section_path: Activities/Fundamental principles
section_name: Fundamental principles
paragraph_text: Fundamental principles
  
  At the 20th International Conference in Neue Hofburg, Vienna, from 2 to 9 October 1965, delegates "proclaimed" seven fundamental principles which are shared by all components of the Movement, and they were added to the official statutes of the Movement in 1986. The durability and universal acceptance is a result of the process through which they came into being in the form they have. Rather than an effort to arrive at agreement, it was an attempt to discover what successful operations and organisational units, over the past 100 years, had in common. As a result, the Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent were not revealed, but found – through a deliberate and participative process of discovery.
  
  That makes it even more important to note that the definition that appears for each principle is an integral part of the Principle in question and not an interpretation that can vary with time and place.