Gustave Moynier

Gustave Moynier (September 21, 1826 - August 21, 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.

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 forty additional charitable organizations and groups involved in tasks from improving the conditions for prison inmates to caring for orphans.

In 1862 Henry 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 members of the Committee 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 became the first president of the Committee, and Moynier became its vice-president.

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