‘Organising the unpredictable’: the Nigeria–Biafra war and its impact on the ICRC Marie-Luce Desgrandchamps Marie-Luce Desgrandchamps is a teaching assistant in the Department of General History at the University of Geneva. She is currently preparing a doctoral thesis on humanitarian aid during the Biafra crisis (1967–1970). Abstract This article analyses how the events of the late 1960s – and in particular the Nigeria–Biafra War – marked a turning point in the history of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The Nigeria-Biafra conflict required the ICRC to set up and coordinate a major relief operation during a civil war in a post-colonial context, posing several new challenges for the organisation. This article shows how the difficulties encountered during the conflict highlighted the need for the Geneva-based organisation to reform the management of its operations, personnel, and communications in order to become more effective and professional. Finally, the article takes the examination of this process within the ICRC as a starting point for a broader discussion of the changing face of the humanitarian sector in the late 1960s. Keywords: Nigeria, Biafra, ICRC, history, professionalisation, reform, assistance. Published literature often presents the Nigeria–Biafra War (1967–1970) as marking a ‘before and after’ in the history of humanitarian aid. 1 Generally speaking, the founding of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders, MSF) after this conflict has been put forward to justify this assertion, as has been the development of its new methods, breaking with a more traditional humanitarianism represented Volume 94 Number 888 Winter 2012 doi:10.1017/S1816383113000428 1409