Have you heard about the new EHL program in International Services? Do you know how this new program differs from the existing IHL program? Are you familiar with either of these acronyms?

Well, let me be the first to admit that I too find myself lost in a wilderness of jargon and acronyms especially when learning about programs in other departments. But there’s very little that goes on in any department here at the Red Cross that isn’t in some way significant to the big picture, especially to the services we provide locally.

So if you know that IHL stands for “International Humanitarian Law” you might then ask the question, how is this important to the work of the Red Cross here at home? It may be trite to say, “It’s a small world after all”, but it is true that what happens “over there” is increasingly felt “over here”.

IHL is a body of laws that aims to minimize the death, destruction, and hardship wrought by armed conflict. These laws are codified in a set of international treaties commonly known as “The Geneva Conventions”. The first of these conventions were drafted over 150 years ago and were the inspiration of one Henry Dunant, a Swiss businessman and founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). More conventions were put forth by the ICRC through the beginning of the twentieth century.

After two devastating world wars and a massive genocide campaign, various codes of conduct in armed conflict that had earlier put forth by the ICRC were co-opted by the United Nations in 1949 and drafted into a set of treaties called the Geneva Conventions. These were signed by every member of the United Nations. The Red Cross was subsequently mandated by the United Nations to be the vanguard of IHL and to promote awareness and educate citizens and governments and military leaders wherever possible of their responsibilities as treaty members.

Okay, so there you have the very abbreviated history of IHL. What does this mean to us here at home? Well, for starters anyone who knows or loves a member of the armed forces serving in harms way, the connection should be obvious. But beyond these immediate concerns, we should also look at the young people who we reach through all of our education outreach programs.

So much of the world we envision will be realized in the generations that follow ours. And when we teach kids and young adults about IHL, we are not just reciting to them the letter of the law. The whole of the Geneva Conventions can fit into a small pocket book (in fact, these are often issued to soldiers in the battle field). What we try to get people thinking about beyond the laws themselves are values and principles such as human dignity, respect for different cultures, and humanitarian action.

In pursuit of these aims, the ICRC designed and produced a comprehensive teaching system called “Exploring Humanitarian Law” (EHL). International Services office, in turn, has set out to promote this new teaching program to schools across the US. Last week, a workshop was hosted in Washington DC where we learned the program inside and out. In a nutshell, EHL is designed for teachers to integrate IHL and related issues into their curriculum for a variety of subject areas including social studies, geography, history, religion, social justice, etc. EHL is also unique in that it is designed to be even more engaging and interactive than the IHL program. One striking feature I found was how it gets audiences to think less in terms of black and white and more in terms of the grey ambiguities faced by soldiers and policy-makers.

EHL Workshop in Washington, D.C.

This point was really brought to bear by excellent guest speakers including Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan from West Point Military Academy, and Betty Bigombe, chief negotiator in the Ugandan civil war.

We covered a lot of ground in a short time. I will be spending a good portion of the rest of the summer months adapting what I learned to our existing IHL program, improving and expanding it, and also preparing a training session for local teachers and administrators.  It was suggested to me that I conduct a lunch and learn to introduce the EHL program to other staff and volunteers who may be interested in learning more about it. Stand by for that…

Meanwhile, you can help get this program off the ground by signing a Facebook petition to school district superintendants to teach the Geneva Conventions in our schools. Just go to http://apps.facebook.com/causes/petitions/193 and follow a few easy steps.

Thank you so much for your support!

- Michael Braeuninger

Michael is the director of International Services for the St. Louis Area Chapter.