The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, in which all Societies have equal status and share equal responsibilities and duties in helping each other, is worldwide.

The Universality Fundamental Principle

In his ‘Essay on Man’, Alexander Pope wrote: “All are but parts of one stupendous whole”. While he was writing over 100 years before the birth of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, his words encapsulate the strength of that Movement today. It is a strength based on the fundamental principle of universality.

The principle involves three mutually dependent elements:

• the Movement is worldwide
• all National Societies have equal status
• all National Societies share equal responsibilities and duties in helping each other

In 2006, there is a Red Cross or Red Crescent Society in 183 countries – almost every country in the world. Each of these National Societies, regardless of their size, wealth or age, is an equal part of the Movement. Each has equal voting power in the decision-making bodies and, while every National Society is an independent entity, there is a solidarity between them and an ethos of mutual support brought about by a shared cause.

The global nature of the Movement in turn strengthens the Red Cross in achieving its principles of humanity and impartiality. The Red Cross works to “prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found”.

At the same time, it makes “no discrimination as to nationality, race, religious beliefs, class or political opinions”.  Clearly, if the Red Cross is to reach out to human suffering wherever it occurs and without prejudice or other form of discrimination, then it must have a presence near to where that suffering might occur.

Equally, volunteers are the lifeblood of the Red Cross Movement and they, too, are recruited without discrimination. Volunteers are drawn from every part of society – rich and poor, young and old. It is this universality of membership that enables each National Society to understand and address the most pressing humanitarian needs within their own countries.

Each National Society works to the same principles and with the same aim in 183 countries across the world. Their staff and volunteers, too, have the same goals, which they use their resources to achieve depending on the unique circumstances of their own people.

Yet it goes further than this. National Societies are independent but at the same time belong to a wider movement – a movement that comes together in the face of human suffering. When, for example, disaster on a large scale afflicts one country to the extent that the resources of its National Society are overwhelmed, an appeal through the International Federation will bring assistance from ‘sister’ Societies in the form of personnel, infrastructure and funding. In other words, National Societies will reach across borders in the name of humanity.

It is this solidarity of purpose, in which everyone is indeed “part of one stupendous whole”, that makes the Red Cross the unique and powerful Movement it is today.