Gustave Moynier

Swiss jurist

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.

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.

Differences between Moynier and Dunant developed early over the reach of the organization's authority and its legal and organizational formation. The key point of dispute was Dunant's idea to grant neutrality to wounded soldiers and medical staff in order to protect them. Moynier was a determined opponent of this plan, which he did not consider realistic, and thought its insistence risked the collapse of the project. Dunant, however, was able to persuade powerful political and military figures in Europe of his ideas, and with the first Geneva Convention in 1864 had some success toward their implementation. In the same year however, Moynier took over the position of president of the International Committee. The increasing tensions between the pragmatist Moynier and the idealist Dunant led to Dunant's expulsion, led by Moynier, after Dunant's bankruptcy in 1867. While not proven, it is probable that Moynier used his influence to prevent Dunant, who from then on lived in rather poor conditions, from receiving financial assistance from his various supporters in Europe. For example, the gold medal of the Sciences Morales at the Paris World's Fair in 1867 was not awarded to Dunant but divided between Dunant, Moynier and Dufour. The prize money was also not awarded to Dunant but given to the International Committee itself. An offer from Napoleon III to settle half of Dunant's debt if the other half would be taken over by Dunant's friends was thwarted by Moynier's efforts. In 1872, Moynier submitted, after the Franco Prussian War in 1870 71, a proposal for the creation of an international arbitration court to penalize violations of international humanitarian law. Because of concerns by most national governments over state sovereignty, the measure was not adopted. Moynier was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, 1903 and 1905 by Richard Kleen, a member of the Institut de droit international (Institute of International Law). Unlike Dunant who was awarded the first Peace Prize in 1901 together with Frédéric Passy, Moynier never received the prize in his own name, although the Institute that he had founded received the honor in 1904. He died in 1910, two months before Dunant, without any sort of reconciliation between the two. Having been president of the committee until his death, he is still the committee's longest serving president.

The Rue Gustave Moynier, in Secheron, Geneva's diplomatic quarter, is named after him and part of the nearby Parc Mon Repos is known as the Parc Moynier. There is a statue of Moynier in the Parc des Bastions, next to the University of Geneva.