Articles

Not having seen the genocidal drift of Hutu Power in 1994 coming, the international community grants Paul Kagame's RPF the impunity of victims. Yet such power also lends itself to criminal acts. The authors express their indignance that NGOs and international organisations - invoking the duty of remembrance - join in the endless evocation of the past that masks the political phenomena at the root of the current violence.

Nicolas de Torrente is questioning how far have the liberal economic reforms in Uganda seeking to rebuild and reshape the health care system, how are reforms affecting the actual delivery of health services and what are the implications of these reforms in terms of the sustainability and equity.

What role should NGOs play in states undergoing reconstruction? What position should they take vis-à-vis civilian donors (governments and supranational institutions) and armed forces?

Behind the question, "Is humanitarianism a commitment?", Rony Brauman warns against the use of humanitarianism in the public arena. Investing the political realm with the moral expectations of a better world, humanitarianism might unintentionally be helping to make "survival of the fittest" more palatable.

For the publication of the Dictionnaire d'Ethique et de philosophie morale, the former president of Médecins Sans Frontières, Rony Brauman, offers a definition of humanitarian aid. 

In 1993, Médecins Sans Frontières left Somalia and denounced the methods of UN troops who were violating the very humanitarian principles in whose name they intervened.