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World Red Cross Day 2025: All you need to know about Red Crescent Day
Every year on May 8, we celebrate World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day. Millions of volunteers and employees who work for the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement are honoured for their humanitarian efforts. Henry Dunant, the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), was born on this day.
This worldwide celebration serves as a reminder of the strength of compassion, selflessness, and solidarity in the face of calamities like natural disasters, war, medical crises, and more. It is a time to honor individuals who dedicate their lives to helping others and to raise awareness of the principles and work of the Red Cross and Red Crescent organizations worldwide.
World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day 2025: Theme
"Keeping Humanity Alive" is the official theme for World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day in 2025. The theme dedication of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent staff, who provide relief where it is most needed, is reflected in this theme.
The theme emphasises how critical it is to uphold humanitarian ideals during a period of escalating inequality, health problems, and conflicts. "Keeping Humanity Alive" is a call to action to spread kindness, peace, and optimism while also paying homage to those working on the ground. ALSO READ:
History of World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day
In 1948, World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day was formally created to commemorate Henry Dunant's birthdate on May 8. After seeing the horrors of the Battle of Solferino in 1859, Dunant became a visionary and pushed for the creation of nonprofit relief organisations.
As a result, the Geneva Conventions were eventually built, and the International Committee of the Red Cross was established in 1863. The Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is currently the greatest humanitarian network in the world, having prompted the creation of 192 National Societies.
World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day: Significance
The millions of volunteers who give their lives to help others are honoured on World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day. These people frequently put their safety in danger to help those in need during crises. The significance is as follows:
• Recognition: Honours the unselfish efforts of employees and volunteers who offer assistance in times of need, such as during emergencies, wars, and natural disasters.
• Awareness: The movement's guiding principles—humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntarism, unity, and universality are brought to the public's attention through awareness-raising.
• Inspiration: Motivates people to support the ideals of compassion and service and take part in humanitarian efforts.
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Time of India
2 days ago
- Time of India
Florence Anselmo: leading the Red Cross search for the missing
AI- Generated Image GENEVA: Tracing and reuniting family members separated by war, migration and disasters is as "bitter-sweet" now for Florence Anselmo, head of the Red Cross's missing persons agency, as the day she started. At 51, she still gets overcome with emotion during family reunions. "Even on video, it moves me. Fortunately, most of my years in the field were before I became a mother," she told AFP in an interview. "Sometimes I doubt I'd be able to do it again without breaking down in tears." After nine years as head of the Central Tracing Agency (CTA) of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Anselmo is preparing to leave her post in June. The Swiss and Italian national fondly recalls the first reunion she took part in as an ICRC official, in Colombia, aged 26. She walked the last few kilometres (miles) alone through the jungle to recover a hostage from an armed group, before bringing him back to his family, who greeted him in a "completely extraordinary moment of jubilation". Since then, the number of people asking the Red Cross to help find their loved ones has grown "exponentially", Anselmo said, driven by conflicts, ever-longer and more dangerous migration routes and climate change. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 오스템 임플란트 받아가세요 임플란터 더 알아보기 Undo More than 56,000 new cases were registered last year -- up from 13,000 in 2014. Anselmo is particularly moved by "the persistence and astounding courage" of women who risk danger to find their sons or husbands, sometimes venturing across front lines or braving gang violence in countries such as Mexico. "They are often the first to make contact with the families of the opposing side and build bridges between communities that demonise each other," said Anselmo, who also spent 10 years working for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) before returning to the ICRC. Hope and despair In the search for missing people, "there are moments of extreme joy", she said -- sometimes even in simple acts like giving good news to loved ones over the phone or in a letter. "Unfortunately, it's also very often bad news," she stressed. Reunions can also be upsetting. Anselmo recalled bringing back to his family a Burundian child soldier found in the Democratic Republic of Congo. "You could see in his eyes... that he had experienced things that had robbed him of his childhood," she said. "It was a little bitter-sweet because there was the parents' joy but we realised that returning to normal life was going to be complicated." By 2024, the ICRC was trying to trace approximately 255,000 missing persons. This is only "the tip of the iceberg", as people often turn to the Red Cross only as a last resort, Anselmo said. For the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria alone, 116,000 and 35,000 cases respectively have been registered with the CTA. In all crises around the world people want, above all else, to be reunited with their loved ones. Family members are often left in a state of "ambiguous loss" that makes them "oscillate between hope and despair, and unable to move on", she explained. And in the current era of "financial contraction", the agency must sometimes restrict its criteria for accepting new cases - something which troubles Anselmo. After growing up in the Swiss countryside and studying political science in Lausanne, she began her career in humanitarian work with a Swiss organisation helping asylum seekers, before joining the Geneva-based ICRC. Mammoth task in Syria The CTA's predecessor, the Basel agency, began its work during the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War. More than a century and a half on, artificial intelligence is now helping triangulate data to find missing persons. But the digital world brings its own dangers. In 2022, cyber-attackers seized the confidential data of more than 500,000 vulnerable people from the ICRC's servers, information relating to the movement's family links services. Anselmo hopes the tracing agency will be able to bring its experience to bear in Syria. The fate of tens of thousands of detainees and others who went missing remains one of the most harrowing legacies of Syria's long years of civil war, which erupted in 2011. "It's quite dizzying. We hear about mass graves but also individual graves that are still being discovered every day," she said. Estimates put the number of missing persons in Syria at between 100,000 and 200,000. Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December 2024. Anselmo welcomed the new Syrian authorities' creation last month of a national commission for missing persons. But she explained that "even a government with the most sophisticated forensic system could not tackle such a mammoth task alone".
The Hindu
3 days ago
- The Hindu
World Environment Day 2025: In pictures
The World Environment Day 2025 focuses on combating plastic pollution. Recent research has suggested that microplastics are now in almost everything that exist on the earth, including the human brain. The 2025 World Environment Day calls for action to tackle plastic pollution. World Environment Day is celebrated every year on June 5. It was started in 1973 and is led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Over the years, the day has become symbolic of efforts related to safeguarding our environment, and millions of people around the world participate in the festivities to raise environmental awareness. The 2025 host of the World Environment Day is the Republic of Korea. Activists participate in a demonstration marking World Environment Day to call for community-built renewable energy structures, outside the Asian Development Bank headquarters in Mandaluyong, Metro Manila, Philippines. Sand artist Sudarshan Pattnaik creates a 30-ft long fish-shaped sand sculpture with plastic bottles and other plastic materials on the occasion of World Environment Day. Dancers wear costumes made with plastic waste as they perform at an event to mark Cambodia's Environment Day and the United Nations' World Environment Day at Morodok Techo National Stadium in Phnom Penh on June 5, 2025. Volunteers participate in a beach cleanup drive on the Arabian Sea coast at Mahim Beach on World Environment Day, in Mumbai. Prime Minister Narendra Modi plants a sapling at his residence on World Environment Day, in New Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi flags off electric buses under the Delhi Government's sustainable transport initiative, on the World Environment Day, in New Delhi. Stark reality: A man unloads plastic and waste material at a garbage site beside a temple on World Environment Day, in Chennai. Judges, advocates and judicial employees plant saplings at the District Court premises on World Environment Day in Sangareddy, Telangana.
Indian Express
4 days ago
- Indian Express
What caused the massive eruption of italy's Mount Etna
Italy's Mount Etna, the largest volcano in Europe, produced an explosive eruption on Monday morning, sending a huge cloud of ash, smoke and rock fragments several kilometres into the sky. Although the eruption created a spectacular sight, it resulted in no reported injuries or damage and barely even disrupted flights in the region. Mount Etna, sometimes referred to simply as Etna, is an active volcano on the east coast of Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, lying just off the toe of the Italian 'boot'. Etna's peak is the highest in Italy south of the Alps, and it is the largest of Europe's active volcanoes. Etna's summit has five craters, which are responsible for most of the volcano's eruptions. 'Flank' eruptions also occur at the 300-odd vents of varying sizes along the slopes of the mountain. The volcano is in near-constant activity. Since 1600, at least 60 flank eruptions and many more summit eruptions have happened. In recent years, summit eruptions have occurred in 2006, 2007-08, on two occasions in 2012, in 2018, and 2021; flank eruptions have taken place in 2001, 2002-03, 2004-05, and 2008-09. Etna has been a World Heritage Site since 2013, and according to UNESCO, the volcano's eruptive history can be traced back 500,000 years. At least 2,700 years of this activity have been documented. Experts suggest that the eruption began with an increase in pressure inside the volcano due to expanding gases, which led to the collapse of the southeast crater, resulting in hot lava flows. According to Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) Etna Observatory, the volcano was witnessing a 'Strombolian' eruption. This type of eruption is usually characterised as discreet moderately explosive bursts which can eject chunks of rock and cinders that can travel hundreds of metres into the air. It occurs due to the presence of gas in the magma chamber within the volcano. 'When the gas bubbles reach the surface, they can burst suddenly, throwing material skywards. The process is not dissimilar to letting gas out of a fizzy drink,' according to a report by the BBC. The Strombolian eruption is named after another Italian volcano called Stromboli, which produces minor eruptions every 10 to 20 minutes. However, some volcanologists believe that Mount Etna did not experience a Strombolian eruption but rather a Plinian eruption, in which hot gas, ash, and rock can explode high enough to reach the stratosphere. Given that the Monday eruption produced by Mount Etna threw material several kilometres into the sky, this set of volcanologists say it was a Plinian eruption. Scientists typically classify eruptions based on how explosive they are. More explosive eruptions tend to be more dangerous, as they can cover a larger area and move faster.
