The Colonial Testing Ground: The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Violent End of Empire

Klose, Fabian

doi:10.1353/hum.2011.0010

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…International law was, in other words, applied in a prejudiced and partial way. This suggests that while sovereignty has served as the gatekeeper, determining the pertinence of international law to the case at hand, 7 Fabian Klose traces the beginning of ICRC's involvement in colonial contexts back to the Algerian and Kenyan wars of liberation in the 1950s and 1960s (Klose 2011;2013; see also Pringle 2017). However, the Ethiopian case reveals that the ICRC's involvement in colonial contexts and its complicity with colonial powers started much earlier.…”

Section: Take Down Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Sovereignty and Race: The Bombardment of Hospitals in the Italo-Ethiopian War and the Colonial Imprint of International Law

Perugini

Gordon

2019

State Crime Journal

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Italy's war crimes during the 1935–1936 invasion of Ethiopia have been broadly documented by different historians of Italian colonialism. However, its systematic bombardment of medical facilities operated by different Red Cross Societies is much less known. Relying on archival materials, we show how the fascist regime presented these attacks as legitimate reprisal; it was, the Italians claimed, the Ethiopian forces who had violated international law, particularly the principle of distinction, when they used medical facilities to hide. Reconstructing the debates about the Red Cross medical units, we show how Ethiopia's sovereign status rendered international law applicable, since the war was carried out between two internationally recognized countries rather than between a sovereign state and its colonial subjects. Simultaneously however, Ethiopia's status as a sovereign state was extremely precarious. The African country was successfully framed by both Italy and the Red Cross as uncivilized through the creation of an artificial link between the ostensible inability to follow the principle of distinction (i.e. hiding behind medical units) and the population's race. The move from sovereignty to race is, we claim, illuminating because it reveals how the inclusion of Ethiopia into the family of nations not only did not undermine the colonial imprint of international law, but also helped cement it. It is therefore crucial to think about the process of colonial inclusion into the liberal order of humanity against the grain, and to reveal how integration through sovereignty can be transmogrified into racist exclusion.

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Section: Take Down Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Sovereignty and Race: The Bombardment of Hospitals in the Italo-Ethiopian War and the Colonial Imprint of International Law

Perugini

Gordon

2019

State Crime Journal

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“…When the ICRC intervened in the anti-colonial wars in Algeria and Kenya in the 1950s, it encountered colonial States who sought to circumvent GC IV by defining certain civilian populations as "terrorists", and these rebellions as "internal security" matters rather than civil war. 122 Although the ICRC's concern for non-European populations certainly increased after 1945, the limits of international law continued to impact its ability to translate this concern into action. 123 The history of the Review and the Movement's engagement with civilian protection is ambiguous, challenging either triumphalist or declinist narratives.…”

Section: Conclusion: Lessons Learned?mentioning

confidence: 99%

TheInternational Review of the Red Crossand the protection of civilians, c. 1919–1939

Holmes¹

2018

Int. rev. Red Cross

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This article will use past issues of the International Review of the Red Cross to examine how the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (the Movement) has engaged with the issue of civilian protection over the course of its history. Although founded to organize humanitarian relief and legal protection for wounded and sick combatants, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the wider Movement have increasingly incorporated civilian war victims into their remit since their establishment. Yet, as this article will highlight, this process has not been straightforward. Focussing on the critical period between the two World Wars, the article will use the Review to illustrate why the Red Cross began engaging with the “civilianization” of conflicts in response to the threat of new technologies like gas and aerial bombardment. Using articles from the Review to highlight the key challenges faced by the Movement in protecting civilians over this period, it will also consider the gaps in the Red Cross's initial conceptions of who “the civilian” was, why belligerents attacked them, and what was the best means of protecting them.

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“…They were, as the Algerian delegate to the Diplomatic Conference Raof Boudjakdji warned, "determined to reject the constraints of a system of international law conceived in bygone days" and imbued with "colonial concepts." 39 By then, the UN had passed several important resolutions that recognized the right of colonized peoples to self-determination and went beyond the UDHR in characterizing selfdetermination as a human right. 40 Of particular significance was the 1970 "Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation Among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations" (Gen. Ass.…”

Section: Modernizing the Laws Of Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After 1956, France was forced to recognize that the war was indeed an "armed conflict," yet, as it maintained that Algeria was part of France, the metropolitan government refused to recognize the international character of the conflict. 46 France, Bedjaoui wrote, is thus able to "settle down amidst the bloodstained horrors of an unforgivable war under shelter of a plea that the laws of humanitarian conventions do not apply." 47 During the drafting of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the colonial powers were united in characterizing their colonial wars as "noninternational" conflicts and in struggling to prevent the extension of the laws of war to such "internal" conflicts.…”

Section: Modernizing the Laws Of Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

The "Dangerous Concept of the Just War": Decolonization, Wars of National Liberation, and the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions

Whyte¹

2018

Humanity

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The Colonial Testing Ground: The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Violent End of Empire

Cited by 11 publications

References 24 publications

Between Sovereignty and Race: The Bombardment of Hospitals in the Italo-Ethiopian War and the Colonial Imprint of International Law

Between Sovereignty and Race: The Bombardment of Hospitals in the Italo-Ethiopian War and the Colonial Imprint of International Law

TheInternational Review of the Red Crossand the protection of civilians, c. 1919–1939

The "Dangerous Concept of the Just War": Decolonization, Wars of National Liberation, and the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions

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