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ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) humanitarian politics of intervention during its relief operation in the Nigeria–Biafra conflict (1967–1970). The humanitarian response to the conflict was a foundational moment for everyday humanitarianism marking a shift from “traditional” state-oriented humanitarianism to an expansion in scope, actors, and practices operating outside of the formal structures of the state. By examining recently declassified archival records, I trace the ICRC’s shifting categorizations of victims in a changing humanitarian landscape. The article makes two main contributions: First, I demonstrate empirically how the Nigeria–Biafra conflict challenged the ICRC’s definition of humanitarian engagement and understandings of victimhood. Second, I argue that the ICRC had a clearer understanding than usually conveyed of how the Biafran leadership used the language of humanitarianism and victimhood to deploy an international response. Conclusively, I reflect on what the history of the ICRC in Biafra can teach scholars of contemporary humanitarianism.
Notes
1 ICRC Archives (ACICR), B AG 239 032-001, meeting minutes by A. Pfirter, ICRC (July 24, 1968).
2 H. Wm. Bernhardt’s Geneva-based PR agency was Markpress, hired by the Biafran leadership to ensure widespread coverage in Western media of the suffering in Biafra. See John J. Stremlau, The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 115–17.
3 H. Wm. Bernhardt quoted in ACICR, B AG 239 032-001, meeting minutes by A. Pfirter, ICRC (July 24, 1968).
4 Representatives from the International Social Service Switzerland (SSI) was also present at the meeting. Founded in 1914, SSI’s mission was to aid migrant women and children.
5 ICRC Archives (ACICR), B AG 239 032-001, meeting minutes by A. Pfirter, ICRC (July 24, 1968) (Author’s translation).
6 ACICR, B AG 239 032-001, letter from the British Red Cross Society, I. D. M. Reid, Director, International Affairs Department, to J. de Heller, ICRC (Genève, August 5, 1968).
7 See Laurie S. Wiseberg, The International Politics of Relief: A Case Study of the Relief Operations Mounted during the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970) (Doctoral dissertation, Los Angeles, CA: University of California, 1973), p. 337.
8 ICRC Annual Report 1968. The Nigerian authorities appointed the ICRC as main relief coordinator of all relief activities in Nigeria and Biafra from April 1968 until the ICRC withdrew from Biafra in June 1969.
9 The ICRC was formed as a private association under the Swiss Civil Code in 1863. However, it is states that mandate its activities of assisting and protecting victims under the Geneva Conventions in International Humanitarian Law. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement consist of the ICRC, the Federation, and the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. See Francois Bugnion, The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Protection of War Victims (Oxford, UK: Macmillan Education, 2003).
10 Here, the term “intervention” relates to humanitarian engagement across sovereign state borders as in the case of the ICRC in Nigeria and should not be confused with the term “humanitarian intervention” in J.L. Holzgrefe’s understanding as “the threat or use of force across state borders by a state (or group of states) aimed at preventing or ending widespread and grave violations of the fundamental human rights of individuals other than its own citizens, without the permission of the state within whose territory force is applied.” Holzgrefe cited in Fabian Klose (ed.), The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas and Practice from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (Human Rights in History) (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 7.
11 On this point, see Lasse Heerten, The Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism: Spectacles of Suffering (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
12 Lisa Ann Richey, “Humanitarianism,” International Political Economy of Everyday Life Project, available online at: http://i-peel.org/homepage/humanitarianism/.
13 The empirical material consists of meeting minutes, reports, telexes, annual reports, and press releases examined over four months (February to June 2014) in the ICRC Biafra archives two years before public disclosure.
14 Following Jensen and Rønsbo, attention to victim categories paves the way for an examination of the “ever-negotiated, impermanent, and immanent state” of victims and the subject-object relation central to the category where “not only the victim is under the spell of the victim category, but so is the one who passes judgment”; and Steffen Jensen and Henrik Rønsbo, Histories of Victimhood (Philadelphia, PA: University of Philadelphia Press, 2014), pp. 1, 7.
15 See Stremlau, International Politics of the Nigerian; John de St. Jorre, The Brothers’ War: Biafra and Nigeria (London, UK: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1972/2009).
16 See Heerten, Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism.
17 See Roy Samuel Doron, “Marketing Genocide: Biafran Propaganda Strategies during the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–70,” Journal of Genocide Research 16:2–3 (2014), pp. 227–46.
18 Heerten, Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism, p. 2.
19 The ICRC’s INALWA airlift ran alongside three other airlifts to Biafra, namely the Joint Church Airlift (JCA) run by Catholic and Protestant agencies; the French Red Cross’ airlift, and the Irish African Concern airlift; and see Wiseberg, International Politics of Relief.
20 According to its own numbers, the ICRC managed to bring in 29,000 tons of foodstuffs and medical supplies through its relief flights to the Biafran side alone. See ICRC press release no. 1053b, February 6, 1970, “The civil war having finished, the ICRC ends its mission in Nigeria.”
21 Eleanor Davey, “Humanitarian History in a Complex World,” HPG Policy Brief 59 (May 2014), p. 3.
22 Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (New York, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), pp. 134–35.
23 Maggie Black, A Cause for Our Times: Oxfam. The First 50 Years (Oxford, UK: Oxfam Publishing, 1992), pp. 121–24.
24 David P. Forsythe, The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 63–65.
25 See for instance the contributions by Kevin O’Sullivan (pp. 299–315), Roy Doron (pp. 227–246), Douglas Anthony (pp. 205–225), and Marie-Luce Desgrandchamps (pp. 281–297) in Lasse Heerten and A. Dirk Moses (eds), “The Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967–1970: Postcolonial Conflict and the Question of Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 16:2–3 (2014).
26 See for example Peter Redfield, “Sacrifice, Triage and Global Humanitarianism,” in Michael Barnett and Thomas Weiss (eds), Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); Didier Fassin, “Inequality of Lives, Hierarchies of Humanity: Moral Commitments and Ethical Dilemmas of Humanitarianism,” in Ilana Feldman and Miriam Ticktin (eds), In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 238–55.
27 On the ICRC’s history, see Bugnion, International Committee of the Red Cross.
28 Forsythe, Humanitarians, p. 18.
29 Caroline Moorehead, Dunant’s Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1998), p. 605. For the challenges to the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement during decolonization, see also Andrew Thompson, “Humanitarian Principles Put to the Test: Challenges to Humanitarian Action during Decolonization,” International Review of the Red Cross 97:897/898 (2016), pp. 45–76.
30 In 1977 the Geneva Conventions were expanded with two Protocols Additional to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions with the second protocol specifically covering victims of non-international armed conflict.
31 Jorre, Brothers’ War, p. 29.
32 Stremlau, International Politics of the Nigerian, p. 4.
33 As described by Stremlau, colonial Nigeria had been divided into regions where different ethnic groups were positioned as the dominant: in the West the Yoruba with approximately 11.3 million people in 1963, the Hausa in the North with 11.6 million, and the Igbo in the East with circa 9.2 million people, Stremlau, International Politics of the Nigerian, p. 30.
34 “Ojukwu’s Address to the Eastern Consultative Assembly, 26 May 1967”, delivered at Enugu, NG (May 26, 1967), Biafran Ministry of Information handout. Document no. 110 in Anthony H. M. Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria: A Documentary Sourcebook, Volume 1: January 1966–July 1967 (London, UK: Oxford University Press), pp. 427–44.
35 “General Gowon’s First Wartime Press Conference” Daily Times (July 14, 1967), document no. 119 in Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria, p. 459.
36 Douglas Anthony, “‘Resourceful and Progressive Blackmen’: Modernity and Race in Biafra, 1967–70,” Journal of African History 51:1 (2010), pp. 41–61.
37 See Stremlau, International Politics of the Nigerian, p. 4.
38 ACICR, B AG 202 147-002, note (no. 1) from George Hoffmann to the ICRC (June 29, 1967).
39 Ibid. (Author’s translation).
40 “Bringing the Red Cross to Africa,” International Review of the Red Cross 67 (October 1966), pp. 549–50.
41 Ibid.
42 ICRC press release no. 850b, July 28, 1967: “ICRC Action in Nigeria.”
43 At the Red Cross Conference in Vienna in 1965, see Forsythe, Humanitarians, p. 161.
44 I follow Hugo Slim who does not see a need for “forcing” a distinction between the Greek term “ethical” and the Latin term “moral,” see Hugo Slim, Humanitarian Ethics: A Guide to the Morality of Aid in War and Disaster (London, UK: Hurst & Co. Publishers Ltd., 2015), pp. 19–20.
45 ICRC press release no. 850b, July 28, 1967: “ICRC Action in Nigeria.”
46 The civil war in Congo (1960–65) represented a heavy baggage because the ICRC had assisted Belgian mercenaries medically and in their evacuation from the Belgian-supported breakaway state of Katanga. At stated in his archival studies on the ICRC, Jean-Luc Blondel writes how this engagement “(…) would leave Africa with a poor image of the organization.” See Jean-Luc Blondel’s internal ICRC study, “From Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City: The ICRC’s Work and Transformation from 1966 to 1975,” ICRC (2016), p. 22.
47 From Hoffmann (report no 34) to ICRC October 19, 1967, ACICR, B AG 202 147-001. (Author’s translation).
48 See for instance ACICR, B AG 234 032-001 from Paul Reynard via Hoffmann to ICRC (October 16, 1967).
49 Marie-Luce Desgrandchamps, “‘Dealing with Genocide’: The ICRC and the UN during the Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967–70,” Journal of Genocide Research 16:2–3 (2014), p. 285.
50 See the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG).
51 ACICR, B AG 200 147-003.01, from K. H. Jaggi to the ICRC President (January 31, 1968).
52 On this point, see Desgrandchamps, “Dealing with Genocide,” pp. 281–97.
53 James Thompson, Humanitarian Performance: From Disaster Tragedies to Spectacles of War (London, UK: Seagull Books, 2014), pp. 121–23.
54 Desgrandchamps, “Dealing with genocide,” pp. 284–85.
55 Ibid., 282.
56 Anthony, “Resourceful and Progressive Blackmen,” pp. 41–61.
57 Despite widespread agreement that the Biafran Igbos had suffered immensely, it was disputable whether this violence could be categorized as genocide since it was difficult to prove a Nigerian intent to exterminate ethnic Igbos (Ibid.)
58 The Committee (now the Assembly) was the ICRC’s highest governing body, led by the President.
59 ACICR, minutes of the Committee meeting (March 6-7, 1968).
60 For example, the ICRC headquarters instructed their head of delegation in Lagos, Jean-René Pierroz, on how to communicate with the Nigerian authorities on the issue. See ACICR, B AG 202 147-008.01, from M. Borsinger to M. Jean-René Pierroz, Chief of Delegation, ICRC Lagos, note no. 369 (March 12, 1968).
61 See ACICR, B AG 200 147-001, from George Hoffmann to M. Georges Palthay, Directeur general adjoint de l’Organisation des Nations Unies, Palais de Nations (February 21, 1967). Paradoxically, because of its non-interference policy, the UN had an explicit interest in not labeling the Nigerian attacks on Igbos as genocide because this would make it an international issue requiring action. This meant that the UN actively worked to prove that the Nigerians were not committing genocide. See Desgrandchamps, “Dealing with Genocide,” pp. 288–90.
62 ACICR, Minutes of the Committee meeting (June 5, 1968).
63 ACICR, Minutes of the Committee meeting (January 11, 1968).
64 See ICRC on “Treaties, States Parties and Commentaries: Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 1949, article 23: Consignment of medical supplies, food and clothing.”
65 ICRC Annual Report (1967), pp. 37–38.
66 ACICR, minutes of the Committee meeting (February 1, 1968).
67 Ibid. (Author’s translation).
68 ACICR, minutes of the Committee meeting (March 6–7, 1968).
69 See Slim, Humanitarian Ethics.
70 ACICR, B AG 322 032-001, contract between ICRC (Ch. Ammann, assistant director) and NAATC (North American Aircraft Trading Corporation, Captain Henry A. Warton, President), Geneva June 21.
71 On Hank Warton, see Wiseberg, International Politics of Relief, pp. 117, 134, 151.
72 ACICR, B AG 322 032-001, by Ch Ammann, Assistant Director to Whom it May Concern, Geneva (June 4, 1968).
73 See also ACICR, Jacques Freymond, internal note to ICRC members, extraordinary Committee meeting (July 19, 1969).
74 ACICR, minutes of the extraordinary Committee meeting (July 31, 1969).
75 Jacques Freymond was a member of the Committee from 1959 to 1972 and Vice-President from 1965 to 1971. During the Nigeria-Biafra conflict, he was also acting President (from February to June 1969) because of the President, Samuel A. Gonard’s illness.
76 ACICR, minutes of the extraordinary Committee meeting (July 31, 1969).
77 Ibid. (Author’s translation).
78 See Marie-Luce Desgrandchamps, “Revenir Sur le Mythe Forndateur de Médecins Sans Frontières : Les Relations Entre Les Médecins Francais et le CICR Pendant la Guerre du Biafra (1967–1970),” Relations Internationales 146:2 (2011), pp. 95–108.
79 See Heerten, Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism, pp. 333–34.
80 See the ICRC’s “SOS Biafra” fundraising campaign: ACICR, B AG 281 147-002,” Appeal to National Red Cross, Red Crescent and Red Lion and Sun Societies,” D 1019b, Geneva (April 23, 1968).
81 On the ICRC’s financial situation during the conflict, see for example ICRC press release no. 921b (September 8, 1968). “ICRC action in Nigeria/Biafra jeopardized by shortage of funds.”
82 ACICR, minutes of the extraordinary Committee meeting (August 29, 1968).
83 ACICR, A. Lindt’s report at the Committee meeting (November 7, 1968).
84 August Lindt was commissioned by the ICRC from July 1968 to direct and coordinate the relief operation on behalf of the ICRC as its main diplomatic profile before the Nigerian Government declared him “persona non grata” in June 1969.
85 ACICR, A. Lindt’s report at the Committee meeting (November 7, 1968). (Author’s translation).
86 ACICR, note by Jacques Freymond at the Committee meeting (June 19, 1969). (Author’s translation).
87 Lagos Radio Talk, “Partners in Crime,” quoted in Anthony H. M. Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria: A Documentary Sourcebook. Volume 2: July 1967–January 1970 (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1971).
88 ICRC, “Help to War Victims in Nigeria,” International Review of the Red Cross 100 (July 1969), pp. 353–56. See also ICRC, “In Geneva, Ceremony of Tribute,” International Review of the Red Cross 101 (August 1969), p. 426.
89 Wiseberg, International Politics of Relief, p. 373.
90 ACICR, Declaration by A. Lindt addressed to the ICRC President, Marcelle Naville, at the extraordinary Committee meeting (June 19, 1969).
91 See Thierry Hentsch, Face au Blocus. La Croix-Rouge International Dans le Nigéria en Guerre (1967–1970) (Genève, CH: Institut Universitaire de hautes études internationales, 1973), p. 274, annex VII.
92 ICRC, Annual Report (1969), P. 8.
93 ACICR, minutes of the closed door session (“huis clos”) following the Committee meeting (November 6, 1969). (Author’s translation).
94 ACICR, ICRC delegate, Egli, at the ICRC Presidential Council meeting (March 27, 1969).
95 ACICR, B AG 239 032-001, meeting minutes by A. Pfirter, ICRC (July 24, 1968).
96 ACICR, report by former ICRC Head of Delegation in Nigeria, G. Schürch, at the Committee meeting (January 9, 1969).
97 After Biafra, the ICRC initiated an internal assessment which led to organizational changes in the areas of communication policy, finance, management, personnel, and the broader coordination within the Red Cross Movement. In the early 1970s, the Tansley Report also led to changes in the Movement specifically to improve the relationship between the organization and the National Red Cross Societies and to increase the ICRC’s openness to the public. For details on the ICRC’s post-Biafra reforms, see Marie-Luce Desgrandchamps, “Organising the Unpredictable: The Nigeria-Biafra War and its Impact on the ICRC,” International Review of the Red Cross 94:888 (2012), pp. 1431-1432.
98 ACICR, report by former ICRC Head of Delegation in Nigeria, G. Schürch, at the Committee meeting (January 9, 1969).
99 Wiseberg, International Politics of Relief, p. 337.
100 Miriam Ticktin, “Transnational Humanitarianism,” Annual Review of Anthropology 43:1 (2014), pp. 273–89. See also Dorothea Hilhorst and Bram J. Jansen’s research examining humanitarian space as an arena of “everyday politics of aid,” Dorothea Hilhorst and Bram J. Jansen, “Humanitarian Space as Arena: A Perspective on the Everyday Politics of Aid,” Development and Change 41:6 (2010), pp. 1117–39.
101 Forsythe, Humanitarians, p. 63.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mie Vestergaard
Mie Vestergaard is an assistant professor at International Development Studies at the Department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde University in Denmark. Her doctoral thesis Do Now Show the Scars – the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Humanitarian Theatre of Biafra (2017) is an historical-anthropological examination of recently declassified archival records on the International Committee of the Red Cross’ relief operation in the Nigeria-Biafra conflict 1967–1970. Presently, Mie is part of the research project Commodifying Compassion – Implications of Turning People and Humanitarian Causes into Marketable Things funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research – Social Sciences.