The Swiss editor Georg just published in open access a collection of articles edited by Sébastien Farré, Jean-François Fayet and Bertrand Taithe. This book is devoted to the emergence of humanitarian exhibitions either within wider events or in their own right, as an attempt to focus attention and make sense of the aid humanitarians provided. The book argues that this exhibition process was central to the narration of the humanitarian project. It did not simply represent humanitarian work, it helped shape its essential identity and sense of purpose. Entail the development of new ways of thinking about needs and emergencies.

All the warning lights are flashing red this year: drought, the high prices of grains and fertilisers exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, reduced imports and speculation, numerous armed conflicts, a record number of refugees to be fed, disengagement of institutional donors,… With the exception of locusts, all the determinants of severe food scarcity are there, from Afghanistan to the Sahel, including Yemen, the Horn of Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. To the point of threatening all of the progress that was made in treating undernutrition after the 2005 crisis in Niger, which was the starting point for global advances in managing malnutrition in places where it is commonplace. It is time for a general mobilisation to limit the scale of the coming catastrophe. Interview with Jean-Hervé Bradol by Elba Rahmouni.

Based on the example of the hospital in Moïssala, Chad, the two authors reflect on the management of pain in children at Médecins Sans Frontières. This article was first published on March 25th 2022 in the journal Alternatives Humanitaires.

In a country with a solid medical infrastructure and faced with a large-scale international mobilisation, what is the place of MSF in Ukraine and beyond? "We are not currently in the front line of emergency care provision," write Thierry Allafort Duverger and Michael Neuman, who see our work in limited areas, particularly with those "left behind," and in the longer term.

Sous les regards incrédules des observateurs, travailleurs humanitaires et militants associatifs, les autorités françaises sont en train de réaliser ce que nombre d’entre nous tentent d’expliquer depuis longtemps : il est nécessaire et possible d’offrir un accueil responsable à des personnes fuyant des situations de violence.

The film Empire of Silence, directed by Thierry Michel, examines the massacres committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1996 to the present. In this blog, Marc Le Pape introduces the film’s structure, some of the principal witnesses to the mass executions and some of the military and political actors responsible for them, and Congolese reactions to their impunity.

Rony Brauman revient sur le bilan des cinquante ans de l’ONG et affiche son scepticisme à l’égard de la justice internationale.

Pour le cinquantième anniversaire de l’ONG fondée en 1971, « l’Obs » s’est associé avec MSF et l’agence Magnum pour publier « Regards témoins », un beau livre qui raconte cinq décennies de crises et d’actions humanitaires, en textes et en images. Le photojournaliste Raymond Depardon a accompagné MSF depuis cinquante ans, et c’est avec enthousiasme qu’il a accepté, pour introduire « Regards témoins », de revenir sur ce singulier compagnonnage dans un dialogue avec Rony Brauman.

This article was first released in the 18th volume of the Humanitarian Alternatives magazine. Designed to reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS in a Kenyan district, a Médecins Sans Frontières project successfully exceeded the “90-90-90” target set by UNAIDS. A look back on the results that the authors of this article - Pierre Mendiharat, Deputy director of operations at MSF France and Léon Salumu Luzinga, Program manager at MSF France, interviewed by Elba Rahmouni - believe are encouraging but by no means a guarantee that the epidemic will be over by 2030.

In his book, La Traversée. Une odyssée au cœur de l’Afrique, Patrick de Saint-Exupéry challenges the reality of Hutu Rwandan refugees’ hunt and massacre facing the advancement of the Rwandan Patriotic Army and their Congolese allies in 1996-97. This systematic exercise of denying reality – especially the denial of the Mapping Report written by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1143 pages, published in June 2009) – but also this denial of Human Rights Advocacy groups’ investigations, and those of journalists’ witnesses present in DRC at the time – does not spare MSF’s teams who came to help these refugees in 1996-97. However, as a front-line witness of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, MSF was also one of the organizations noticing the intense violence perpetrated by the new Rwandan political regime in Zaire / DRC back in 1996 and 1997, mostly against a population constituted at three-quarters of women and children. 

Comment enquêter sur les violences extrêmes ? Comment secourir leurs victimes et juger leurs responsables ? Ces trois questions traversent un ouvrage collectif intitulé « Violences extrêmes. Enquêter, secourir, Juger », qui vient d’être publié par la Maison des sciences de l’homme. Le livre revient sur ce qui s’est notamment passé au Rwanda. Pour en parler, Laurent Correau est en ligne avec l'universitaire Claudine Vidal, l’une des coordonnatrices de ce travail.

Dans cette interview accordée au média Jeune Afrique, Rony Brauman, l'ancien président de MSF et actuel membre du Crash, revient sur les limites des interventions militaires impérialistes occidentales en Afghanistan et au Sahel. Il y partage son point de vue de docteur humanitaire ayant travaillé sur ces terrains en conflits.