Resumo de Book Of Facts - Reader's Digest

INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS
Saved from extinction
Since its foundation in 1961 the World Wildlife Fund has helped to save from extinction some 30 animal species- including tigers, polars bears and African elephants. The fund, which works closely with an international team of scientists, raises money to provide sanctuaries for threatened species, but there are still about 1000 different kinds of animals ? among them the Japanese crested ibis, the Californian condor, the American crocodile, the blue whale and the Javan tiger- in danger of dying out. Some 25,000 flowering plants are also threatened with extinction.
So, far the fund- with headquarters in Gland, Switzerland and branches in almost 30 countries- has raised more than 40 million pounds to finance over 6000 life-saving projects in 135 countries
Paving the way for peace
Amnesty International- the worldwide organization for the defense of human rights-is one of the few institutions to have won a Nobel Peace Prize. Most winners have been individual people. The only institutions to have won the prize more than once are the United Nations High Commission for refugees, in 1954 and 1981, and the Red Cross, in 1971, 1944 and 1963. Amnesty?s prize was awarded in 1971 for the origination?s help in paving the way ?for freedom, for justice, and thereby also for peace in the world?.
Amnesty International was founded in 1962 by a British lawyer, Peter Benenson, and is financially independent and without any political ties or affiliations. The organization- which handles 5000-6000 individual cases a year- campaigns for the release of all prisoners of conscience, provided they have not used or advocated violence; fair and prompt trials for all political prisoners; and the abolition of torture and capital punishments. It estimates that around the conscience and many more who have been killed unjustly by governments.
The 8.5 Million Dollar Gift
The United Nations ? most of whose members are poor Third World Countries ? meets on a site donated by one of the world?s richest men. The gift came from the multi-millionaire philanthropist and industrialist John D. Rockefeller Junior, son of the founder of the giant American oil company, Standard Oil. Rockefeller bought 7 hectare (18 acre) tract of land beside New York?s East River for 8.5 Million Dollars in 1946. He then gave it to the UN as a site for its headquarters building, which was opened in 1952. The land is now officially international territory, and a team of guides takes about a million visitors around the headquarters each year
The Man Who Started The Red Cross
In the summer of 1859 a young Swiss businessman named Henri Dunant, traveling through northern Italy, became an eye-witness at the Battle of Solferino during the Franco-Austrian war. He was so appalled by the bloodshed and slaughter- altogether some 30,000 soldiers were killed or wounded as France tried to free Italy from Austrian domination- that he stayed on to organize local relief work.
The following year Dunant, who became a full-time philanthropist, published a booklet. A Memory of Solferino, in which he called for the formation of a permanent relief society for those wounded in war. Four years later, in 1864, Dunant formed The international Red Cross in his home town of Geneva, and in 1901 he became the co-winner of the first Nobel Peace Prize.
Today the Red Cross has about 200 million members in 131 countries, and its work has expanded to help the suffering caused by political upheavals and natural disasters as well as war.
The international symbol of the Red Cross ? a red cross on a white background ? is the reverse of the flag of Switzerland, birthplace of the society. In most Islamic countries, however, the organization displays a red crescent instead of the cross. And the Russian Red Cross uses the cross and crescent combined.

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