André Durand

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André Durand (born  November 13, 1912 in Neuilly-sur-Seine ; †  March 7, 2008 ) was a Swiss delegate to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and author of several publications on the history of the ICRC.

Life

André Durand was born in 1912 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, to Swiss parents and studied mathematics at the University of Geneva . He began working for the Red Cross in 1942 during the Second World War in the International Center for prisoners of war the ICRC, where he worked in the department for other civilian internees, whose task is to clarify the fate of stateless persons and civilian victims of Nazism was . After the end of the war he worked briefly in the committee's central secretariat and as a delegate in France . During a mission for the committee in 1948/1949 in the context of the Middle East conflict , he lost his right arm in July 1948 as a result of a gunshot wound . After working again at the ICRC headquarters in Geneva , he went to Hong Kong in May 1951 . He remained active for the committee in Asia until 1970 , where he initially served as a delegate in Indochina , later as head of the ICRC special mission in Japan and from 1962 to 1970 as the leading delegate for all of Asia and at times the only representative of the committee in the region was. During this time he visited prisoners of war in various countries under difficult conditions.

After the end of his active work for the ICRC, he turned to historical research. In 1978 he published the second volume for a standard work on the history of the ICRC founded by Pierre Boissier and now in four volumes. It documents the work of the committee from 1914 to 1945 and appeared in English , French and Spanish . In addition, he wrote a number of articles on the creation of the Red Cross and its principles, as well as on the history of the peace movement . For health reasons, he left an unfinished manuscript of a biography on Gustave Moynier , the co-founder and long-time President of the ICRC, to the Geneva historian Jean de Senarclens , who published it in a revised form in 2000.

André Durand received the ICRC silver medal in 1962, the gold medal of the Japanese Red Cross in 1968 and the Henry Dunant Medal in 2003 , the highest award of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. He died in March 2008.

Works

Books
  • Le Miroir d'Amaterasu. Geneva 1969 (collection of poems)
  • Histoire du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge. De Sarajevo à Hiroshima. Geneva 1978
  • Le Comité international de la Croix-Rouge. Lausanne 1980
  • Gustave Moynier: le bâtisseur. Unfinished manuscript. Revised and published by Jean de Senarclens, Geneva 2000
items
  • Gustave Moynier and the Peace Societies. In: International Review of the Red Cross. 314/1996. ICRC, pp. 532-550, ISSN  1560-7755
  • The International Committee of the Red Cross at the Time of the First Hague Peace Conference (1899). In: International Review of the Red Cross. 834/1999. ICRC, pp. 353-364, ISSN  1560-7755
  • The First Nobel Prize (1901) Henry Dunant, Gustave Moynier and the International Committee of the Red Cross as Candidates. In: International Review of the Red Cross. 842/2001. ICRC, pp. 275-285, ISSN  1560-7755

literature

  • François Bugnion: Une vie errante d'homme croix-rouge: André Durand, 1912-2008. Obituary in: Les cahiers du centenaire. Issue 4 (January to June 2008). Edited by the Dunant-Moynier Association, pp. 37-43

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Durand, André
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross and author of historical publications
DATE OF BIRTH November 13, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuilly-sur-Seine
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 2008