Gustave Moynier

Gustave Moynier (21 September 1826 – 21 August 1910) was a Swiss jurist who was active in many charitable organizations in Geneva. He was a co-founder of the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, which became the International Committee of the Red Cross after 1876. In 1864, he took over the position of president of the committee from Guillaume-Henri Dufour, and he was also a major rival of the founder Henry Dunant. During his record long term of 46 years as president, he did much to support the development of the committee in the first decades after its creation. Background Moynier came from a rich and established Geneva family of merchants and bankers. He studied law in Paris and received his doctorate in 1850. Because of his Calvinist persuasion, he became interested in charity work and social problems early on. In 1859, he took over the chairmanship of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare. He was also active in around 40 additional charitable organizations and groups involved in tasks from improving conditions for prison inmates to caring for orphans. In 1862, Dunant sent him a copy of his book A Memory of Solferino. Moynier showed great interest in the realization of Dunant's ideas for the creation of a voluntary care organization for the assistance of the wounded in battle and opened a discussion about the book at the assembly of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare. This led to the creation of the Committee of Five, a commission of the society set up to investigate the plausibility of Dunant's ideas. The additional members of the commission, with Moynier as chairman, were Dunant, the doctors Louis Appia and Théodore Maunoir and the army general Guillaume-Henri Dufour. Soon afterwards, the committee members changed the name to the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded and, in 1876, it adopted its current name, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Dufour was the first president of the Committee, and Moynier became its vice-president.