Marcel Junod (14 May 1904 – 16 June 1961) was a Swiss medical doctor and one of the most accomplished field delegates in the history of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

After the war, he worked for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) as chief representative in China, and settled back in Europe in 1950.

Junod completed his initial education in 1923 with a baccalaureate diploma from Geneva's Collège Calvin, the same school that Red Cross founder Henry Dunant had attended.

Due to generous financial support from his uncle Henri-Alexandre Junod he was able to follow his aspirations and study medicine in Geneva and Strasbourg, obtaining his MD in 1929.

Encouraged by the head doctor of the clinic in Mulhouse, he accepted the offer and soon traveled to Addis Ababa with a second ICRC delegate, Sidney Brown.

Because of his experience in law, Sidney Brown worked on the establishment of an effective national Red Cross Society in Ethiopia.

Some of the most difficult experiences for Junod during the war involved the attacks on Red Cross ambulances by the Italian military and Ethiopian armed groups.

Among other events, he witnessed the bombardment of the city Dessie by the Italian air force, the use of mustard gas against civilian populations in the towns of Degehabur and Sassabaneh, and the plundering of Addis Ababa in the final days of the war.

The commission would have coordinated work on the release of captured women and children, the erection of neutral international zones, and the compilation of prisoner lists.

Despite the ambiguous legal basis for the Red Cross' work in this conflict, Junod succeeded to convince the warring parties to sign and implement a number of agreements regarding prisoner exchange and other issues, thereby saving many lives.

He started his mission on 16 September 1939 in Berlin and for a long time remained the only ICRC delegate in Germany and its soon-to-be occupied territories.

The central tasks in this war were the observation of the adherence to the Geneva Conventions in POW camps and the distribution of provisions and medical supplies to the civil populations of occupied territories.

After a short break from being a delegate, during part of which he worked in the ICRC headquarters in Geneva, in June 1945 he was sent to Japan and arrived in Tokyo on 9 August.

His deployment in Japan and other surrounding Asian countries lasted until April 1946 when he was able to return to Switzerland, having missed the birth of his son Benoit in October 1945.

In 1946, the USA wanted to honour Junod with the Medal of Liberty for his work on behalf of Allied prisoners in Japan, but a rule that Swiss citizens, while bound to military service, cannot accept foreign decorations, prevented him from receiving it.

At the beginning of 1953, he relocated to Lullier, a small, charming village near Geneva, to find respite from his double burden as a physician and member of the ICRC.