Between the fall of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and the rise of his nephew in the Italian campaign of 1859, the powers had maintained peace in western Europe.

[4] Despite its intent of ameliorating the ravages of war, the inception of the 1864 Geneva Convention inaugurated "a renewal of military activity on a large scale, to which the people of western Europe…had not been accustomed since the first Napoleon had been eliminated.

"[4] The movement for an international set of laws governing the treatment and care for the wounded and prisoners of war began when relief activist Henry Dunant witnessed the Battle of Solferino in 1859, fought between French-Piedmontese and Austrian armies in Northern Italy.

[5] The subsequent suffering of 40,000 wounded soldiers left on the field due to lack of facilities, personnel, and truces to give them medical aid moved Dunant into action.

"[8] To ensure that its mission was widely accepted, it required a body of rules to govern its activities and those of the involved belligerent parties.

[15] The convention "derived its obligatory force from the implied consent of the states which accepted and applied them in the conduct of their military operations.

[19] However, as Jean S. Pictet, Director of the International Committee of the Red Cross, noted in 1951, "the law, however, always lags behind charity; it is tardy in conforming with life's realities and the needs of humankind", as such it is the duty of the Red Cross "to assist in the widening the scope of law, on the assumption that…law will retain its value", principally through the revision and expansion of these basic principles of the original Geneva Convention.