The meeting opened on October 29, 1863, in Geneva, where representatives of sixteen states sat down to set rules for the care of soldiers hurt in combat. The aim was plain: the wounded should be helped whoever they fought for. The idea was new. No army had such a rule before.
It grew from one man's shock. Henri Dunant, a Swiss businessman, had seen the field after the Battle of Solferino in 1859, where thousands lay untended as the armies moved on, and he wrote a book that stirred the public and the courts of Europe to act on the suffering he had witnessed. The book moved princes. It sold across Europe in months.
The group took shape as a permanent committee in Geneva, and it would later win the backing of the Geneva Convention that bound states to spare medics and the hurt. The red cross on white became a protected sign. The mirror sign, the red crescent, came later for other faiths. The work began small. The committee met in a private home at first.
The movement spread to most countries and now aids civilians in peace as well as soldiers in war. Dunant won the first Nobel Peace Prize for it, yet died poor and half-forgotten. He had given his wealth to the cause. The emblem still flies in disaster. The pledge holds. The sign is known in nearly every land.