For a long time it was considered at the ICRC, as in most other international organizations, that the function of an information service was to put out information on the institution's current activities and its general aims. No attention was paid to the true needs of those sections of the public who were at the receiving end, the only concern being the ICRC's short-term interests. This one-way process meant that the people to whom this flow of information was fed received it passively but there were no means of discovering what were their reactions, in other words, there was no feed-back.

The Tansley Report does not devote a special heading to the problem of dissemination, its remarks on this subject being scattered in various chapters. In the interest of greater clarity, the ICRC and the Leage felt it would be useful to bring them together, to summarize them, so as to identify the general concepts.

The Report's comments may thus be divided into two groups.

In short, while recognizing that the policy of discretion has generally served the interests of the victims, the Tansley Report suggests that in future the ICRC should make this policy more flexible by engaging in certain forms of information activity which would eventually be all the more readily accepted, as they would become an integral part of established doctrine. This development, according to the Tansley Report, could only strengthen the position of the Red Cross in the eyes of authorities which violate with impunity both humane principles and humanitarian law. This change should ultimately be in the interest of the victims.

The Tansley Report gives the following comments under the heading The concept of International Red Cross:

Members of Red Cross have an ambivalent approach to the concept ot and use of the term “International Red Cross”. On some occasions greaf effort is expended to enhance the idea of one Red Cross, of Red Cross moving as a unity, of acting in the name of the International Red Cross. On other occasions equal pains are taken to distinguish between, say, the League and the ICRC, or the ICRC and individual National Societies, and to accentuate the differences in purposes and structure of the various Red Cross organs. Which approach is adopted at any given time seems dependent upon what serves the best immediate need of the Red Cross organ involved…

On 7 December 1978 the two Protocols—one for the protection of victims of international armed conflicts and one for the protection of victims of non-international armed conflicts–additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 will come into force.

We have the honour to inform you that the Papua New Guinea Red Cross Society, which was officially recognized on 15 September 1977 by the International Committee of the Red Cross provided that the said Society submitted a declaration of adherence to the Statutes of the International Red Cross, has now transmitted this document to us, in compliance with the procedure resulting from Resolution XI of the Seventeenth International Red Cross Conference. This official recognition brings the number of member Societies of the International Red Cross to 125.

The International Committee of the Red Cross was one of the recipients of the 1978 Human Rights Prize, which the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Kurt Waldheim, presented to the President of the ICRC, Mr. Alexander Hay, in New York on 11 December before the United Nations General Assembly, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. The prize was awarded to the ICRC for its work in promoting observance of human rights.

The Torstein Dale Prize, founded by the Norwegian Red Cross in 1975 in memory of its former President, for persons who have made a conspicuous contribution to the humanitarian work and fundamental ideas of the Red Cross, was awarded to Mr. Jean Pictet, Vice-President of the ICRC and Director of the Henry Dunant Institute. The distinction, a bronze dove, was presented to Mr. Pictet by the Norwegian Red Cross President, Mr. Hans Hoegh, at a ceremony which took place last May in Oslo.

Friends of the ICRC will be sad to learn that Dr. Roland Marti, former ICRC Chief Medical Officer, died in Geneva on 9 November.

Dr. Marti joined the ICRC in 1936 and devoted his whole career to helping suffering humanity. After the Spanish Civil War, during which he worked in extremely difficult conditions, he went to Germany, to head the ICRC delegation in Berlin. He was appointed head of the Medical Division in 1946 and later head of the Relief Division, and played an important role in all the major ICRC programmes of action after the Second World War, particularly in the Middle East and in Asia.

On 7 November, the International Committee of the Red Cross launched an appeal for 15 million Swiss francs. This sum is required for the six-month financing of the humanitarian project to meet the needs resulting from the various conflicts at present causing havoc in Africa.