Category Archives: International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

Red Cross and Foreign Office to discuss plan to visit Palestinians in Israeli detention

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ICRC is denied access to prisoners in what is said to be breach of Geneva conventions but critics say UK plan may weaken rule of law

Red Cross officials are to hold talks with the UK over a Foreign Office plan to visit Palestinian detainees held by Israel. Critics say this bypasses a duty on Israel under the Geneva conventions to give the Red Cross access to detainees.

Israel has suspended the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from access to Palestinian detainees since the Hamas attack on 7 October, and says it will not rescind the policy until Hamas grants access to Israeli hostages.

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Red Cross urged to act over Russian branch’s links to Kremlin war machine

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International organisation under growing pressure as Russian group’s activities appear to defy neutrality principle

The international Red Cross movement is under pressure to take action against the Russian Red Cross (RRC) over close links between the group and the Kremlin’s war and propaganda machine.

The evidence includes the RRC president’s central role in a pro-Putin “patriotic” organisation, senior RRC staff who speak of the impossibility of peace with “Ukrainian Nazis”, and RRC participation in military training for children.

A series of documents leaked from the Russian presidential administration, the most recent of which are dated December 2023, were obtained by Estonia’s Delfi. These documents were shared for joint investigation with the Guardian as well as VSquare and Frontstory.pl (Poland), Expressen (Sweden), Meduza and iStories (independent Russian outlets), Paper Trail Media, Der Spiegel and ZDF (Germany), Der Standard (Austria), and Tamedia publications (Switzerland).

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Hamas says two Israeli hostages have been killed by Israeli airstrikes

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In unverified video, woman also held captive and speaking under duress says two men have been killed

Hamas has released a video announcing the death of two Israeli hostages and claimed that they were killed by Israeli airstrikes.

The video showed a female hostage named in Israeli media as Noa Argamani, 26, speaking under duress, revealing that two men she was held captive with had been killed in captivity. It was not clear when or where the video was filmed and there was no independent confirmation of Hamas’s claims.

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Zelenskiy steps up criticism of International Red Cross over inaction at Kakhovka dam

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Ukrainian president’s remarks echo previous comments about international bodies’ failure to intervene more decisively

Volodymyr Zelenskiy – well schooled in chiding the west for being slow in providing help – has shifted his line of criticism from the pace at which arms has been reaching his country to the slow international response to the humanitarian and ecological disaster caused by the breach of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam.

Before visiting the flood-affected areas on Thursday, he used his nightly address to say: “Large-scale efforts are needed. We need international organisations, such as the International Committee on Red Cross, to immediately join the rescue operation and help the people in the occupied part of Kherson region. Each person that dies there is a verdict on the existing international architecture and international organisations that have forgotten how to save lives. If there is no international organisation in the area of this disaster now, it means it does not exist at all and that it is incapable of functioning.”

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Sudan medical volunteers detained after being seized from ambulance

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Mohamed Ahmed and Mohamed Jamal went missing last week while working to reopen a hospital in Bahri

Activists in Sudan have expressed outrage after two medical volunteers were seized from the ambulance they were driving in northern Khartoum and detained for days by army intelligence officers, as airstrikes and clashes continued across the capital.

Mohamed Ahmed and Mohamed Jamal went missing last week while working with other volunteers to reopen the Haj al-Safi hospital in Bahri, which had been forced to close amid heavy fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

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Red Cross announces exchange of nearly 900 prisoners in Yemen war

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International Committee of the Red Cross organises swap between Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels as ceasefire talks continue

An “emotional and precious” exchange of nearly 900 prisoners involved in Yemen’s long-running war began on Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said.

The exchange, the largest since 2020, is likely to be staged over three days, and includes politicians, journalists and soldiers. On Friday, four flights carrying a total of 318 people took place between the rebel-held capital, Sana’a, and government-controlled Aden. A further 500 will be exchanged on Saturday.

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‘We just sleep and hope we don’t perish’: 2m in Tigray in urgent need of food – UN

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Aid workers call for ‘humanitarian pause’ so crucial supplies can be delivered, after first assessment of hunger in the region since war broke out

At least 2 million people in the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray are suffering from an extreme lack of food, with the 15-month conflict between rebel and government forces pushing families to the brink, the UN’s emergency food agency has found.

In the first comprehensive assessment the World Food Programme (WFP) has carried out in Tigray since the start of the war, 37% of the population were found to be severely food insecure, meaning they had at times run out of food and gone a day or more without eating.

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Spat at, abused, attacked: healthcare staff face rising violence during Covid

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Data shows increased danger for those on the frontline in the pandemic, with misinformation, scarce vaccines and fragile health systems blamed

Hundreds of healthcare workers treating Covid patients around the world have experienced verbal, physical, and sometimes life-threatening attacks during the pandemic, prompting calls for immediate action from human rights campaigners.

Covid-related attacks on healthcare workers are expected to rise as new variants cause havoc in countries such as India and rollouts of vaccination programmes belatedly get under way in some countries, according to the UN special rapporteur on the right to health.

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Registration cards of Dutch Holocaust victims to go on display

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Red Cross returns nearly 160,000 records, many of which belonged to Dutch Jews sent to Nazi death camps

Nearly 160,000 registration cards belonging to Dutch Jews and people from other persecuted minorities, many of whom were destined for Nazi death camps, will be put on display for the first time in the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam after being handed over by the Red Cross.

The cards include name, address, date of birth, profession, marital status, family composition and, in three out of four cases, the date of their transport to a concentration camp written in red pencil. They ended up with the Red Cross after the war and were used to locate missing persons.

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Ethiopia: aid workers report chaos as thousands flee fighting

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Refugees on the move as federal troops confront TPLF in Tigray and ethnic tensions escalate

International aid workers who have left Ethiopia’s Tigray region in recent days have described a chaotic and dynamic situation with large numbers on the move to avoid fighting, choking roads already full of military vehicles.

Federal troops are involved in a massive offensive aimed at removing the Tigray People’s Liberation Front from power in the northern region, and intensifying rhetoric from both sides has reinforced fears of a long and bloody conflict.

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Covid-19 presents people in the crosshairs of conflict with a terrifying new threat

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As the Red Cross launches an emergency appeal, its president calls for the world to pull together

If the first casualty of war is truth, the second may very well be something the entire world values highly right now: healthcare.

Families fleeing conflict, or currently in its crosshairs, know that medical assistance is a rare and precious privilege in war zones. Amid the terror of bombs and bullets, a functioning medical facility is a life-saving oasis, but it’s a near certainty medical staff will be overworked and short on supplies.

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Syria: drone footage shows devastation in Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor and rural Damascus – video

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Newly released drone footage shows the destruction caused to towns and cities in Syria during the nearly nine-year civil war. The aerial footage from October, provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross, shows the extent of the damage to buildings, homes and streets in Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor and rural Damascus

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Red Cross says more than 100 people killed in airstrike on Yemen prison

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Saudi-led coalition claimed it targeted a military storage facility run by Houthi rebels

More than 100 people are believed to have been killed in an airstrike by the Saudi-led military coalition on a detention centre in Yemen, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The coalition said it had targeted a facility run by Houthi rebels that “stores drones and missiles”, but the rebels said the attack had levelled a building they used as a prison.

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