Red cross
A red cross on a white ground, the sign the first Geneva Convention of 1864 put on the flags and arm-badges of army hospitals and ambulances. It is the oldest of the emblems of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and the ICRC says it was formed by reversing the colours of the Swiss flag.
Meaning
The Convention of 22 August 1864 required “a distinctive and uniform flag” for hospitals, ambulances and evacuations, always with the national flag, and allowed an arm-badge for those it neutralized: “The flag and the arm-badge shall bear a red cross on a white ground.” The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says the emblem was formed by reversing the colours of the Swiss flag because it was to stand for the neutrality of the armed forces’ medical services, and Switzerland’s neutrality had been confirmed by the treaties of 1815; the white flag, too, signalled the wish to negotiate or surrender. The committee founded by Henry Dunant took the emblem into its own name in 1875. Today 151 National Societies use the red cross; what it marks and who may display it now is on the red cross emblem page on whatdoesthissymbolmean.com.
Origin and history
On 24 June 1859 Henry Dunant, a Swiss citizen on a private trip, came to Solferino and saw more than 45,000 soldiers abandoned, dead or wounded, on the battlefield. His book A Memory of Solferino (1862) proposed volunteer relief groups in every country, set up in peacetime, and an agreement among countries to protect first aid volunteers and the wounded. A five-member committee, the future ICRC, met in Geneva on 17 February 1863 to study his proposals. One of its aims was a single distinctive symbol backed by the law: simple, identifiable from a distance, known to everyone and identical for friend and foe. The first International Conference, in October 1863, with delegates from 14 governments, adopted the red cross on a white background, and the diplomatic conference of August 1864 wrote it into the first Geneva Convention.
Was it the Swiss flag reversed?
The Movement’s own accounts say so. The ICRC says the emblem was formed by reversing the colours of the Swiss flag, and the British Red Cross calls it an inversion of the Swiss flag that recognises Switzerland’s connection with the first Convention. A conference of experts convened by the ICRC in 1937 put it in heraldic terms: “the inverted heraldic colours of the Swiss federal flag, adopted as a tribute to Switzerland”.
The ICRC’s archivists, following the historian François Bugnion, think the story is more complicated. The starting point was the white background, long a sign of peace: in 1857 the French military doctor Lucien Baudens had proposed white to mark medical personnel on the battlefield. The red cross came later, to make the sign easier to recognize and to draw attention to the Geneva committee. As late as October 1863 a plain white armlet still dominated the debate, and no record survives of the discussion that chose the cross. Bugnion thinks its likely advantages were that it was simple, easy to reproduce and carried centuries of symbolism.
Is the red cross a Christian symbol?
Not by intention, say its custodians. The British Red Cross says the emblem has no intentional religious meaning, and Protocol III to the Geneva Conventions (2005) stresses that the distinctive emblems are not intended to have any religious, ethnic, racial, regional or political significance. Others have read it differently. The ICRC’s archive blog points out that the Swiss federal cross itself is a reference to Christianity, and the British Red Cross records that in the nineteenth century the cross reminded Ottoman soldiers of the crusaders. That reading is why the Movement came to have more than one emblem: the red crescent, the Red Lion and Sun of Persia, and in 2005 the red crystal.
On hospital ships
The Geneva Convention of 1949 for the wounded and sick at sea painted the emblem large. Hospital ships are to be white on all exterior surfaces, with one or more dark red crosses, as large as possible, on each side of the hull and on the horizontal surfaces, so as to be seen from the sea and from the air.
Where you’ll see it today
whatdoesthissymbolmean.comRed Cross emblemA red cross on a white ground is the protective emblem of the Geneva Conventions. In armed conflict it marks military medical services and relief workers as protected, and the red crescent and the red crystal have the same status. whatdoesthissymbolmean.comFlag of SwitzerlandSwitzerland’s flag is a square red flag with an upright white cross whose equal arms do not reach the edges. The Swiss coat of arms act describes the cross and makes the flag square but gives the colours no meaning, and the Fribourg historian Damir Skenderovic says nobody knows for certain why they are red and white.Read next
- Next in Symbols of medicineRed Lion and SunThe red lion and sun on a white ground was Persia’s sign for the medical services of its armies, recognized in the Geneva Convention of 1929 as one of three distinctive emblems beside the red cross and the red crescent. Iran gave it up for the red crescent in 1980, and it is no longer in use.
- The same shape in Tarot cardsFour of SwordsThe four of swords in the tarot's Minor Arcana: the effigy of a knight lying at prayer on his tomb. A. E. Waite read it as vigilance, retreat, solitude and repose.
See also
Rod of Asclepius, Caduceus, Bowl of Hygieia, Lamp of Florence Nightingale, Show globe.
Sources
- Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field (Red Cross Convention), 22 August 1864, The Avalon Project: Laws of War, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, Article 7
- The history of the emblems, Article, 14 January 2007, International Committee of the Red Cross, 1876–1878; 1929; 1980; 1992; 2000; 2005; 2007
- A controversial emblem, Cross-Files, the blog of the ICRC Archives, audiovisual and library, International Committee of the Red Cross, Blog post
- The emblem, Protecting people in armed conflict, British Red Cross, Page text
- Convention (II) for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea, 12 August 1949, The Avalon Project: Laws of War, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, Articles 41 and 43
- Geneva Conventions Act 1957, Schedule 7: Protocol III additional to the Geneva Conventions, Text of Protocol III (2005) as scheduled to the Act, legislation.gov.uk (UK Government), Preamble; Article 1
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from crosses or squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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