Morocco. World War I. ICRC delegate visiting a camp of German prisoners of war. 01/1916. ©ICRC Archives (ARR). V-P-HIST-00617-14

“The organization began inspecting internment camps in Germany, the United Kingdom and France in January 1915. All main belligerents eventually granted permission for this. The ICRC dispatched a total of 54 missions to visit 524 prisoner-of-war camps in Europe, but also in Turkey, North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt) and Asia (Siberia, Burma, Japan and British India). The reports on these visits – which were also written by neutral protecting powers (Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the Holy See and the United States until 1917) or by the Young Men’s Christian Associations – were submitted to the governments concerned, but were also published … and sold.” [1]

The ICRC Library holds the exhaustive collection of the “Documents publiés à l’occasion de la guerre de 1914-1918”, available online below and on the website Prisoners of the First World War of the ICRC archives.

Some reports have also been published in German or only in German.

[1] The International Committee of the Red Cross in the First World War / Daniel Palmieri. – 10 September 2014. – Source : https://www.icrc.org/en/document/international-committee-red-cross-first-world-war-0 (accessed on 03.10.2016)