Pernette
Zehnder
Pernette Zehnder profile's picture
Lebanon

We remember Pernette Zehnder

Pernette Zehnder was born on 6 December 1958 in Orbe, Switzerland, where she went to primary and lower secondary school. She completed high school – with a focus on maths and science – in nearby Yverdon-les-Bains in 1978. That same year she started a three-year programme in nursing in Saint-Loup, finishing her degree in 1981. For the following six years, she worked as a general-care nurse, first at Orbe Hospital, where she was employed from 1981 to 1983 in the emergency care recovery room, and then at the Courtelary district hospital, where she worked from 1983 to 1987 in intensive care. Her specializations were urgent care and paediatrics, and she was highly regarded for her knowledge, efficiency and level-headedness.

 

Pernette was an accomplished pianist, with 11 years of formal study under her belt; she also played guitar and flute. She counted photography, crafts and reading among her hobbies and kept active through hiking, swimming, cycling and skiing. She was a seasoned traveller within Western Europe, while also making forays to Israel and Canada. Pernette devoted some of her free time to working with a youth group at her church: her well-structured approach and easy-going nature made her a good fit for the wide range of young people she helped oversee.

 

After submitting her application to the ICRC in the spring of 1987, Pernette was called in for an interview. Despite her youthful appearance, she impressed the ICRC recruiters with her no-nonsense professionalism, solid social skills and discreet manner. She described herself as generous and plain-spoken and expressed no political leanings or interest in international politics. She simply wanted to work for the ICRC as a nurse and was ready to commit to an initial assignment lasting from six months to a year.

 

For her first assignment, Pernette was sent to Beirut, Lebanon, in early October 1987. Just over a week into her new job, she was killed in a car accident at a military checkpoint on the road between Tripoli and Beirut. Her two passengers suffered only minor injuries. Pernette was 29 years old.

 

Pernette’s reason for joining the ICRC was simple: she believed that her nursing skills could be put to good use in the humanitarian sector for the benefit of those in need – whoever they might be. Sadly, her life was cut tragically short.

The ICRC in
Lebanon, 1987

Lebanon is a multi-ethnic country sitting at the crossroads of East and West. After gaining its independence from France following the Second World War, the country experienced intermittent unrest over the following decades, falling prey to the instability that plagued the Middle East. In the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, tens of thousands of Palestinians fled Israel for Lebanon. The defeat of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Jordan in 1970 led to a further influx of Palestinians, this time from Jordan. During the final decades of the 20th century, parts of Lebanon were occupied by Syria (1976 to 2005) and Israel (1985 to 2000). In 1987, when Pernette was assigned to the ICRC’s Beirut delegation, the country was caught up in a spiral of overlapping violence: a civil war involving Lebanese and Palestinian factions was raging, accompanied by a spate of indiscriminate acts of violence such as car bombings. Fighting was also taking place in the “security belt” set up by Israel in southern Lebanon and run by the South Lebanon Army (a Christian militia backed by the Israeli armed forces). The ICRC’s work consisted mainly of visiting detainees on all sides of the fighting and seeking to improve their treatment; exchanging Red Cross messages between prisoners and their families or between members of families separated by conflict; providing food and other relief supplies to civilians who had been displaced or were directly affected by the fighting; supporting the local medical infrastructure; and delivering medical services in the camps and to communities cut off by conflict. Our efforts were repeatedly hampered during this period by restrictions placed on our movements by the warring parties and sometimes by direct attacks on Red Cross representatives.

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