Suchergebnisse

Dissemination of international humanitarian law and the principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is always one of the ICRC's primary objectives. Through such activities the ICRC seeks to promote respect for international humanitarian law and prevent violations of it; to increase the effectiveness and safety of humanitarian action; and to strengthen the Movement's identity and cohesion whilst making the specific role of each of its components (ICRC, League, National Societies) better known.

This article offers a critique of dissemination models that are based on technical rationalist ontologies. We argue that such models privilege a particularly narrow set of meaning and in consequence preclude other ways through which we might imagine dissemination acts. Our article therefore seeks to deconstruct dissemination in order to illuminate the ethical, political and communicative issues that lie at the heart of dissemination practices and to offer a range of alternative ways that dissemination might be conceptualized. These issues are illustrated through a series of vignettes that are drawn from research in the fields of education, health and social care. These focus on the everyday features of qualitative research that are more usually discussed in relation to substantive issues of methodology rather than dissemination per se. These vignettes are designed to demonstrate how dissemination is present at the very moment of conceptualizing research and that it continues in ways we have yet to explore well after the formal stages of research are complete.

The year 1977 may be considered a turning point for the dissemination of knowledge of international humanitarian law and the Principles and the ideals of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. If we briefly review events of that year, we see that from 21 to 30 March 1977 the first European Red Cross Seminar on the Dissemination of the Geneva Conventions, organized by the Polish Red Cross and the ICRC, was held in Warsaw. Representatives of European and North American National Societies and of the ICRC and the League attended the seminar which adopted the following principles:«Although dissemination of knowledge of international humanitarian law is a responsibility of governments, it should be a direct concern of the Red Cross in general and particularly of each National Society in its own country.

Lewin proposed three goals for action research: to advance knowledge; to improve a concrete situation; and to improve behavioral science methodology. The three objectives cannot be met by a single mode of dissemination. Innovative dissemination strategies will be necessary. Action researchers should publish substantive articles in technical journals to reach colleagues; applied articles in periodicals read by practitioners and the public; and methodological and reflective articles in associational and professional journals designed to improve the practice of action research.

The dissemination of international humanitarian law is more than an obligation laid down by the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols for all the States party to them. To spread such knowledge is to play a vital part — if not the most important part of all — in limiting the suffering caused by armed conflict.

Behold a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: But others fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.–St. Matthew [ch. 13, verses 3-8]