Georges Olivet
Swiss Red Cross delegate
Georges Olivet (19 August 1927 – 13 December 1961) was a Swiss delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Early life
He was born in Nyon and grew up in Jussy.
Career
After high school, he did an apprenticeship as an electrician and mechanic before doing further training in business. In the early 1950s, Olivet moved to the Belgian Congo working in textile imports.
Georges contacted the ICRC delegate in Léopoldville to offer his services. Following a short trip back to Switzerland, Georges assumed his duties as a delegate in late October, 1960. During the Congo Crisis Olivet provided humanitarian support in his role as an ICRC delegate within the secessionist State of Katanga.
The UN Representative in Katanga George Ivan Smith reported to the UN that Olivet "confirmed" to him that "Katanga military and mercenaries are making use of the Red Cross symbol to protect their military operations against the United Nations."
Death
Olivet and two volunteers, Nicole Vroonen and Styts Smeding, were shot and killed while operating their ambulance during Operation Unokat on 13 December 1961. The results of a joint UN-International Red Cross investigation of the incident and the identity of their killers were not made public, but the UN paid a settlement to Olivet's family and Belgian news reports held an Ethiopian peacekeeper responsible.
Burial and recognition
He was buried on 24 December.
“Georges Olivet” enters the record as swiss Red Cross delegate. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Georges, Olivet and Swiss can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 11, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q124254215. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 1961 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Georges Olivet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.