International Disaster Relief Organizations

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) traces its founding to Swiss businessman Henry Dunant, who, after witnessing the aftermath of the 1859 Battle of Solferino in northern Italy, published the 1862 book A Memory of Solferino calling for a neutral organization to aid wounded soldiers regardless of nationality; this led directly to the ICRC's founding in Geneva in 1863 and to the first Geneva Convention in 1864. The broader International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which coordinates the roughly 191 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies in disaster response and development work distinct from the ICRC's wartime protection mandate, was founded in Paris in 1919, originally under the name the League of Red Cross Societies, on the initiative of American Red Cross chairman Henry Davison.