The Origins of World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day

In 1922, just after World War One, there was a general yearning for peace.

In what was then Czechoslovakia, the National Red Cross Society proclaimed a three-day truce at Easter to promote peace. An eminent government leader summed up the underlying aspirations of that initiative:

“

Our Red Cross wants to encourage our society to prevent wars rather than having to bear the consequences involved... If this annual action could take hold in the whole world, this would certainly be a major contribution to peace.

”

This was an intimation of what was to become World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day.

This initiative, known as the “Red Cross Truce”, had a big impact on the public, but met with some scepticism among National Society leaders. As a result, the 14th International Conference of the Red Cross set up an International Commission to study the Red Cross Truce. The report, presented at the 15th International Conference in Tokyo in 1934, stated that it approved the principle of the Truce and considered that its application should be made more general.

It was only after World War II, in 1946, that the Tokyo proposal was put into effect. During the 14th Session of the Board of Governors of the League of Red Cross Societies (later to become the General Assembly of the International Federation), the League was requested to study the possibility of adopting an International Red Cross Day, to be celebrated on the same date by all National Societies.

Two years later, the first Red Cross Day was celebrated throughout the world on 8 May 1948, the anniversary of the birth of Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross.

In 1984, it became known as World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day.