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The International Congress attracted delegates appointed by sixteen countries. Several weeks were consumed in diplomatic wrangling of the kind that we still experience today, but, surprisingly Moynier’s and Dunant’s draft was finally approved with few modifications. It was a model of brevity, ten articles in just over five hundred words. The Americans refused to sign. The delegates returned home bearing the Convention with them and their respective countries ratified it one by one. It was approved by Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, the Neth- erlands, Sweden, Norway, Spain and Switzerland in 1864. They were followed by Britain (1865), Prussia (1865), Greece (1865), Turkey (1865), Austria (1866), Portugal (1866), Russia (1867), Persia (1874), Serbia (1876), Chile (1879), Argentina (1879) and Peru (1880).
Clara Barton, a storied nurse in the American Civil War, led the campaign to persuade the United States to sign the Geneva Convention. In 1877, Barton organized the American National Committee, which three years
later became the American Red Cross. However, it was not until 1882 that the USA signed the Gene- va Convention. It also agreed to support Barton’s efforts to distribute relief during floods, earthquakes, famines, cyclones and other peace-time disasters.
After the USA signed, others followed including, Bulgar-
ia (1884), Japan (1886), Luxemburg (1888), Venezuela (1894), South Africa (1896), Uruguay (1900), Guatemala (1903), Mexico (1905), China (1906), Germany (1906), Brazil (1906), Cuba (1907), Panama (1907) and Paraguay (1907).
In addition to the Resolution, the conference made three recommendations:
1. Governments should extend their patron- age to relief committees which may be formed and facilitate ... the accomplish- ment of their task;
2. In time of war belligerent nations should proclaim the neutrality of ambulances and military hospitals and neutrality should be accorded . . . to all official medical personnel
. . . nurses, to the inhabitants of the country who go to the relief of the wounded and to the wounded themselves;
3. A uniform distinctive sign be recognized for the medical corps of all armies . . . and that a uniform flag also be adopted in all countries for ambulances and hospitals.
These recommendations were the seed from which all the Geneva Conventions eventually blossomed.
The Committee of Five set about arranging a conference to endorse the three recommenda- tions at the same time as encouraging those who were establishing relief societies in many of the European states. The Swiss agreed to host the conference, which was set for August 1864 in Geneva. Invitations were sent to all European states, the U.S., Mexico and Brazil. Japan, they decided, was too remote to warrant an invitation. Moynier and Dunant drew up a draft conven- tion for circulation amongst the delegates.
In 1877, Dunant, supported by a modest stipend from his family, be- gan to write his memoirs and to work in the local hospital. A German journalist discovered him, broadcast his whereabouts and condition and various important people took up his cause, with the result that in 1901 he was awarded the very first Nobel Prize for Peace, which he shared with the pacifist, Frederic Passy. The one hundred and four thousand Francs that came with the prize supported him until his death in 1910.
At the Paris Exposition in 1867, four modifications were made to the 1864 Convention, (1) to extend its scope to maritime warfare; (2) that belligerents police battlefields at the end of hostilities so as to protect the wounded from looters and gratuitous injury; (3) that all soldiers
should wear identity tags, to facilitate the dissemination of informa- tion about who had died and who was wounded and in captivity; and (4) that at the conclusion of a battle all belligerents should provide the enemy with information about the dead, wounded and prisoners.
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A number of wars broke out over the next forty-two years. The Austro-Prussian war was fought in 1866. Henri Dunant attended the Prussian victory celebrations as a guest of Queen Augusta and was much lionized. But in the spring of 1877, the Credit Geno- vois Bank, of which Dunant was a director, fell into difficulty as a result of ill-advised loans and purchases, including stone quarries in Algeria, which Dunant had owned before he sold them to his fellow directors. With scandal breaking in Geneva, Moynier forced Dunant to resign from the Committee. Dunant was ostracized and ruined, and slowly slid into the status of a penniless vagabond.