Reuniting of families.—The ICRC delegates in the Near East arranged the reuniting of a number of families: two persons on 19 November and a further seven on 25 November joined their families in the occupied territory of the Golan Heights. At El Qantara on the Suez Canal an operation on a larger scale took place on 9 December when 90 Palestinians returned to the occupied territory of Gaza-Sinai and 183 other persons rejoined their families in the United Arab Republic.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was created on 8 November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council, of which it is a subsidiary body. Its task is to help restore and maintain peace and bring about national reconciliation by trying persons allegedly responsible for acts of genocide and other grave breaches of international humanitarian law committed in Rwanda and Rwandan citizens suspected of committing such acts and violations in the territory of neighbouring States between 1 January and 31 December 1994.

Will the Red Cross survive? Should it survive? Has it really a mission in the world of today? In the world of the 1980s and thereafter? What is that mission? How can Red Cross gear up for it?

These questions have been the subject of thoughtful discussion among Red Cross people for some years. In 1972, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the League of Red Cross Societies, in co-operation with the National Societies, decided to take a hard look at the future in the form of a comprehensive examination of the role of the Red Cross.

Cet article se propose d'examiner les mandats qui sont exercés en matière de protection et d'assistance aux réfugiés dans les cas de conflits armés et de troubles intérieurs. Il essaie modestement d'établir des distinctions dans les rôles et les mandats des organes humanitaires, qui souvent se ressemblent et se recoupent, en particulier pour le Mouvement international de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant-Rouge (le Mouvement) et le Haut Commissariat des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés (HCR). Il voudrait également redéfinir l'évolution de leur mandat et en déterminer l'extension. Les principes de l'action humanitaire, fondés sur la pratique passée et présente, ont certes besoin d'être clairement définis, mais il faut laisser jouer la souplesse et le pragmatisme là où n'existe aucun pronostic d'ensemble. La conclusion montrera l'intrdépendance et la complémentarité des organisations humanitaires qui ont à apporter protection et assistance dans les situations où aucun autre organe n'est en mesure d'agir.

Japan is a country where nature is by no means benign and where men are often sorely tried by the violence of the elements; in addition, the configuration and population distribution add further to the difficulties.

In the six years since it was created, the Comisión Intersecretarial de Derecho Internacional Humanitario de México, Mexico's Interministerial Committee on International Humanitarian Law, has become one of the region's most active national bodies for the implementation of international humanitarian law (IHL). Its achievements are the result of the efforts of the federal executive branch agencies that form and participate in the Committee, as well as of the support that the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Mexican Red Cross have provided to facilitate its work. In this article, the author describes the structure and operation of the Committee, as well as the activities it has carried out in fulfilling its mandate to disseminate and promote respect for IHL rules, principles and institutions and further the national implementation of IHL.

When trying, in very popular terms, to explain what the Red Cross is, we sometimes define it in three ways: it is an emblem, a symbol, protecting or designating a movement; it is a world organization with 230 million members, almost all of them volunteers, brought together into 126 National Societies; but it is also an ideal, inspiring action to make this ideal a reality, based on a firm belief in a global, human solidarity, active in the fight against suffering.

The report on the re-appraisal of the role of the Red Cross has brought to light a fact which hitherto had been given no attention, namely that the objectives of the Red Cross movement as a whole have never been denned in writing. This omission is easily explained.

At an ICRC seminar on training and information techniques a few years ago an instructor described the position of a dissemination delegate within an ICRC delegation, and hence of dissemination work in general, as follows:

“Within an ICRC delegation, the delegate responsible for disseminating international humanitarian law generally has his office at the end of a long corridor, right at the back between the office supplies cupboard and the toilets. But most of the time you won't find him there, as he (or she) is constantly out giving courses or suchlike, either at military installations or universities or among the National Red Cross Society's volunteers. And when you do find him for a short while in his office, he's fiddling around with scissors, paper and glue trying to put together a leaflet or a poster, or perhaps even a small brochure. His colleagues, the delegates dealing with the distribution of relief supplies, the tracing service or prison visits, smile indulgently when they see the dissemination delegate busy with work like that. They speak well of him because he regularly reads the International Review of the Red Cross and knows the ins and outs of international humanitarian law and ICRC policy; he is a good talker, so he always has to step in where armed protagonists in local conflict fail to observe the rules protecting the civilian population. He must often beware of being torn to pieces and is expected to be everywhere at once, because what he does, he alone can do. Many ICRC delegates admire the dissemination delegate; sometimes he gets called “the professor”, “the clown” or “the artist”. His work is a one-man show, and yet those delegates who distribute rice, visit prisoners or try to trace missing persons could not and would not want to do his job themselves.”

In this interview, conducted after their visit to Hiroshima, President Peter Maurer and President Tadateru Konoe reflect on the human cost of nuclear weapons and present the perspective of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement on the Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Oslo, Nayarit, Mexico and Vienna, and the challenges ahead for nuclear disarmament.