The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) no longer manages to keep its accounts and lays off massively. In a letter to management, a copy of which was obtained by the RTS Investigation Department, the staff demanded an account of the “budgetary drift” of recent years. The ICRC refutes these criticisms.
The ICRC is facing the worst crisis in its history. Funded mainly by the States on a voluntary basis, the institution founded 160 years ago in Geneva has not managed to balance its budget this year. In ten years, the latter has more than doubled, going from 1.18 billion francs in 2012 to 2.84 billion in 2022.
Spectacular growth now called into question, as the ICRC is forced to save 430 million francs and 1,800 people are about to be made redundant, out of a total of 22,700 employees.
>> Read also: The ICRC will eventually lay off nearly 1,800 people around the world
Thirty-five positions cut in Geneva
Most of these job cuts affect the delegations abroad, several dozen of which will close or greatly reduce their activities. At the headquarters in Geneva, which employs 1,400 people, 35 positions are to be cut, according to an internal source. This climate of high tension notably led to the sending of an open letter to management, signed nominally and anonymously by 2,500 staff members.
The RTS investigation center obtained a copy. The signatories say they are “disappointed, disillusioned and angry”. They criticize the lack of “humility” and “anticipation” of the current management. And above all, the previous management team is singled out, with the request for an “inventory right” over the decade 2012-2022 which should go through an “independent, external and international audit”.
The old management refuses to speak
The letter specifies the grievance in relation to the explosion of the budget and staffing over the past ten years: “We believe that all employees, like the victims we serve, deserve a clear explanation of the budgetary drift which unfortunately does not date not today”. Targeted by these criticisms, both former president Peter Maurer and former general manager Yves Daccord have told RTS that they no longer want to speak publicly about the ICRC.
On the side of past and current employees, several witnesses told RTS what should be understood by “budget drift”: “Humanitarian assistance activities have taken over while the basic mission is the protection victims of armed conflicts, the visit of prisoners, the search for the missing”, sums up a source who has experienced these changes from the inside.
The “dogma of growth” denounced
“It sells better to show that we distribute water or that we feed children than to visit prisoners of war”, image another source. A former executive believes that the ICRC has begun to be “managed in the American way, with highly paid consultants and experts of all kinds attached to the general management”.
And the ICRC would above all have been caught in a spiral of growth without seeing the crisis coming: “Always more money was requested each year and it worked, so there was no reason to stop or to wonder if getting so fat was not risky.”
A former ICRC employee, National Councilor Nicolas Walder shares many of these criticisms. For him, the “dogma of growth” has too strongly permeated the ICRC in recent years: “This choice of wanting to do everything, everywhere, is perhaps wrong.”
Le Vert genevois estimates that the explosion of the budget weakens the ICRC today, making it too strongly dependent on the will of its donors. He calls on the institution to review its priorities and in return, he will invest at the federal level so that the Confederation provides more support to the ICRC in this period of historic crisis.
What will Switzerland do?
The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs refuses for the time being to comment. With 160 million francs donated to the ICRC in 2022, Switzerland is in third position, behind Germany and the United States, of the institution’s main donors. Major donors who are to meet during the month of June. We should then see more clearly which countries are reducing, maintaining or increasing their payments.
So far, it is not known which donors announced at the beginning of this year that they would reduce their contribution, potentially forcing the ICRC to a first reduction in its budget of around 2.8 to 2.4 billion francs. . “We hope that our appeal, revised downwards, will be accepted,” ICRC vice-president Gilles Carbonnier told RTS.
All the humanitarian sector affected
Asked at 7:30 p.m., Gilles Carbonnier refuted faulty management, indicating that “the entire humanitarian sector is facing a major change, because the major donors are facing very significant financial constraints”. Clearly, the ICRC claims to be a victim like others of budgets in crisis, of inflation and above all of the priority given by States to the war in Ukraine, which is drying up the funds available for humanitarian action at the global level. .
However, a new strategy is being prepared within the governing bodies. “It is obvious that we must give priority to our work as a neutral intermediary, guarantor and promoter of international humanitarian law in armed conflicts”, specified Gilles Carbonnier. Either return to its basic missions. The ICRC obviously no longer has much choice, as the pressure on its budget is not about to ease.
>> See the explanations of Ludovic Rocchi in the 7:30 p.m.:
Ludovic Rocchi, RTS Investigation Unit
