Gustave Moynier

Louis Gabriel Gustave Moynier was born into a wealthy Genevan patrician family. Studying law in Paris, he dedicated his legal training to philanthropy, becoming president of the Geneva Public Welfare Society (Société genevoise d'utilité publique) in 1858. In 1862, when Henri Dunant published A Memory of Solferino describing the horrors of wounded soldiers abandoned on the battlefield, Moynier was so profoundly inspired that he placed the resources of his society behind Dunant's vision.

In February 1863, Moynier organized the 'Committee of Five'—comprising himself, Dunant, General Guillaume-Henri Dufour, Dr. Louis Appia, and Dr. Théodore Maunoir—which formed the International Committee for the Relief of the Wounded (later the ICRC). While Dunant provided visionary passion, Moynier provided the administrative, organizational, and legal genius. In October 1863, Moynier convened sixteen nations in Geneva to approve the red cross emblem, followed in August 1864 by the diplomatic conference that adopted the First Geneva Convention.

As ICRC President for forty-seven consecutive years until his death in 1910, Moynier established national Red Cross societies across the globe. Following atrocities committed during the Franco-Prussian War, Moynier drafted a visionary proposal in 1872 for the establishment of a permanent international criminal court to prosecute violations of the Geneva Convention—a legal concept realized 126 years later with the International Criminal Court. In 1873, he co-founded the Institut de Droit International, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1904.