Reuniting of Families.—Under the aegis of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the fifth operation for the reuniting of families took place in the region of the Golan Plateau at the beginning of May. This activity involves, with the agreement of the Israeli government, the repatriation of Arabs displaced by the war of June 1967 and part of whose families had remained in the Israeli-occupied zone. Thanks to the action of the ICRC, 367 people have been able to return to their families.

Work carried out during the past year is described in the usual ICRC report.

The 1968 Annual Report is divided as previously into two parts: practical, and general and permanent activities. The former deals with various countries and continents. Emphasis is laid on efforts made for victims in the Nigerian conflict and relief data showed their increasing extent. On the other hand, some of the specialist services, such as the Central Tracing Agency in Geneva, the International Tracing Service at Arolsen, the Medical Personnel and War Disablement Sections have continued to be particularly active. One has only to quote the Central Agency which in 1968 received 54,783 communications and sent out 54,227 items, a considerable increase in volume in comparison with the previous year.

Mr. Diallo Telli, Secretary General of the Organization of African Unity, and Mr. Gratien Pognon, Assistant Secretary General, on 18 June, met Mr. Marcel A. Naville, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in Geneva.

The previous issue of International Review gave a table recapitulating to the end of December 1968 the relief activities undertaken by the ICRC in Nigeria and the secessionist province (Biafra), as well as the donations in cash and in kind which enabled it to continue and extend those activities. These cover various fields, and we now wish to explain some aspects. We would first mention that the appeal launched by the ICRC for financial support for its operation produced the sum of 40 million Swiss francs by the end of January 1969.

“Oh, War is not dead!” cried Henry Dunant at the end of the last century, observing with rigorous penetration that “To judge the past in the light of Holy Writ, after studying the long succession of centuries fraught with wars, is to see history as an indelible indictment of the human species”.

In our May 1969 issue we mentioned that 123 States were parties to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The International Committee of the Red Cross has since been informed by the Swiss Federal Political Department in Berne of the accession of two more States to those Conventions.

Under this self-explanation heading which is justified on merely reading the Table of Contents of the Revue internationale since 1919, we give extracts of some articles which have appeared in our publication over half a century. The selection may indeed be arbitrary, but its purpose is merely to show the diversity and importance of the subjects dealt with. Those years have been of capital importance and corresponded to a turning point in history all the more profound as all problems have found themselves raised anew.

Reuniting of families.—In spite of increased tension in the Middle East, the International Committee of the Red Cross has managed, through its delegations in Cairo and Tel Aviv, to get 143 persons across the Suez canal. This “reuniting of families” operation took place on December 30 at el Qantara.

Twenty-five years after the second World War, the International Committee of the Red Cross is still dealing with claims for compensation from people living in certain Central European countries who were victims of pseudo-medical experiments in German concentration camps.

Many are the delegates working in the field under the Red Cross flag in various parts of the world. Below is the list as at the end of February 1969. There are also many other voluntary workers dedicated to the Red Cross ideal. In Nigeria, for instance, in addition to the ICRC delegates, there are 268 of them; in the secessionist province (Biafra) 88; in Equatorial Guinea 11 and in Dahomey 26—all working side by side with many African colleagues.

A delegation from the Danish Red Cross visited the International Committee of the Red Cross and the League of Red Cross Societies on 10-11 July 1969.

It comprised Dr. C. C. Joergensen, Danish Red Cross Vice-President, Mr. Arne Fremm, Secretary-General, Prince Henrik of Denmark, Head of International Relations, and Dr. J. Larsen, President of the Danish Medical Association.

In its last number, the International Review mentioned the departure from Geneva of Mr. S. Nessi, ICRC delegate-general for Latin America and of Mr. E. Leemann, delegate, as a result of the appeal made by the Red Cross of Honduras due to the conflict which had broken out between Honduras and El Salvador. On arrival the ICRC representatives were able to visit prisoners of war and interned civilians on several occasions in those two countries and distribute relief to them.

Since May 1967 the International Committee of the Red Cross has visited a number of detention centres in Greece, as reported several times by the International Review, but the authorizations granted its delegates were concessions without any obligation.

The International Committee has just produced a booklet entitled Rights and Duties of Nurses, as defined by the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949.

The basic idea of this publication is a simple one: to collect in a single work of modest size, and easy to read, the essential provisions of the four 1949 Conventions relative to the medical services and medical personnel. Apart from specialized knowledge, a thorough grounding in the principles and the spirit itself of these Conventions is to be found. It should be added that this brochure, of some fifty pages, is published in French, English, Spanish and German and can be obtained from the ICRC in Geneva at a cost of Sw. fr. 1.50 a copy.