International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is an international humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide which was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, and to prevent and alleviate human suffering.

The movement consists of several distinct organizations that are legally independent from each other, but are united within the movement through common basic principles, objectives, symbols, statutes and governing organisations. The movement's parts are:

Indonesian Red Cross Society

Indonesian Red Cross Society (Indonesian: Palang Merah Indonesia) is a humanitarian organization in Indonesia. It is a member of International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Indonesia is the one of the very few Muslim-majority countries to use the Red Cross as its symbol. Because Indonesia is neither a strictly faith-based nor secular nation, it has chosen to use the Red Cross as its symbol.

In mid-2013, Indonesia Red Cross Society has 32,568 people join in Volunteer Corps, 19,294 join in Individual Volunteers and 893,381 Blood Donor Volunteers or totally 945,243 persons and is recorded as the most number volunteers in the world.

History

The IRCS was created on 17 September 1945, exactly 1 month after Indonesia's independence. President Soekarno ordered its inception when a battle between Indonesian soldiers and allied troops broke out, leaving many wounded, on 3 September 1945. Based on the performance, IRCS received an international recognition in 1950 that it was accepted as a member of the International Red Cross and achieved its legal status through Presidential Decree Number 25 Year 1959, which was later reinforced by Presidential Decree Number 245 Year 1963.

Society

A society is a group of people involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent members. In the social sciences, a larger society often evinces stratification or dominance patterns in subgroups.

Insofar as it is collaborative, a society can enable its members to benefit in ways that would not otherwise be possible on an individual basis; both individual and social (common) benefits can thus be distinguished, or in many cases found to overlap.

A society can also consist of like-minded people governed by their own norms and values within a dominant, larger society. This is sometimes referred to as a subculture, a term used extensively within criminology.

Cross

A cross is a geometrical figure consisting of two lines or bars perpendicular to each other, dividing one or two of the lines in half. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally; if they run obliquely, the design is technically termed a saltire, although the arms of a saltire need not meet at right angles.

The cross is one of the most ancient human symbols, and has been used by many religions, most notably Christianity. It may be seen as a division of the world into four elements (Chevalier, 1997) or cardinal points, or alternately as the union of the concepts of divinity, the vertical line, and the world, the horizontal line (Koch, 1955).

Etymology

The word cross comes ultimately from Latin crux, a Roman torture device used for crucifixion, via Old Irish cros. The word was introduced to English in the 10th century as the term for the instrument of the torturous execution of Jesus as described in the New Testament, gradually replacing the earlier word rood. Crux is possibly derived from Phoenician. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia cross does not come from crux but form the Latin curio, "to torment".

PMI

PMI may stand for:

Computer science

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Mathematics