World Red Cross Day

Held on : 8th May

May 8, is celebrated throughout the world as 'The Red Cross Day'. It marks the birthday of the founder of the Red Cross, Henry Dunant and highlights the role of its staff and volunteers in saving lives and assisting vulnerable communities around the world. For more than one hundred years, in all continents and practically every country in the world, during war time or in peace, the Red Cross has groups of millions of goodwill people. Henry Dunant's visionary idea based on his concept of Brotherhood of Man led to the formation of a committee of five in Geneva in February 1863. This committee which included Dunant, examined his idea and formulated the basis for calling the first international conference of the Red Cross in 1863 in Geneva.

In 1922, just after World War I, there was a general yearning for peace. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia - then one State, Czechoslovakia - the National Society proclaimed a three-day truce at Easter to promote peace. An eminent government leader of the time summed up the underlying aspirations of that initiative as follows: "Our Red Cross wants to prevent disease so that it will not be obliged to give care; it also wants to encourage our society to prevent wars rather than having to bear the serious consequences involved. We all know the importance of the moral potential it brings into being and extends to all sections of the community. If its annual action could take hold in the whole world, this would certainly be a major contribution to peace." This was an intimation of what was to become World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day.

This initiative, known as the "Red Cross Truce", had a big impact on the public, but met with some scepticism among National Society leaders. As a result, the 14th International Conference of the Red Cross set up an International Commission to study the Red Cross Truce. Its report, presented to the 15th International Conference in Tokyo in 1934, stated that it approved the principle of the Truce and considered it advisable that its application be made more general, from the point of view of methodology, taking into account the psychology characteristic of different regions.

It was only after World War II, in 1946, that the Tokyo proposal was put into effect. During the XIVth Session of the Board of Governors of the League of Red Cross Societies, later called the General Assembly of the International Federation of Red Cross Societies, the League was requested to study the possibility of adopting an international Red Cross Day, to be celebrated on the same date by all National Societies.

Two years later, following approval by the Federation's Executive Committee, Red Cross Day was celebrated for the first time throughout the world on May 8, 1948, the anniversary of the birth of Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross. It subsequently changed names several times and in 1984 became World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day. In recognition of the home land of these humanitarian ideas the new movement took as the emblem of its neutrality the national emblem of Switzerland in reverse a Red Cross on a white background. Today this emblem carries instant recognition all over the world.

Alternate Name - World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day