Roll of the Red Cross in war?

[edwhit]

What is the role of the red cross in this war? I have heard some say that the red cross has declared that some or all of the prisoners were innocent in the abuse/torture incident. Ok but I don't understand why them saying that matters. How are they an authority on the issue?

A search of the red cross website gave the info below in the faq section found here http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_315_,00.html#387

Am i missing something? I am not Red Cross bashing in any way shape or form. I highly respect the work they do to help the needy and wounded. I just don't understand their role beyond helping injured in war time situations.



"U.S. Armed Forces have highly skilled medical staff as part of their fighting force, why does the American Red Cross send its members into battle?
In 1905, the U.S. Congress granted a charter to the American Red Cross that required it to act "in accord with the military authorities as a medium of communication between the people of the United States and their armed forces." Since then, the Red Cross has provided communications and other humanitarian services to help members of the U.S. military and their families around the world. Living and working in the same difficult situations and dangerous environment as U.S. troops, Red Cross staff have given comfort to soldiers thousands of miles from home by providing emergency messages, about deaths and births, for example, comfort kits and blank cards for troops to send home to loved ones"

[Zeld2.0]

Red Cross has always been pretty involved...

And prisoner wise, the (at least International organization) has been used by both sides, though usually by the Americans, to help in treating prisoners and wounded on each side..

Just a tidbit fact but the Red Cross has been involved in most of our wars.. in World War II they helped a treating our prisoners in German hands, their prisoners in our hands, and were reporting the concentration camps as they witnessed em themselves (though usually the Germans tried to hide it)

[seretogis]

Role, not roll.

I don't think that the Red Cross has any official role in any conflict, though it is largely recognized as an impartial organization and most groups will not attack them if they are involved in treating victims.

[onetime2]

Originally posted by seretogis
Role, not roll.

I don't think that the Red Cross has any official role in any conflict, though it is largely recognized as an impartial organization and most groups will not attack them if they are involved in treating victims.

Yeah what he said.

[Macheath]

They are probably one of the most significant non-state international authorities in this matter due to the fact that the International Red Cross basically INVENTED the Geneva Convention.

From an article I read just yesterday:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/conten...talk_hertzberg

The codification of rules of warfare into laws of war—that is, into formal, written, supposedly binding international agreements—was a product of the nineteenth century. It arose from the same can-do spirit of the age as did the invention of mechanized wars fought by huge conscript armies. The visionary behind that humanitarian effort—its Napoleon—was a young Swiss businessman named Henri Dunant, who, in 1859, witnessed the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino, fought in northern Italy between the French and the Austrians. So horrified was Dunant by the sufferings of the wounded, thousands of whom died of injuries that could have been treated if there had been anyone to treat them, that, in short order, he founded what would become the International Committee of the Red Cross and convened an international conference to draft a new kind of universal treaty. The result, in 1864, was the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field—the first Geneva Convention. By 1867, it had been ratified by all the great powers of Europe. The United States did not ratify it until 1882, but in 1863 President Lincoln’s War Department had drawn up its own set of rules, which anticipated many of the provisions not only of Dunant’s Convention but also of the revised and extended versions of 1906 and 1929. The four Geneva Conventions that are in effect today—covering the treatment of the wounded on land and at sea, prisoners of war, and civilians in time of war—were drafted in 1949, in the aftermath of the Second World War. Some two hundred countries have ratified them, including all the members of the United Nations.

[Seaver]

The primary role of the Red Cross is to aid in PoW prisons, military/civilian hospitals, and to provide food and non-military supplies to anyone who needs it.

In WWII they provided food to US/German and even Russian prisons (Japs decapitated them on sight). US/Brit PoWs even recieved chocolate and cigarettes, which were often used to bribe the German captors (who rarely got these items).

They do a lot of good in the Hell we know as war. They used to be the neutral doctors who would provide medication to anyone who needed it, back in the days that many officers would refuse to help the enemy while their own soldiers were needing it. Now the US has enough of its own doctors in most conflicts they help anyone involved, but the Red Cross help with massive civilian casualties and providing a long-term aid situation.