ICRC's Perverted Priorities

Don Habibi documents how biased the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is.

For North Africa - covering Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco/Western Sahara, and Tunisia - the ICRC has one office in Tunis, a budget of 2,512,613 Swiss francs, and personnel consisting of five expatriates and 10 locally-hired staff.

These are the allocations dedicated to a human rights disaster zone, a population of 82 million and covering an area of 6,048,149 square kilometers.

For Asia and the Pacific - covering Cambodia, People's Republic of Korea, Japan, Laos, Mongolia, People's Republic of China, Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam - the ICRC has a main office in Bangkok, plus two prosthetic limb workshops in Cambodia.

The budget for this region is 5,838,991 Swiss francs, and the personnel consists of 17 expatriates and 43 locally hired staff. These are the allocations dedicated to a human rights disaster zone, for a population of 1.7 billion and covering an area of 13,056,235 sq. km.

For "Israel/Occupied Territories/Autonomous Territories," the ICRC has 13 offices in Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus, Kalkilya, Ramallah, Jericho, Bethlehem, Hebron, Gaza, Khan Yunis, Majdel Shams, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. The budget for this area is 22,407,815 Swiss francs, and the personnel consists of 130 expatriates and 90 locally-hired staff. The personnel numbers and budget have continued to increase dramatically since the Annual Report 2001.

When I checked the ICRC worldwide web page on February 19-21, 2003, they listed a presence of 327 (254 staff, including 73 expatriates).