Mission humanitaire ou voyage d'étude ? Le CICR et la guerre du Chaco

Abstract

The Chaco War was the first opportunity for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the oldest of the international organizations, to launch a humanitarian action in Latin America. Between 1933 and 1934, ICRC sent two delegations in Bolivia and in Paraguay in order to visit the prisoners of war. If we are to believe the institutional literature, the ICRC's involvement for the victims of the war was successful. However, by the passing of the time, the Chaco War seems to have been evacuated from the history and from the memory of the ICRC. Based on ICRC archives material, this paper analyses the reasons of this discrepancy. Looking both on material contingencies and on psychological factors, our contribution aims at bringing new perspectives on the problematic of the European humanitarian assistance in front of non-European victims.