International Committee of the Red Cross archives

The handwritten minutes of the first meeting in 1863, signed by the founder, businessperson-turned-activist Henry Dunant

The shelves with the oldest files, pre-1914, up to the red folders

As the ICRC was founded by five men in a private appartment at the Old Town of Geneva, so were at the same moment its archives and the library[2]:

"On 17 February 1863, Henry Dunant, as secretary, signed off the minutes of the first meeting of the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, the precursor of the ICRC. Still unaware of what would follow but hopeful that Dunant’s vision would bear fruit, the young Committee preserved this document and the ones that followed in order to account for their decisions and actions."[1]

In the following five decades, the archives and the library documented the evolution of the Red Cross movement.[2] The archives also collected information from various conflicts, especially the 1864 Second Schleswig War between the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire on the one hand side, and the Kingdom of Denmark on the other, followed by the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71).[1]

Another focus was the collection of information about the implementation of IHL, particularly with regard to the First Geneva Convention of 1864 and its 1906 supplement. However, the primary task of the archives was to record diplomatic correspondence in order to account for the institution's humanitarian mandate.[1]

Romain Rolland (centre), Frédéric Ferrière (right) and an unidentified woman (left)

Suzanne Ferrière (right) with an unidentified woman in 1914

Shortly after the beginning of the First World War, the ICRC under its president Gustave Ador decided to establish the International Prisoners-of-War Agency (IPWA). Its main task was to trace PoWs and to re-establish communications with their respective families. Already at the end of 1914, it had a staff of some 1,200 volunteers who worked in the Musée Rath of Geneva. Many of them were girls, women, and students.[4]

Their mandate was based on resolution VI of the 9th conference of Washington in 1912 and thus limited to military personnel. However, the committee member and medical doctor Frédéric Ferrière founded a civilian section which soon became commonly associated with the ICRC and significantly contributed to its positive image.[5]

One of its early activists was the French writer Romain Rolland, who volunteered in the sub-division for missing civilians until July 1915.[6] When he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1915, he donated half of the prize money to the Agency.[7] His friend, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, provided a lively description of the commitment:

"A rough stool, a small table of unpolished deal, the turmoil of typewriters, the bustle of human beings questioning, calling one to another, hastening to and fro - such was Romain Rolland's battlefield in this campaign against the afflictions of the war. Here, while other authors and intellectuals were doing their utmost to foster mutual hatred, he endeavored to promote reconciliation, to alleviate the torment of a fraction among the countless sufferers by such consolation as the circumstances rendered possible. He neither desired, nor occupied a leading position in the work of the Red Cross; but, like so many other nameless assistants, he devoted himself to the daily task of promoting the interchange of news. His deeds were inconspicuous, and are therefore all the more memorable. [..] Ecce homo! Ecce poeta!"[4]

The Central Agency archives at Plainpalais in 1946

The IPWA stopped operating in 1924, but the ICRC archives kept on collecting information from various armed conflicts which in many cases may be considered a continuation of WWI: the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), the Chaco War (1932–1935), the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1936), the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the Second Sino-Japanese War (starting in 1937).[1]

It was also during those two decades that the ICRC developed "notions of historical memory and preserving memory for the sake of all humanity in relation to the archives".[1]

The IWPA was re-opened two weeks after the beginning of the Second World War as the Central Agency for Prisoners of War. Suzanne Ferrière, who had assisted her uncle Frédéric at the IPWA during WWI, played a prominent role by instituting a new family messaging system.[8]

Faced with a gigantic growth of personal and institutional data, the ICRC in 1942 introduced its first filing system.[1]

Jean Pictet hall at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum

In 1946, the IHL expert Jean Pictet - who played a key role in drafting the 1949 Geneva Conventions for the protection of victims of war - created the Archives Division:

"A general comprehensive filing plan was then adopted in 1950 – the so-called 'Pictet Plan', in reference to its creator, Jean Pictet, who was then director of the Division of General Affairs, which included the archives. The filing plan comprised both thematic and geographic referential numbering. It applied to the whole institution until 1972 and to the Archives Division until 1997."[1]

1958 letter signed by Che Guevera on behalf of Fidel Castro to the ICRC asking for recognition of the revolutionary movement

Cambodian files, Khmer archives, in the non-public records at Satigny

Meanwhile, the ICRC archives grew with the increase of conflicts during decolonisation and the so-called Cold War, which was a "hot war" in many places. These included:

• the French Indochina War (1946–1954);
• the 1948 Palestinian Exodus;
• the Korean War (1950–1953);
• the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution (1956);
• the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962);
• the Congo Crisis (1960–1965);
• the North Yemen Civil War (1962–1970);
• the Six-Day War of 1967 and the 1973 Yom Kippur War in the Near East;
• the Vietnam War (1964-1975);
• the Nigeria-Biafra War (1967–1970);
• the Greek junta (1967-1974);
• the coup d'état against President Salvador Allende in Chile (1973);
• the 1974 Cyprus conflict;
• the end of the Portuguese colonial empire in the wars of independence in Mozambique and Angola (1975); and
• the Cambodian genocide (1975-1979) and Cambodian–Vietnamese War (1978-1989)[1][9]

Cornelio Sommaruga (*1932)

Jean-Claude Favez (1938-2013)

In 1960, the Central PoW Agency acquired a permanent status within the ICRC as the Central Tracing Agency.[1]

Until 1973, public access to records of the archives was generally barred, though the ICRC directorate could consider individual requests. It was 110 years after its inception that the ICRC Assembly as the governing body of the organisation formalised this case-by-case practise as a first step of opening up:

"The system of ad hoc derogations allowing access to select archival materials was however denounced by researchers as being incoherent, partial and subjective. Furthermore, by the late 1970s and 1980s, the social mood began channelling growing criticism towards the ICRC’s perceived role and stance during the Second World War, specifically regarding the Nazi genocide and concentration camps. Voices were raised across society calling for accountability for the perceived lack of action by the ICRC, and for transparency in relation to its past. The institution’s reputation was being challenged from several angles. If prior to this the ICRC had managed its image by mostly keeping its archives out of the public arena, it seemed that maintaining its reputation depended on bringing them to the fore, albeit with due respect for confidentiality. In terms of public image, transparency was becoming a stronger tool than secrecy."[1]

In 1979, the ICRC created a precedent when it granted unlimited access to Jean-Claude Favez, professor at the University of Geneva, for his study about the role of the ICRC in the Holocaust.[1] However, he only published his groundbreaking book in 1988. Just in the previous year, the former top-diplomat Cornelio Sommaruga had become the new ICRC President. He has been widely credited for leading the opening of the archives, which in 1984 had moved into a newly constructed seven-storey administrative office block next to the historical "Le Carlton" headquarters.[10]

Yet, despite Sommaruga's efforts the ICRC governing body took its time. Hence, it was only at the very end of the Cold War - in May 1990 - that the ICRC Assembly finally confirmed the mandate of the Archives Division to comply with the "principles of modern archiving" and open up.[1]

Files in Satigny on children separated from their families in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide

Yet, it took almost another six years - until January 1996 - that the ICRC Assembly officially adopted the right of the general public for access to the archives.[9] Protection periods were ruled to be fifty years for general archives and 100 years for personal files. "It is worth noting that some within the ICRC had proposed even longer protection periods." Subsequently, the files of the general archives from 1863 to 1950 were opened to the public in full.[1]

In 1997, the archives adopted a new filing plan - B AI (Services généraux – Archives institutionnelles) - which included computerized documents.[1]

The entrance area (above) and the foyer (below) at Satigny

In 2004, the archives released a second set of general archives containing the files from 1951 to 1965. In the same year, the ICRC Assembly reduced the protection period for general files from fifty to forty years, and the embargo on personal files from one hundred to sixty years.[1]

On 19 June 2007, UNESCO added the IWPA archives to the Memory of the World Register

"to prevent collective amnesia, promote the conservation of archive and library collections throughout the world and ensure that they are disseminated as widely as possible."[11]

In 2008/9, a rotunda was constructed at the HQ administrative building which houses the archives, providing a new reception area for visiting researchers as well.[10]

In 2010, the Public Archives were merged with the ICRC Library and the ICRC Photos archives under the umbrella of the ICRC Information Management service in order to cope with the growing complexity of big data and at the same time the fragmentation of information due to the rapid evolution of digital technologies.[12] In the same year, the ICRC formally adopted an electronic filing system, called B RF (Services généraux – Archives générales des unités, Reference Files).[1] Subsequently, tailormade automation processes, including more recently the use of artificial intelligence, have been explored to adequately preserve the institutional memory.[12]

As part of this modernisation process, the archives expanded in 2011 into the new ICRC logistics hub in Satigny, near Geneva Airport. Construction was partly financed by the Swiss government, and the land was provided by the canton of Geneva. The main archives and library services to the public have stayed at the HQ though.[13]

In 2015, the archives released its third batch from the general files on the armed conflicts up to 1975 (see above), including information on Nelson Mandela's detention.[9]

In 2017, the ICRC once again revised the access rules to its public archives: protection periods were increased by ten years in order to ensure confidentiality as the ICRC standard operating principle and data privacy protection, especially with regard to protracted conflicts. This means that the embargo on general files is back to fifty years as between 1996 and 2004, while individual files stay closed for seventy years.[14] According to these new rules of access,

"the next section of the ICRC general archives, covering the period from 1976 to 1985, will be opened to the public in 2035." [1]