Claudine Vidal is a sociologist whose research has mainly centred on Rwanda (from its pre-colonial history to the genocide of Tutsi Rwandans in 1994) and Côte d'Ivoire (history and sociology of urbanisation in Abidjan). This research has been carried out in the framework of the Centre d'Études africaines de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Since 1995 she has collaborated with MSF on various publications and regularly participates in the reflection and work of the CRASH.
Claudine Vidal
Book
Extreme violence. Investigating, Saving, Judging Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Syria
Over the last few years, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Syria have been places where situations of extreme violence took place. As witnesses and investigators of such, the authors of this book shed light on three key-moments that marked these tragic episodes: the investigation, the intervention of emergency relief teams and the implementation of justice procedures leading to judgement.
Article
Debate: Judi Rever will not let anything stand in the way of her quest to document a second Rwandan genocide
Published in March 2018, Judi Rever’s investigative work, In Praise of Blood, quickly garnered international attention. It is an indictment of both the Rwandan patriotic front (RPF) and its leader, current Rwandan president Paul Kagame, and foreign governments and international institutions – the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), in particular – that allowed crimes committed against Hutu civilians to go unpunished.Judi Rever’s book is more than a work of investigation. It reads like a prosecutor’s closing argument: the massacres are described in such a way as to classify them as genocide. And it is precisely this combination of investigation and the pursuit of evidence that would stand up in a court of law that is problematic.
Article
Natural Disasters: “Do Something!”
In this interview conducted by Claudine Vidal in 2012 and published in the book Agir à Tout Prix (Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed: the MSF experience), Rony Brauman speaks about emergency humanitarian aid set up following natural disasters. Time constraints, access to victims, cooperation with local institutions, misleading representations of the disasters' effects, controversial assessments of the number of casualties; various topics related to these interventions are discussed and illustrated with specific examples.
Book
Medical Innovations in Humanitarian Situations
Medical Innovations in Humanitarian Situations explores how the particular style of humanitarian action practiced by MSF has stayed in line with the standards in scientifically advanced countries while also leading to significant improvements in the medical care delivered to people in crisis.
Article
Terror and Impunity in Rwanda
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.
