The ICRC delegate: an exceptional humanitarian player?

Troyon, Brigitte; Palmieri, Daniel

doi:10.1017/s1816383107000975

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…As part of its historical relationship with Switzerland, ICRC delegates in high-stakes confidential encounters had to have Swiss nationality until December 1992 in the interest of maintaining neutrality in armed conflicts. The gradual ICRC opening of delegate positions to other nationalities, informally called "internationalisation", has raised continued concerns in the ICRC over perceptions of neutrality linked to different nationalities (see Garrido, 2022b on "easy nationality") and gendered, racialised embodiments (see Troyon & Palmieri, 2007).…”

Section: Context: the International Committee Of The Red Crossmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanitarian neutrality and language at the International Committee of the Red Cross

Garrido Sardà

2023

RLD

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This article examines the articulation of the humanitarian principle of neutrality and language as the vehicle of this political stance at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The ICRC is a neutral humanitarian actor recognised by the Geneva Conventions and historically linked with Swiss political neutrality and multilingualism. Through interviews, focus groups and institutional documents, I analyse the ICRC delegates’ linguistic negotiation of neutrality in humanitarian encounters. Based on the semiotic process of iconisation (Gal & Irvine, 2000) with a focus on the politics of embodiment (Bucholtz & Hall, 2016), the analysis reveals that raciolinguistic ideologies reinforce the dominance of English (Footitt et al., 2020) and the imagined figure of the White, male European humanitarian (Fassin, 2012) who does not speak local and regional languages such as Arabic. “Neutrality” emerges as a contextual and relational concept based on a negotiation in terms of possession of a language repertoire, racialised embodiment and cultural closeness. In the Middle East and Northern Africa, this results in stakeholder perceptions of lesser neutrality attached to Arabic-speaking “Westerners” and “Arabs”, who destabilise the imagined humanitarian figure linked with neutrality.

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Section: Context: the International Committee Of The Red Crossmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanitarian neutrality and language at the International Committee of the Red Cross

Garrido Sardà

2023

RLD

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“…However, the historically close relations with the Swiss Confederation were diluted after the headquarters agreement in 1993. Separating humanitarian neutrality from Swiss political neutrality had become necessary due to Switzerland’s referendum on EU membership (December 1992), which obtained a negative vote, and Switzerland’s later entry into the United Nations in 2002 (Julier, 2002 ; Troyon & Palmieri, 2007 ). Today, it is the Swiss Confederation that uses the Red Cross for nation branding rather than the ICRC using Swissness to promote its efforts (Brühwiler et al 2019 ).…”

Section: Roots and Routes: An International Organisation In Genevamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For many HR informants at the time, the opportunity to “dewesternise” the ICRC was “wishful thinking” in a global international organisation with most field operations outside Europe (Julier, 2002 ). Troyon and Palmieri ( 2007 ) claim that the “delegate” profession had been “at least Westernised” (p.110): 65% of “non-Swiss Westerners” were recruited in 2006, compared to only 11% of “non-Westerners”. They do not define either category.…”

Section: Multilingualism and “Internationalisation”: Continuities And...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution of language ideological debates about English and French in a multilingual humanitarian organisation

Garrido

2021

Lang Policy

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This article traces the evolution of the ideological construction of elite multilingualism, with a focus on the values accorded to French and English, under transforming socioeconomic and institutional conditions at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The ICRC, a major humanitarian agency based in Geneva, opens a window onto the construction of “internationalisation” and its accompanying language ideologies, resulting in fluctuating hiring requirements for “delegates” (expatriate representatives). The data include job advertisements for delegate posts from 1989 to 2020 complemented by interviews with different generations of delegates and ethnographic fieldwork in a recruitment fair. The analysis of language ideological debates at the ICRC illuminates the articulations and tensions between “roots” in Geneva, symbolised by French, and “routes” in its delegations worldwide, with English as a lingua franca, in dominant discourses about multilingualism. The requirements for ICRC delegates include English as a must and at least a second ICRC working language. Concerning the latter, there are tensions between the desired language regime at headquarters, privileging French as the “parent” language, and the current needs in key operations, with a shortage of Arabic speakers. The analysis shows that French requirements for generalist delegates have fluctuated from perfect command and good knowledge to an optional second working language. In the 2020 recruitment campaign, elite multilingualism is hierarchically stratified into English as a global language, other “working languages” including Arabic, and non-European languages such as Pashto or Dari as newly-introduced “assets”.

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“…Even though the organisation nowadays takes pride in its multidisciplinary approach to relief and emphasises the complementarity between ‘protection’ (i.e. diplomatic and monitoring activities aiming at preventing violations) and ‘assistance’ (relief operations), ‘for a long time there has been a tacit hierarchy among the different roles allocated to delegates, and hence a sort of occult segregation between those who regard themselves as performing ‘noble tasks’ – and who therefore feel they alone may bear the title of ‘delegate’ – and all the others who are assigned the “dirty work”’ (Troyon and Palmieri : 101). Even today, the title of ‘protection delegate’ keeps an aura of prestige within the organisation and the tasks such a delegate performs are in many ways similar to the one of the first ICRC delegates: visiting prisoners of war and civilian detainees, searching for missing persons, passing messages between family members separated by conflict, spreading the knowledge of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and negotiating for humanitarian purposes.…”

Section: Reformers Vs Guardians Of Visionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Masters of disorder: rituals of communication and monitoring at the International Committee of the Red Cross

Billaud

2020

Soc Anthropol

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The mandate of the ICRC as granted by the Geneva Conventions is to act as a ‘guardian of International Humanitarian Law’ on the frontlines of conflicts. While its humanitarian relief operations have contributed to its international reputation, this monitoring function is rather unknown to the public. In this paper, I pay specific attention to activities carried out by ICRC delegates to protect various categories of victims in times of war. By focusing on the ways in which delegates interpret the principles (‘neutrality’, ‘impartiality’, ‘confidentiality’) that guide their actions, I seek to decipher the organisation’s ethos and worldview. I highlight the hopes as well as the frustrations and disappointments generated by myriad administrative techniques devised to engage parties to a conflict in a ‘confidential dialogue’ on the conduct of hostilities. Finally, I examine how these techniques, built on the hope in the possibility of communication, are changing as a result of external sources of pressure for ‘evidence‐based programming’, turning personalised case‐based monitoring into a new form of ‘audit culture’ based on statistical evidence. Paradoxically, relying on numbers to realise the utopia of ‘humanising war’ makes the very ‘humans’ who are supposed to benefit from it disappear from view.

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The ICRC delegate: an exceptional humanitarian player?

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Humanitarian neutrality and language at the International Committee of the Red Cross

Humanitarian neutrality and language at the International Committee of the Red Cross

The evolution of language ideological debates about English and French in a multilingual humanitarian organisation

Masters of disorder: rituals of communication and monitoring at the International Committee of the Red Cross

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