The International Committee of the Red Cross

Seminar paper from the year 2024 in the subject Politics - Topic: International development, grade: A, University of Vienna (International Development), course: The History and Politics of Humanitarianism, language: English, abstract: Today, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) - unlike other humanitarian organizations - follows a principled application of the human rights based approach (HRBA). To gain insights into why the organization follows a HRBA at all and why it does so in a principled manner, I propose that this necessitates going back in history. I, thus, set out to explore the following research question in this paper: How have the concept and agenda of human rights "infiltrated" the ICRC with regards to its stance on and practices of humanitarian aid in the aftermath of the Second World War? I will, thereby, argue that examining the relationship between international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) by diving into their drafting history in the aftermath of the Second World War will provide us with some valuable answers. Structurally, I will first discuss the HRBA and potential dilemmas raised for humanitarian actors. Secondly, I will provide an overview of the historical roots of humanitarianism and human rights as well as of the theoretical approaches on their legal relationship before diving into the drafting history of IHL and IHR to possibly evidence a mutually reinforcing relationship. I will illustrate this by showing how the experiences made by the ICRC during the Second World War and the Nigerian civil war shaped international legal development and with it also the practices and convictions of the organization.