Biography | Henry Dunant — The Town Hall Treaty That Put Neutral Care into Law

On 22 August 1864, representatives of twelve states signed the first Geneva Convention at Geneva’s Hôtel de Ville. The treaty was the legal answer to a problem Henry Dunant had carried away from the wounded of Solferino: compassion improvised after a battle could not protect medical work before the next one began. Dunant did not sign here as a state delegate, and the convention was not his work alone. The International Committee of the Red Cross records that Dunant and four Geneva colleagues organized the diplomatic process that led to adoption, while the Swiss government formally convened the conference. From 8 to 22 August, delegates met in the room now known as the Alabama Room and negotiated a compact between governments. Its rules required wounded soldiers to be collected and cared for without discrimination by nationality. They also protected military medical services and recognized the red cross on a white ground as an identifying emblem for protected personnel and facilities. That shift mattered because the October 1863 conference at the Athénée had established a voluntary relief movement; this meeting bound states through an international treaty. The convention was brief, but it gave legal form to the combination Dunant had proposed in “A Memory of Solferino”: organized civilian aid supported by agreed protection in wartime. It also became the starting point of the treaty tradition now called international humanitarian law. The pin marks the documented public Town Hall building, using the coordinates of its courtyard, not the Alabama Room, an entrance, an office, or any restricted interior. The attached photograph was taken in 2008 and shows that courtyard as architectural context. It is not an image of the 1864 delegates or the signing. Here a campaign that began with testimony from a battlefield passed beyond one advocate and became an obligation accepted by governments. Photo: Bart van Poll, 2008, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.