[Gnso-igo-ingo] National legislation on the protection of the designations/words "Red Cross" and "Red Crescent" designations

[Stephane Hankins]

Dear Berry, dear Thomas,
Dear all,
 
(1) As agreed during last week's Working Group call, we have reviewed the 
legislation of the 21 countries/High Contracting Parties to the Geneva 
Conventions, which National Red Cross or Red Crescent Societies have 
requested the reservation of the words/designations "Red Cross" or "Red 
Crescent", and thus, as a variant of their usual or commonly used name. 
These include Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, 
Cambodia, China, Czech Republic, Finland, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, 
Norway, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Palestine, Paraguay, Somalia, Sweden, 
Tanzania, Turkey and Ukraine. 

Once again, I would like to emphasize that all High Contracting Parties to 
the 1949 Geneva Conventions (196 in total) enjoy a formal obligation to 
protect the designations and names "Red Cross" and "Red Crescent" from all 
forms of unauthorized or improper use. 



[…]

 

In many jurisdictions, such protections apply directly in the domestic 
legal order without the need to adopt national implementing legislation. 
This is generally the case in States of the Civil Law tradition that are 
generaly qualified as "monist legal systems". For those States, the 
prohibitions on misuse of the names apply, in principle, directly in the 
national legal order. The situation is different in States of the Common 
Law tradition, which habitually require an international treaty norm to be 
translated into the domestic legal order through the adoption of domestic 
implementation legislation. These are generally referred to as "dualist 
legal systems". The supremacy of international law is generally considered 
to apply however in dualist legal orders and it is generally understood 
that a State cannot evoke municipal law as the reason for the 
non-fullfilment or for evading its international obligations. 
 
Without entering into the "monist" vs "dualist" debate, it should be noted 
that a majority of the 21 States on the list, would mostly qualify as 
Monist legal orders.
 
(2) The attached list includes relevant extracts of national legislation 
in force in the above mentioned States confirming either or both
 
i) the entitlement of the National Society in the country to make use of 
the designation or words "Red Cross" or "Red Crescent";

ii) the protections of the designations and names "Red Cross" and "Red 
Crescent" (by implication in the official national language or languages). 
We have not systematically included the translation of those articles in 
national languages, but these are available on our Website and national 
implementation database.

In several cases, we were not able to find national legislation protecting 
the designations of the emblems, but only of the emblems themselves - this 
stands as an anomaly or as an omission by the national legislator. We 
would hence recommend however that the GNSO confirm the reservations of 
the designations/names "Red Cross" and "Red Crescent" for all 21 National 
Societies as one of their commonly used names - bearing in mind, at a 
minimum, the good faith duty for States to abide by their conventional 
obligations under the 1949 Geneva Conventions (even if national 
implementing legislation may be lacking). 

NB: For memory, we had provided in the past an extensive list (and 
extracts) of national laws from different States protecting the "Red 
Cross" and "Red Crescent" designations (including the United States, the 
UK, etc.). Please refer in this regard to our message of 6 September 2017.



Kind regards,

Stéphane


Stéphane J. Hankins 
Legal adviser 
Cooperation and coordination within the Movement 
International Committee of the Red Cross 
Tel (direct line): ++0041 22 730 24 19 
 
 

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