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to address the new security agenda'. Several Symposium participants pointed out that the military has been somewhat isolated from the new thinking about the changing nature of security and that in the future they need to be systematically included.
International Committee of the Red Cross ICRC)
The ICRC has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on three occasions - 1917, 1944 and 1963 - in recognition of its work to protect people from the suffering caused by war. It is the promoter and guardian of international humanitarian law and of the Geneva Conventions which were first established in 1864 thanks to the work of the committee which was the predecessor of the ICRC. In addition, in all wars, it acts as a neutral intermediary between the conflicting parties, helping and protecting victims of hostilities and alleviating their physical and moral suffering.
Because of its role in international law and its consistent humanitarian action on the battlefield, the ICRC, although not technically an intergovernmental organization, has a special status among them. It is often included in meetings of the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations and has come to symbolize for many the work for peace by the international community. The organization makes people aware of the horrors of war and helps them to work against it, developing an active sense of human solidarity and responsibility for the common good.
The work of the ICRC is exemplified by its role in establishing children as a -conflict free zone' in the recent civil war in El Salvador. Working closely with the Swedish branch of the non governmental organization Save the Children and with the United Nations Children's Fund, the ICRC sought to obtain a ceasefire in the war so that children could receive their needed immunization shots.
Lengthy negotiations with El Salvador's president, UNICEF Executive Director James Grant and UN Secretary General Javier P�rez de Cu�llar gave rise, in 1984, to a campaign of 'Days of Tranquillity for the Sake of Children', whereby government and rebel forces, for a few days a month over three months, took their fingers off the trigger long enough to enable UNICEF and the International Red Cross to immunize their children against diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, measles, TB and polio, the six 'vaccinable' diseases which kill children.
The negotiation process was complex, and involved the many players in the conflict. What was needed was not just a ceasefire of three days a month for the coverage but a few days of peace before the campaign started so that people would feel safe to leave their homes and travel some distance with their children. The Vatican was enlisted and, in turn, Archbishop Arturo Rivera Damas in El Salvador, who accepted the role of mediator on two conditions: that the immunization campaign should not become, nor be seen to be, a political stratagem of the government, and that it should cover the entire country, not just the government-held areas.
In the end, more children than ever before were protected against immunizable diseases. Their parents, by participating directly in the 'Days of Tranquillity' by bringing in their own children for vaccination, realized that they were active participants in a real development effort. They had seen that, however poor they were, they could make a positive contribution towards protecting their children; they had become, in effect, the ultimate units of a health 'infrastructure'. By the end of civil war, six years later, more than 80 per cent coverage had been attained.
To celebrate the anniversary of the birth of its founder, Henry Dunant, the ICRC convened a meeting in 1978 with the other eight institutions who had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace to contribute to build-
Treating children as a 'conflict free zone' the warring parties in El Salvador took their fingers off the trigger long enough to enable UNICEF and the International Red Cross to immunize their children against six killer diseases.