Talk:International Committee of the Red Cross

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Archive 1

This article is written in British English with Oxford spelling (colour, realize, organization, analyse; note that -ize is used instead of -ise) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on August 22, 2009.

Untitled

A remark about non-Swiss nationals and the ICRC: membership of the ICRC is still strictly restricted to Swiss citizens, and probably will be so as long as the ICRC exists. In addition to that, the maximum number of members is 25. What is allowed since a couple of years is service of individuals from other countries as delegates to lead or participate in abroad missions conducted by the ICRC. Previously, serving as a delegate was also restricted to Swiss citizens but the need for delegates by far exceeds the number of Swiss people who are willing to go on such a mission. As I'm not a native speaker regarding the English language, I abstain from changing the article for myself, but I kindly ask to edit it regarding this issue. Sincerely, Uwe from the German Wikipedia

Done. TAS 18:23, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Translation from the German Wikipedia

Dear Wikipedians, I've prepared a translation of the article about the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement from the German Wikipedia. Compared to the current version of the respective English article, the German article provides a lot more details and information. Furtheremore, the translation contains also more information about the ICRC than the current English article about the ICRC. I kindly ask you to check the translation at

International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement

As I'm not a native speaker of the English language, the translation probably contains some unusual or even obscure wording. You are welcome to edit the translation directly. In addition to that leave a comment, either here, on the discussion page of the translation or on my personal discussion page. Any ideas or comments are highly appreciated. My ultimate goal is to transfer the translated version into the English Wikipedia. Best Regards, Uwe from the German Wikipedia

Structure

Draeco, the tone and structure of this article is completely inappropriate. All you have done is paste a portion of an article that was well-thought out and constructed to another place. If we are even going to consider this change, don't you think you should change the tone and structure first? There are still many references to the Movement here, and the distinctions are not apparent at all. I think it would be better if you made sample pages on your user page until you are satisfied, which could later be used to vote on a change. Otherwise, you may divide up lots of work and destroy the structure and tone established by the earlier authors. Also, in the meantime while you finish your changes, the article(s) will lose all coherence. Tfine80 20:38, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly unrecognised It would require a unanimous vote

(Tfine80 is referring to this edit and its predecessors) -- Very well, I'll continue the work at User:Draeco/ICRC, since the article is still in its formative stages as you noted. All editors are still welcome to join in. - Draeco 20:51, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Move to create separate ICRC article

It is proposed that User:Draeco/ICRC be moved to International Committee of the Red Cross in order to become an article. The move has been discussed previously on the Movement talk page and Uwe's talk page.

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was Move. I'll also combine the histories. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

Support as nom. - Draeco 17:47, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still Opposed because separate articles create unnecessary overlapping and redundancies. As the introduction says, all parts of the movement are united through common basic principles, objectives, symbols, statutes, and governing organs. Having said that, I recognize that this issue is sort of a general cultural rift between the English and the German Wikipedias (the German counterpart of this article, from which the English article was translated, has FA status in the de-WP). And as I consider all my contributions in Red-Cross-related articles to be in the Public Domain, do whatever you like - I will accept any outcome of this proposal. --Uwe 18:44, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Tentatively support. There seems to be enough material in Draeco's article to be, if anything, a longish article in its own right, and (admittedly, after only a skim) I don't see anything in it that doesn't look encyclopedia-worthy. I don't have any strong opinion on how the articles are to be broken up; I'd appreciate hearing from whether Uwe is of the opinion that some of this material simply does not belong in Wikipedia at all. Assuming that it does, how else would one organize this without ending up with a monster article? - Jmabel | Talk 20:04, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This is long overdue, and a split is clearly warranted. The ICRC has a markedly different mandate from the national Red Cross/Crescent societies and needs separate treatment. --Dhartung | Talk 06:32, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support due to the above reasons. But I hope that the reorganization of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement will be planned too. Another thing I'm concerned about is the History of ICRC. In which article shall it be placed? --Knowhow 04:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support, as it focuses mainly on the topic discussed. However, the separated article should have its own place in Wikipedia, all neatly reorganized. Bluerfn 08:46, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Add any additional comments

Building upon the fine work of editors Uwe, Tfine80, and company, I have created a new article for the International Committee of the Red Cross. The ICRC is a distinct organization that deserves its own article, not just mention in the Movement article. The Movement article has become too long and attempts to cover too much information; several editors have noted that, and it was one of the main reasons the article was rejected for FA status here. The new article focusses on the ICRC specifically and only mentions the other parts of the Movement where appropriate. The current Movement article is still perfectly valid, but much of its material specific to the ICRC may be redundant now. The work is based upon this revision of the Movement article from 2 May 2006. - Draeco 17:26, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As I have researched, compiled and written the German article about the movement, and translated it to English in collaboration with User:Tfine80, 90% or so of Draeco's proposed new separate article about the ICRC is composed of parts from the article I've written together with Tfine80. So, from my point of view there's nothing wrong with the content of Draeco's proposal. My point is that I consider the current solution to be better for several reasons which I've explained before in more detail on the Talk page of the article about the movement. The current article about the movement is 67KB long, which is (in my view) not too long but well suited considering the complex matter, and it's far away from being a monster article. There are a couple of featured articles in the en-WP which are far longer than 67KB. The main reason why I oppose separate articles is to avoid redundancies which would be inescapable if one tries to write two separate articles about the ICRC and the Federation, both being complete on their own. Many parts which are common for both organizations would have to be duplicated to some extent. Most of the books which I know are either written about the whole movement, or about the ICRC with significant parts going into lengthy details about the history, the role etc. of the Federation. I know of no book which is solely or primarily about the Federation. In other words, printed books about the Red Cross either cover the whole movement from the outset, or, while primarily covering the ICRC because of it's lead role and its longer history, they also de facto cover the whole movement by including the Federation into the context of the ICRC. In other words, there is no good way to tell the story of the ICRC without mentioning the Federation to significant extent, and vice versa one cannot write about the history and aims of the Federation without resorting to several references to the ICRC. So, in my humble opinion it's still the best solution to cover both parts of the movement in one single article to reduce redundancies and duplications to the minimum. --Uwe 21:40, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Uwe raises some good points above; the Red Cross Movement is certainly complex and interconnected. However, my main point is that the ICRC is a separate organization from the Federation and the National Red Cross societies and therefore the ICRC should have its own article. For the same reason, the American Red Cross has its own article, even though it is also part of the same Movement and inextricably tied to the ICRC. I also disagree that the ICRC and "everything else" cannot be treated separately; the ICRC article I have presented only mentions the Federation three times outside of the "Relationships Within the Movement" section. It is true that even ICRC-centric books unfailingly include the Federation, but that is for the sake of comprehensiveness because a book cannot just "link" to another book, whereas we can because Wikipedia is not paper. Finally, I disagree with the 90% redundancy and would say that more like 60% of the original content remains. The ICRC article now contains brand-new "Relationships within the Movement" and "Relationships in the World Order" sections, a greatly expanded explanation of the organizational structure, and 27 citations. The rest is rearranged material from Uwe et al. The ICRC article does not include any history, the controversy over symbols, or Federation activities that compose a large portion of the Movement article. - Draeco 22:18, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

A Whitewash?

The article misleadingly passes over the highly controversial 'Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross' published under the editorship of Frederic Siordet in Geneva in 1948, which described Red Cross activities in association with the German detention of civilians in camps. Essentially, this work presented evidence denying the Holocaust long after any international political concerns or pressure from the Nazi regime could have induced any fabrication. Omitting discussion of this, and instead concentrating solely on the Red Cross acceptance of the Holocaust years later, raises suspicion that this article is more a propaganda piece than a strictly factual entry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.151.246.108 (talk) 22:51, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The reference to the "controversial" Siordet report is just the warming over of an old denialist deception that the report supports "Holocaust revisionism." This is a plain lie: "The ICRC report is very clear regarding Nazi atrocities." (See page 641 of the report which states that Jews were "outcasts condemned by rigid racial legislation to suffer tyranny, persecution, and systematic extermination" quoted in Siordet Report) See document at: ICRC Report 1948 Joel Mc (talk) 14:15, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The link provided does not lead to the three-volume work published by the International Red Cross in 1948, but just to a 1962 'Analytischer Bericht,' or 'Analytical Report,' by which time things were being cleaned up. I have never been able to locate a copy of the much-discussed 1948 report, which many suggest said nothing about extermination but blamed the deaths on the inability to supply the camps with food because of the breakdown of the railway system due to Allied bombing at the end of the war. A usually reliable source of all difficult to locate texts from the Second World War, the ZVAB site, also does not have it. I am increasingly suspicious that this report remains persistently elusive. A copy is supposedly available at the Red Cross archives in Geneva, but beyond that, there should be more copies available to scholars, not just summaries and excerpts published a long time after. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.151.246.70 (talk) 16:00, 24 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry, but the second link that I provided is to the 1948 report: "Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on its ..., Volumes 1-2" By International Committee of the Red Cross.--Joel Mc (talk) 17:08, 24 October 2013 (UTC) Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be anything elusive about the report: the University of Geneva libraries have three copies (in French) of the 1948 three volume report.Joel Mc (talk) 08:08, 25 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of 'Criticism' section

I boldly removed the 'Criticism' section as it was full of WP:Unsupported attributions and poorly sourced / unnotable accusations. See the diff here.

Also I removed the section for reasons outlined at WP:Criticism.

- IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:01, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Qualiesin has restored the section without discussion. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 10:22, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Qualiesin. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 10:22, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like you're trying to whitewash the organization. I see nothing wrong with the criticism. Qualiesin (talk) 16:21, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please address the reasons I gave for my removal of the content. Especially regarding "WP:Unsupported attributions and poorly sourced / unnotable accusations." IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 01:01, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the section again since you've neither given a reason for your restoration nor responded here substantively, @Qualiesin. Please don't restore the content without achieving consensus for its inclusion. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 06:18, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I requested a third opinion here. I'm not sure it's necessary/appropriate but it would be helpful. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 06:26, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey there, I'm coming from the third opinion page to provide my input. After reviewing @IOHANNVSVERVS's initial removal of the Criticism section, I notice that much of the content was poorly sourced or lacked reliable references. For example, there was a dead link to Yahoo News Singapore, as well as articles from The Messenger and TPS, which are considered weak or unreliable sources and yet accounted for over half of the citations in the section.

While there's certainly nothing wrong with criticism, I agree that the section was poorly sourced and as such was subject to removal. Tvfunhouse (talk) 23:56, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]