Shortly after the beginning of the First World War in 1914, the ICRC under its president Gustave Ador decided to establish the International Prisoners-of-War Agency (IPWA).
Its main task was to trace PoW and to re-establish communications with their respective families.
Already at the end of the same year, it had a staff of some 1,200 volunteers who worked in the Musée Rath of Geneva.
Many of them were girls, women, and students.

Their mandate was based on resolution VI of the 9th conference of Washington in 1912 and hence limited to military personnel.
However, the committee member and medical doctor Frédéric Ferrière founded a civilian section against the advice of other committee members.
It soon became commonly associated with the ICRC and significantly contributed to its positive image, thus also to its first Nobel Peace Prize in 1917 (The ousted Dunant had received the first one in 1901 as an individual).


One of its early activists was the French writer Romain Rolland, who volunteered in the sub-division for missing civilians until July 1915.
When he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1915, he donated half of the prize money to the Agency.
His friend, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, provided a lively description of the commitment:
"A rough stool, a small table of unpolished deal, the turmoil of typewriters, the bustle of human beings questioning, calling one to another, hastening to and fro - such was Romain Rolland's battlefield in this campaign against the afflictions of the war.
Here, while other authors and intellectuals were doing their utmost to foster mutual hatred, he endeavored to promote reconciliation, to alleviate the torment of a fraction among the countless sufferers by such consolation as the circumstances rendered possible.
He neither desired, nor occupied a leading position in the work of the Red Cross; but, like so many other nameless assistants, he devoted himself to the daily task of promoting the interchange of news.
His deeds were inconspicuous, and are therefore all the more memorable. [..]
Ecce homo!
Ecce poeta!"

Étienne Clouzot (1881–1944) - an archivist palaeographer, who was also a columnist for the liberal daily newspaper Journal de Genève (which had published an anonymous essay by Dunant about Solferino and thus played a role in the founding of the ICRC, illustrating the networking connections of Geneva's patrician family dynasties) -  became the director of one of the Entente sections and designed the classification system for the millions of index cards.
Shortly after the beginning of the First World War in 1914, the ICRC under its president Gustave Ador decided to establish the International Prisoners-of-War Agency (IPWA). Its main task was to trace PoW and to re-establish communications with their respective families. Already at the end of the same year, it had a staff of some 1,200 volunteers who worked in the Musée Rath of Geneva. Many of them were girls, women, and students.
Their mandate was based on resolution VI of the 9th conference of Washington in 1912 and hence limited to military personnel. However, the committee member and medical doctor Frédéric Ferrière founded a civilian section against the advice of other committee members. It soon became commonly associated with the ICRC and significantly contributed to its positive image, thus also to its first Nobel Peace Prize in 1917 (The ousted Dunant had received the first one in 1901 as an individual).

One of its early activists was the French writer Romain Rolland, who volunteered in the sub-division for missing civilians until July 1915. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1915, he donated half of the prize money to the Agency. His friend, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, provided a lively description of the commitment:
"A rough stool, a small table of unpolished deal, the turmoil of typewriters, the bustle of human beings questioning, calling one to another, hastening to and fro - such was Romain Rolland's battlefield in this campaign against the afflictions of the war. Here, while other authors and intellectuals were doing their utmost to foster mutual hatred, he endeavored to promote reconciliation, to alleviate the torment of a fraction among the countless sufferers by such consolation as the circumstances rendered possible. He neither desired, nor occupied a leading position in the work of the Red Cross; but, like so many other nameless assistants, he devoted himself to the daily task of promoting the interchange of news. His deeds were inconspicuous, and are therefore all the more memorable. [..] Ecce homo! Ecce poeta!"
Étienne Clouzot (1881–1944) - an archivist palaeographer, who was also a columnist for the liberal daily newspaper Journal de Genève (which had published an anonymous essay by Dunant about Solferino and thus played a role in the founding of the ICRC, illustrating the networking connections of Geneva's patrician family dynasties) -  became the director of one of the Entente sections and designed the classification system for the millions of index cards.
International Committee of the Red Cross archives