section_path: International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)/Legal status and organization
section_name: Legal status and organization
paragraph_text: Legal status and organization
  
  The ICRC is headquartered in the Swiss city of Geneva and has offices in over 100 countries. It has more than 22,000 staff members worldwide, about 1,400 of them working in its Geneva headquarters, 3,250 expatriate staff serving as general delegates and technical specialists, and about 17,000 locally recruited staff.
  
  According to Swiss law, the ICRC is defined as a private association. Contrary to popular belief, the ICRC is not a non-governmental organization in the most common sense of the term, nor is it an international organization. As it limits its members (a process called cooptation) to Swiss nationals only, it does not have a policy of open and unrestricted membership for individuals like other legally defined NGOs. The word "international" in its name does not refer to its membership but to the worldwide scope of its activities as defined by the Geneva Conventions. The ICRC has special privileges and legal immunities in many countries, based on national law in these countries or through agreements between the committee and respective national governments.
  
  According to its statutes, it consists of 15 to 25 Swiss-citizen members, which it coopts for a period of four years. There is no limit to the number of terms an individual member can have although a three-quarters majority of all members is required for re-election after the third term.
  
  The leading organs of the ICRC are the Directorate and the Assembly. The Directorate is the executive body of the committee. It consists of a general director and five directors in the areas of "Operations", "Human Resources", "Resources and Operational Support", "Communication", and "International Law and Cooperation within the Movement". The members of the Directorate are appointed by the Assembly to serve for four years. The Assembly, consisting of all of the members of the committee, convenes on a regular basis and is responsible for defining aims, guidelines, and strategies and for supervising the financial matters of the committee. The president of the Assembly is also the president of the committee as a whole. Furthermore, the Assembly elects a five-member Assembly Council which has the authority to decide on behalf of the full Assembly in some matters. The council is also responsible for organizing the Assembly meetings and for facilitating communication between the Assembly and the Directorate.
  
  Due to Geneva's location in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, the ICRC usually acts under its French name Comité international de la Croix-Rouge (CICR). The official symbol of the ICRC is the Red Cross on white background with the words "COMITE INTERNATIONAL GENEVE" circling the cross.