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Notes
1. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies was indeed created after World War I, but it never became the supreme authority of the movement. Focusing on natural and industrial disasters, it mostly left political disasters to the ICRC and the National Societies. (The Federation does have a role in caring for refugees.) In contemporary times, it is a threat to the independence of neither the ICRC nor the National Societies.
2. Other Syrians organized the White Helmets for humanitarian relief, also intended to be neutral, similar to Dunant's idea, but operating in rebel areas and often targeted by governmental forces. Doctors Without Borders, a spin off from the French Red Cross, was also active in Syria with its own version of humanitarian action independent of governments. Dunant's ideas about neutral humanitarianism have broad impact in contemporary world affairs, even beyond the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
3. The practice of appointing Protecting Powers in international armed conflict, intended as neutral states to assist belligerents in implementing international humanitarian law, has fallen into disuse.
4. Israel has Magen David Adom, which is recognized by the ICRC and a member of the Federation.
5. The UN Security Council created an international criminal court for the Former Yugoslavia in 1993, followed the next year by one for Rwanda. Both focused on genocide, crimes against humanity, and major war crimes. Other internationally endorsed criminal courts followed in various ways for various situations, culminating in the 1998–2000 era in the International Criminal Court with essentially the same subject-matter jurisdiction. (See further Schabas Citation2012). In 2005, the UN General Assembly approved without vote a long list of principles for proper policy in world affairs. Among these were two paragraphs making up R2P and comprising the notion that other states had a duty to involve themselves (in keeping with international law) in situations where a state did not prevent atrocity crimes and was “unable or unwilling” to investigate and perhaps prosecute for them. (See further Evans Citation2009).
6. Space does not permit discussion of the autocracies subject to the court's jurisdiction, like Russia and increasingly Turkey.