Dunant's horror at the suffering of wounded soldiers he witnessed at the Battle of Solferino in 1859 led him to campaign for a neutral organization to care for war casualties regardless of nationality. His advocacy produced the First Geneva Convention of 1864 and the founding of the Red Cross, and in 1901 he became a co-recipient of the first Nobel Peace Prize.
Dunant was a Geneva businessman with no military or medical background when he stumbled, almost by accident, into one of the bloodiest battlefields of the 19th century. Traveling through northern Italy on business in June 1859, he arrived at Solferino just after a ferocious battle between French-Sardinian and Austrian forces had left roughly 40,000 men dead, dying, or wounded, with almost no medical infrastructure to help them.
Appalled, Dunant organized local villagers, regardless of nationality, to feed and tend the wounded, coining the phrase 'tutti fratelli' — all brothers. He returned to Geneva shaken and wrote 'A Memory of Solferino,' a slim, harrowing book that argued for permanent, neutral relief societies to be formed in peacetime, ready to serve in war. The book's proposals became the founding documents of the Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions, treaties that still govern the humane treatment of soldiers and civilians in conflict.
Dunant, however, died in near poverty and obscurity in 1910, having lost his fortune in bad investments decades earlier. His birthday, May 8, is now observed worldwide as World Red Cross Day.
Key people: Henry Dunant