Humanitarianism, race, and the late colonial global order: Red Cross prison inspections in Apartheid South Africa

Abstract This article interrogates the politics of global humanitarianism and its entanglement with racial oppression during Africa’s decolonization by examining the International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) first prison visits to Apartheid South Africa in the 1960s. Using newly available archives from liberation movements, anti-Apartheid collections, the Apartheid state, and the ICRC itself, it shows how a global humanitarian organization was appropriated as a legitimating façade in the governance of a late colonial global order. Rather than scrutinizing Apartheid policies or safeguarding prisoners of colour, the ICRC’s prison visits reframed collaboration as humanitarian neutrality, thereby enabling White minority rule. Afro-Asian critics, however, articulated alternative legal and humanitarian visions that challenged the Red Cross’s claims to impartiality, neutrality, and universality. The article unsettles triumphalist accounts that portray Red Cross humanitarianism as neutral, leading, and/or inherently progressive, and instead emphasizes its structural incorporation into Apartheid’s political order. In doing so, it contributes to a global history of humanitarianism and international organizations that calls for a more critical reckoning with how international organizations instrumentalize and memorialize their pasts.