionshave been formulated in Geneva, Switzerland, to set the standards for international law for humanitarian concerns. These four Treaties address the treatment of the wounded, civilians, shipwrecked and prisoners of war. As of 2 August 2006, when the Republic of Montenegro adopted the four Conventions, they have been ratified by 194 countries.
Source: Barbara Dossey (2010). Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer Commemorative Edition. Philadelphia: F. A. Davis; pp. 323-324.
Additional related information — featuring Henri Dunant, Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton — is available at the Permanent Exhibition “Acts of Mercy” at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva, Switzerland
See also: http://www.micr.ch/e/exhib/explore_mercy_e.html
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