Red Cross commissions external audit to manage financial woes

© Keystone / Martial Trezzini

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has commissioned an independent assessment of its financial management practices to help guide future strategy.

Mirjana Spoljaric , the president of the ICRC, which recently announced cuts of 1,800 staff because of financial problems, believes that an external audit is “necessary”. In an interview published in Le Temps on Saturday, she said that an independent assessment of financial management and audit processes was under way.

The ICRC has had to reduce its budget by CHF 440 million this year, to CHF2.4 billion. Faced with cash flow difficulties, “it was urgent to make these cuts”, the ICRC president continued. “It was not ideal to make tactical cuts, but in the short term we had no choice,” she said.

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The organisation is in the process of developing its strategy for the next four years and will come into force at the beginning of 2024. According to Spoljaric, the conclusions of the external audit “will be directly integrated into the new strategy and into the preparation of the new budgets”.

“We will have fewer resources in the future, so we now have to think about what we can afford to do,” she said. But the ICRC’s mission “must be clear: to help civilians caught up in armed conflicts and to provide them with protection”.

Switzerland has traditionally had close ties with the ICRC, founded by Swiss Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Dunant in the 19th century and guardian of the Geneva Conventions. It is traditionally headed by Swiss nationals. Switzerland is also the ICRC’s third largest funder. Last year, the federal government contributed CHF166 million to the Geneva-based humanitarian organisation.