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The International Committee of the Red Cross and political prisoners

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

J. D. Armstrong
J. D. Armstrong
Affiliation:
Director of the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Birmingham, England.
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Abstract

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has greatly expanded its activities on behalf of political prisoners since the Second World War. The ICRC's involvement with this issue has resulted from a series of incremental steps, taken over more than a hundred years, and it raises difficult legal, political, and moral questions. Is the ICRC, by operating in this highly sensitive area, endangering its special relationship with governments–a relationship that is vital for the performance of its more traditional functions in wartime? Should the organization be more open or less Swiss? Is it evading fundamental moral issues? The ICRC's success in achieving its objectives also raises questions as to why states have permitted a nongovernmental organization to intervene in their internal affairs and whether the ICRC provides a model that other nongovernmental organizations concerned with human rights might seek to emulate.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1985 , pp. 615 - 642
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1985

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References

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