Would you like to find out everything about the French Red Cross Foundation? What did we achieve in 2025? Which research projects are we supporting? What are the prospects for 2026?
Take a look at our 2025 annual report!
Our President’s Forewords
The year 2025 was a particularly challenging one for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Crises are multiplying, becoming increasingly complex and are accompanied by a worrying challenge to international humanitarian law and the validity of social science research. Humanitarian needs are rising, whilst funding is declining.
To address this now structural tension, the Foundation has reflected on the situation and organised round-table discussions on the future of aid and the role of research, thereby creating the conditions for dialogue between those working on the ground and the scientific community. The dissemination of knowledge has also been central to the Foundation’s work. In a public sphere characterised by disinformation, scientific discourse is an all the more valuable resource. In its latest World Disasters Report, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warns that dehumanising rhetoric and disinformation are endangering the lives of humanitarian workers and local communities on the ground. Subjecting facts to rigorous scientific scrutiny is now a prerequisite for action, and this only serves to reinforce the Foundation’s raison d’être.
The Foundation has made innovation in research a key focus of its work to address the challenges of tomorrow, fully in line with the French Red Cross’s tradition of social innovation. Thus, to ground its work in the realities on the ground, the Foundation took a new step forward in 2025 with the introduction of the APRIS method — Post-Research Workshops and Social Innovation. This new initiative is based on a collective intelligence approach which, once the researcher’s work is complete, brings together all the research stakeholders with the aim of fostering social innovation and transforming practices on the basis of the scientific results obtained. In the same spirit of putting research findings into practice, the Foundation continued its Bénévo’Lab, a research programme that enables volunteers and staff to receive support through bespoke research to find solutions to the challenges they may face in their Red Cross work.
This year, ten grants were awarded to projects providing tangible solutions for aid workers. Three research prizes were awarded to inspiring researchers working on a variety of topics firmly rooted in contemporary issues: perceptions of risk in the face of disasters and climate change, the life trajectories of women who use drugs, and scientific and medical ethics. The grants, the awards and the partnership established with the School of Political Science at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne for the Foundation’s Annual Meetings demonstrate the Foundation’s ambition to create lasting synergies between the academic world and humanitarian actors. In line with this approach, the Foundation, guided by the principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, remains a committed member of the RC3 Consortium, which brings together the Movement’s research bodies, and notably organised a round-table discussion during the Movement’s international conference.
Rooted in the realities on the ground as well as in the debates shaping the international scene, at the French Red Cross we place research and scientific knowledge at the heart of our commitment. The new Board of Directors, elected in July 2025, has, moreover, made the development of impact measurement, innovation and research a priority, convinced that it is by informing our actions that we can build, sustainably, the solidarity of tomorrow.
Dr Caroline Cross
President
Read the report :
