Henri Dunant

Jean-Henri Dunant was born in Geneva into a devout and wealthy Calvinist merchant family. Engaged in social reform and charitable work from youth, he co-founded the Geneva YMCA in 1852. In June 1859, while traveling in northern Italy on private business to seek land concessions from Napoleon III, Dunant arrived in the aftermath of the catastrophic Battle of Solferino, where over 40,000 wounded French, Italian, and Austrian soldiers lay dying in agony on the battlefield with virtually no medical care.

Horrified by the suffering, Dunant abandoned his business, mobilized local village women in Castiglione delle Stiviere, and organized makeshift hospitals in churches, famously instructing the volunteers to care for wounded soldiers of all sides with the motto: Tutti fratelli ('All are brothers'). Returning to Geneva, he published A Memory of Solferino (1862) at his own expense, proposing the creation of neutral, permanent national relief societies and an international binding treaty to protect medical personnel in wartime.

Dunant's proposals directly led to the founding of the Committee of Five in 1863—which became the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)—and the diplomatic conference that adopted the First Geneva Convention in 1864. Although bankrupt business ventures forced him into destitution and obscurity for decades in the Swiss village of Heiden, he was rediscovered by journalists in 1895 and awarded the first-ever Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, bequeathing his prize money to philanthropic hospices.