Context Behind the ICRC and CRA

The Algerian War (1 November 1954 – 19 March 1962), “an asymmetrical war of national liberation,” saw the presence of mass casualties and war crimes (including civilian massacre, rape, and torture) from both the Algerian National Liberation Front (Front de libération nationale, FLN) and the French Army (Király, 2023) Given France’s colonial claims over Algeria, from 1954-1956 the French government refused to acknowledge “the presence of an armed conflict in Algeria,” instead characterizing the developing resistance as “an internal armed conflict” (Peret and Bugnion, 2011; Király, 2023)

Within the sphere of human rights treaties, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) played a vital role in fighting for the political rights for FLN soldiers, who were captured and imprisoned during war. According to Common Article III of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1949), in cases of armed conflict not of an international character, both parties have an obligation to end “violence to life and person [including torture], [...] taking of hostages, [...] outrages upon personal dignity [...] the carrying out of executions [outside of established judicial processes],” as well as to protect those wounded and sick (ICRC Database, 1949). Common Article III further permits an impartial humanitarian body, such as the ICRC, to deliver humanitarian aid to both parties (Király, 2023). While Algerians insisted that all four Geneva conventions should apply to the Algerian War (given the “international character”) over eighteen months, France refused to admit the “existence of a non-international armed conflict to which Common Article III applied” (Johnson, 2016) Consequently, Algerian sovereignty meant vastly different legal fates for FLN fighters. In international conflicts, the FLN soldier would be “seen as an instrument of the state;” thus, they would not be individually responsible for taking up arms, and instead seen as complying with the laws and customs of war (Peret and Bugnion, 2011). However, as a non-international armed conflict, FLN insurgents were held criminally liable for participating in acts of war. Thus, in the Algerian perspective, “each conviction in the courts [would be seen] as a new injustice, and every execution as an assassination” (Peret and Bugnion, 2011)

Formation of the Algerian Red Crescent

Prior to the Algerian War of Independence, the French Red Cross (Croix-Rouge française, CRF) pushed for social welfare, education, and healthcare within Algeria (Johnson, 2016). While select reports suggest that the organization did not receive major criticism from either the French or the Algerians, the clear limitation of the CRF was the difficulty in “overcoming religious differences and recruiting local Algerian staff” (Johnson, 2016). David Forsythe, a scholar in the field of human rights and humanitarian affairs, further argues that “national societies [like the CRF] were never fully independent entities” due to the “historically deferential” relationship between states and their government (Johnson, 2016). Torn between “a colonial mission and humanitarian one,” the CRF served as a “vessel of French colonialism” and refused to acknowledge the war for months, despite widespread repression and chaos erupting in the region. Consequently, in 1956, the Algerian Red Crescent (Croissant-Rouge algérien, CRA) was formed out of an offshoot of the ICRC humanitarian missions. However, the ICRC did not recognize the legitimacy of the CRA, given that it failed to meet the conditions stated in the Seventeenth International Conference of the Red Cross, specifically that “a national society must exercise its activity on the territory of an independent state where the Geneva Conventions are in force” (Peret and Bugnion, 2011). Having neither the recognition as an independent state nor the acceptance of the Geneva Conventions, the CRA continually fought for legitimacy during the Algerian War.

From the inception of the organization, delegates in the CRA had a clear goal of monitoring and reporting “French violations of human rights and the Geneva conventions in Algeria” (Peret and Bugnion, 2011; Kiraly, 2023). The Algerian Red Crescent focused on four issues: “controversy over French military use of torture, staging prison release ceremonies, soliciting the vast [ICRC network for foreign aid and money], and campaigning on behalf of Algerian refugees.” (Johnson, 2016).  However, the CRA had a far larger political function than the newly established Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (Gouvernement Provisoire de la République algérienne, GPRA). Dr. Jennifer Johnson, public health and African decolonization scholar, writes that the CRA would function as:

the much-needed social wing of the revolutionary movement, complimenting its primary political and military initiatives [...] [using] humanitarian ideals, principles, and rhetoric to expand support for the nationalist cause by merging Algerian political questions with humanitarian ones (Johnson, 2016).

In other words, by using the language and institutions of international institutions that previously served Western powers, the GRPA would be able to garner support for the Algerians’ anti-colonial movement on a broader international platform (Johnson, 2016; Király, 2023).

CRA’s Independent Monitoring of Internment Camps

The need for the International Committee of the Red Cross was represented in their first mission on February 1, 1955, when the organization send aid to detainees and their families, who were experiencing human rights violations and mistreatment during their incarceration.^[1] During this time, joined by a medical professional, the ICRC conducted meetings with prison inmates and staff in regards to the condition of sanitary facilities, dorms and kitchens, as well as investigations into medical treatment and healthcare.^[2] The success of this mission brought relief, supplies, recommendations and set a precedent for the ICRC to return again from May 12 – June 28, 1956, to visit 61 internment camps, where they found evidence of torture and misconduct.^[3] These findings were important to the January 10, 1957 establishment of the Algerian Red Crescent, as a more consistent presence was needed in Algiers to monitor human rights in detention centres.^[4]

In the spring of 1955, the French authorities declared a state of emergency and deported FLN sympathizers to internment camps (“centres d’hébergement” or accommodation centers) (Király, 2023). Especially during the early stages of the conflict, Algerian detainees were not recognized as “prisoners of war.” Through the ambiguity, French prison officials were able to use “arbitrary detentions and gross violations of international humanitarian law [especially torture]” (Király, 2023). To correct this policy, ICRC delegates sought to “get the French guarantee that FLN fighters captured while bearing arms openly would be granted the same protection as prisoners of war in international armed conflict” (Peret and Bugnion, 2011). While the French authorities granted permission to ICRC delegates, they were specifically authorized to only investigate “the conditions of detention within the camps, not the reasons for imprisonment; [exchange] correspondence between prisoners and their families, and [...] [distribute] aid to detainees and their families” (Peret and Bugnion, 2011) Most concerningly, the ICRC had to ensure that their findings and recommendations must be held confidentially between French government officials.

With these guarantees, the first mission (23 February 1955 to 30 March 1955), covered forty-one camps in Morocco and approximately 2,000 prisoners (Johnson, 2016). "Members of the ICRC were able to interview detainees about possible ill-treatment, use physicians to verify the health of prisoners, and make recommendations to prison officials” (Peret and Bugnion, 2011) Over the course of three years, the ICRC placed pressures on France to reintegrate the ar in Algeria “into the only legal framework that could contain violence 一 international humanitarian law.” On 19 March 1958, the then commander-in-chief of French forces in Algeria ordered the “creation of ‘special camps’ for ALN fighters while openly bearing arms,” which prohibited acts of torture. Visiting hundreds of internment camps and detention sites in Algeria due to tightly established networks between ICRC, FLN, and ALN military officials, the ICRC was instrumental in respecting the globally established laws of war. Additionally, while prisoner exchanges rarely occurred (for giving legitimacy to FLN fighters), interview materials from former Algerian POWs and their families from scholar Raphaëlle Branche, highlight how Algerian prisoners were a central bargaining chip between the ICRC and the French military army (Johnson, 2016). Through the widely publicized prisoner-release ceremonies, this new coverage was a “calculated propaganda effort aimed at winning over international public opinion” and committed to the laws of war (Johnson, 2016).

However, the publication of confidential reports on the seventh mission of the ICRC in Algeria by the French Newspaper Le Monde broke the delicate balance between the French government, the ICRC, and the FLN (Király, 2023). Containing reports of inadequate prison conditions, and cases of torture and forced disappearance, this leaked report had further fracture what historians Françoise Perret and François Bugnion refer to as, “the most painful part of [the French national] fault line” (Peret and Bugnion, 2011). Because the interviews and findings came from an institution “respected for its neutrality and impartiality,” and the findings were written factually, the French public and the international community had proof of the Algerian nationalists’ allegations about French crimes.

The Focus of the CRA on Algerian Refugees

While prisoner-release ceremonies helped Algerian nationalists as being committed to the laws of war, “focusing on Algerian refugees would help them garner international sympathy for the consequences of such a brutal war and bring in significant financial and material aid from every continent” (Johnson, 2016) Through the Challe Plan and the zone interdites (“fire-free zones”), which resulted in the destruction and mass murder of the Algerian countryside, over 200,000 Algerians began fleeing their homeland “in search of basic essentials like food, clothing, and medicine” (Johnson, 2016) Accordingly, the Algerian Red Crescent took on the refugee issue and made the issue into a centerpiece of the CRA’s agenda. Through international platforms, such as the 1959 World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, the CRA was able to publicly pressure the French government to observe the Geneva Conventions and return displaced inhabitants back to their original land (Johnson, 2016). With this unique intersection of propaganda and diplomacy, countries both in and out of the Arab world provided foreign developmental aid (from Germany to North Vietnam to the Vatican) in the form of medications, food, and monetary support (Johnson, 2016). As Dr. Jennifer Johnson further writes, “The global response in the second half of the war is a powerful indicator of Algerian Red Crescent success in constructing a compelling humanitarian message that went beyond Arab alliances and anticolonial movements” (Johnson, 2016).

The organization was actually first established in two locations, Tangier, Morocco and Tunis, Tunisia, where the leadership of the National Liberation Front (NLF) were living in exile.^[5] Mamia Chentouf was one of the founders in Tunis.^[6][7] Following its establishment, the Algerian Red Crescent aided the ICRC in providing aid to the forty thousand refugees in neighbouring Morocco, as a result of their newly granted independence on March 2, 1956.^[8]

The Evian Accords and the End of ICRC Involvement

From the Algerian side, FLN’s resistance to the ICRC investigation of French prisoners of war was met with equal resistance. Most revealingly, one of the FLN leaders, Ben Bella, informed the ICRC delegation that due to the nature of guerrilla fighting, ICRC visits were impossible; as such, the FLN refused to provide any information about the lists of the French combatants held, as well as their conditions (Peret and Bugnion, 2011). Concurrently, after the Evian Accords (18 March 1962) and the cease-fire (19 March 1962), which formalized the status of Algeria as an independent nation, the ICRC was responsible for prisoner negotiations after the end of the war (Peret and Bugnion, 2011). While the French authorities notified the ICRC of the locations of the 3,600 prisoners captured, the newly Algerian government was resistant to give the ICRC access to those detained. With the mass arrests of harkis (who were Algerians loyal to France) as well as European expatriates, the ICRC continued to visit those still imprisoned and searched for remaining missing persons, until the end of its mission in September 1963 (Peret and Bugnion, 2011; Király, 2023). For the newly formed Algerian government, while they recognized they could not engage in legal proceedings against harkis, the government felt that the ICRC was not responsible, only the French authorities to get back French soldiers (Johnson, 2016).

Criticism of the ICRC

However, Dr. Jennifer Johnson argues that because the ICRC lacked a political stake within the war, the recommendations did not go far enough for the sake of “maintaining good relationships with its contacts” (Johnson, 2016) In doing so, the “ICRC made tepid recommendations for improvements but, overall, remained a passive observer to these pressing issues” (Johnson, 2016) Johnson further acknowledges that if the ICRC sent assistance or suggested conducting missions, “[the organization] had to make requests through the European governments, not the nationalist organizations, for the countries were not yet sovereign” (Johnson, 2016) Specifically, toward understanding the criticism of monitoring of internment camps, the core features of the IRIC missions was supposed to be unsupervised conversations with detainees; instead, Johnson found that the “IRIC team was only allowed to speak to Algerian detainees without French supervision half of the time” (Johnson, 2016) David Forsythe, who wrote about the history of the ICRC, further argues that “the vast majority of ICRC literature is neither self-critical nor self-reflective” (Johnson, 2016) Within the camps, these reports did not stress “particular sites around Algeria that needed better sanitation, nor did it condemn French police brutality” (Johnson, 2016) While the ICRC’s repeated actions led to improvements in prison conditions and establishment of military internment camps, critics of the ICRC argue that their missions did not stop the practice of torture during interrogations of prisoners. Thus, because every aspect of the ICRC visit was controlled by the colonial administration, the relationship between France at the ICRC served more as a reference point that demonstrated French commitment to humanitarian principles, not its adherence.