Mr. Cornelio Sommaruga, President of the ICRC, travelled Namibia, Kenya, Uganda and Zaire from 19 to 30 March 1990.

In his speeches, talks with heads of State and government representatives and meetings with National Society leaders, diplomats, academics and journalists, the ICRC President stressed the need for humanitarian mobilization within the international community. He laid special emphasis on the following points:

– The ICRC spends half its field budget for its work in Africa. This major commitment corresponds to the needs resulting from the many armed conflicts and internal disturbances on the continent. The ICRC intends to continue its activities to help the civilian population, who are the main victims of these conflicts, and will adapt its emergency assistance wherever possible to ensure that the beneficiaries rapidly become self-sufficient.

The ICRC extended the scope of its protection activities, set up an emergency first-aid medical post with surgical facilities for one month to care for people wounded in the Sudan conflict, and implemented a major relief programme for 85,000 displaced people in camps near Kumi. The delegation also assisted victims of the Rwandan conflict by participating in the repatriation of 214 Ugandans, including 52 children, from Kigali and by temporarily supporting refugees in the border region.

With its nine war surgery hospitals treating thousands of wounded people in various parts of the world, the ICRC has gained unique experience in this area.

In order to make use of what it has learnt and spread that knowledge to others, a war surgery seminar was organized by the ICRC's Medical Division at the institution's headquarters from 30 March to April 1990. The seminar, which was opened by ICRC Vice-President Maurice Aubert, had the following objectives:

— recruit more surgeons to meet growing needs in the treatment war victims;

— prepare surgeons for medical missions in the field and especially for the particular demands of war surgery;

— set up a coherent and rigorous system to classify wounds using ballistics to understand the effects of war injuries on the human body and their implications in terms of surgery.

In 1990, the ICRC was the only humanitarian organization with a regular presence in northern Somalia, where the conflict between government forces and the SNM continued unabated. The fighting compounded ethnic tensions, leading to an extremely complicated situation where the various Somali tribes in the area found themselves aligned with the combatant groups; the circumstances of the conflict were rendered still more complex by the presence of thousands of Ethiopian refugees in the area.

From the beginning of 1990, the institution's activities grew steadily in southern Sudan. Delegates used road transport to reach Bor, and later descended the Nile to Shambe and Adok, the port towns for Yirol and Leer.

In April, the ICRC was able to start reducing the amount of food it had been providing to the population living on the Planalto. With the beginning of the harvest season, the people could once again count to a certain extent on their own crops to survive. The ICRC's agricultural engineers already anticipate however, that the harvest will not suffice to cover the population's needs beyond the month of October. In the second half of April, the ICRC began a new seed distribution programme on the Planalto. This programme will benefit some 55,000 families, each of which will receive 2.5 kg of seed.

The ICRC regional delegations in Dakar, Lomé, Lagos, Kinshasa, Harare and Nairobi were instrumental in responding to a number of emergencies in 1990.