Cédric Cotter
Cédric Cotter is the Head of the Library and Public Archives Unit at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). He leads a team facilitating access to the ICRC’s library and public archives collections and playing a key role in a large-scale digitization project aiming at digitizing and publishing online over 40 million pages of archives.
He first joined the ICRC in 2009 and has more than 15 years of experience in historical research, both at the ICRC and in the Academia. Between 2020 and 2026, he was responsible for researching and writing analyses of the ICRC’s past actions to enhance in-house knowledge and to inform the organization’s current operations and decisions.
Cédric has authored or co-authored more than 60 publications on various issues related to the history of the ICRC, humanitarian action, the First World War, neutrality and international humanitarian law. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Geneva.
Posts by the contributor
Three lives, one vision: how Dunant, Demidoff and Abdelkader shaped modern humanitarianism
15 mins read Analysis / History / Humanitarian Principles / IHL Anastasia Kushleyko, Cédric Cotter & Ahmed Al-Dawoody
From the ‘Spanish Flu’ to COVID-19: lessons from the 1918 pandemic and First World War
10 mins read COVID-19 and conflict / History Cédric Cotter
The 1918 Bern Agreements: repatriating prisoners in a total war
10 mins read Detention / Humanitarian Action Cédric Cotter