Following the unrest in Lourenco Marques (Mozambique), and at the request of the Portuguese Red Cross, the ICRC regional delegate for Southern Africa, based on Rhodesia, took part in an emergency relief action which consisted in the despatch from Salisbury to Lourenço Marques, on 12 September 1974, of 700 kg of medicines and blood plasma, valued at 50,000 Swiss francs, for the principal hospital in that town. On the same day, he attended the first meeting between the Portuguese Red Cross, the Portuguese authorities and FRELIMO, with a view to organizing food supplies for the town and its suburbs.

On 8 June, 180 members of the Association française des anciennes déportées et internées de la Résistance called to thank the ICRC and its delegates for the aid they had been rendered on their release from the Ravensbrück camp.

The International Review has several times in the past published information about the operation sponsored by the Red Cross on behalf of the Indian population of the Amazon region. It will be recalled that, under an agreement with the Brazilian Ministry of the Interior and in close co-operation with the League of Red Cross Societies and the Brazilian Red Cross, the International Committee sent a team to Brazil early in May 1970, to make a survey of the health situation and the needs of the population.

The Statement of Income and Expenditure for 1973 (Table II) shows an excess of income over expenditure, indicating that for the third successive year the balance between the expenses and receipts of the ICRC's permanent structure has been maintained.

At the Conference of Experts on the Reuniting of Dispersed Families, held in Florence last June, Mr. N. Vecsey, Deputy Director of the Central Tracing Agency, Geneva, submitted a statment on recent Red Cross action in that specific field. We give below an outline of his statement.

A group of six army officers, from Dahomey, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal and Zaire, followed a course in Geneva organized jointly by the Swiss army and the International Committee of the Red Cross from 29 April to 10 May 1974.

There have been three new appointments to the International Committee of the Red Cross. On 6 December 1973, the Assembly of the ICRC elected Mr. Hans Peter Tschudi a member of the ICRC, and on 17 January 1974 Mr. Henry Huguenin and Mr. Gottfried de Smit.

The International Committee is publishing a report on the proceedings of the XXIInd International Conference of the Red Cross in the course of its consideration of the draft Protocols to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949. We quote below the introduction to that report. The three conference resolutions to which it refers were published in the January 1974 issue of International Review.

By an Act dated 20 February 1974, Australia notified the Swiss Government, depositary of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, of the withdrawal of the reservation formulated by the Australian Government at the time of its ratification, on 14 October 1958, of the Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.