The Geneva Convention: The Hidden Origins of the Red Cross - Pasta blanda

This is the story of the Geneva Convention and the extraordinary events which brought it into being. Who would have thought that the world's first treaty on human rights could have been founded by two young men - Henry Dunant and Gustave Moynier - who cordially loathed each other? Angela Bennett describes how they drew up a code of practice for the treatment of war-wounded in battle. She follows Dunant on his epic crusade across Europe where he succeeded in summoning the rulers of almost every country to a meeting in Geneva. Yet hardly was the ink dry on the Convention when Dunant was (falsely) convicted of defrauding a bank. Pursued by his creditors, he was condemned to live the rest of his life in poverty-stricken exile until, rehabilitated in old age, he was awarded the first Nobel Prize for Peace. Angela Bennett's lively narrative takes the reader into the nineteenth century and brings to life the elegant salons, the suffering and horror of the battlefield and the frustrations and tortuous complications which nearly destroyed the Geneva Convention and Red Cross in the early years. She concludes with some hard questions about the Convention today.