The International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) in Africa

The purpose of this work is to focus on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which was structured in 1863 to establish and monitor the laws of warfare. It was one of the first NGOs to actively work to change the behavior of states by preserving a measure of humanity in the midst of war. The choice of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 as my case study is because it clearly gives us an example of how politics underline humanitarian engagements or intervention like the deployment of massive military operations for conflict resolution. These actions are aimed at resolving and containing conflict rather than focus solely on the consequences of war, therefore they affect the amount of casualties a full uninterrupted war may accumulate. In the case of Rwanda the international community ignored the demands for humanitarian intervention (peacekeeping forces) and consequently the casualties left to humanitarian operators such as the ICRC were staggering. This work examines the ICRC’s operations in conflict situations in Africa, especially during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and highlight their increased relevance in the contemporary international system in the face of conflicts.