Fabrice Weissman

Could a doctor working for a humanitarian organisation be sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States for having offered his “expert advice” to people linked to a “terrorist organisation”? That is what is feared by a number of civil rights’ organisations in the US since the Supreme Court declared on 21 June that the legislation known as the Material Support Statute was constitutional. 

Argued in the 1990s in the name of the "right or duty to intervene", the application of military might to rescue populations in danger is now debated with reference to the "Responsibility to Protect" paradigm (or "R2P" for those in the know). In this article Fabrice Weissman explains why MSF refuses to adhere to this doctrine of ‘just war', whose legalisation would effectively be legalising a new form of imperialism.

On March 3, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen sent a direct appeal to the humanitarian community. Acknowledging the limits of military force in the stabilization and reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, he wants to create a closer partnership with the NGOs.

This essay points out the fragility of the arguments most often used by humanitarian organizations to justify their support for an international criminal court. Questioning NGOs' infatuation with punitive justice, Fabrice Weissman argues that humanitarian organizations should advocate for politics of aid and mediation rather than for a global moral order based on judicial punishment and just war.

With 13,000 humanitarian workers and a hundred relief agencies, Darfur hosts the largest humanitarian operation in the world. The aid apparatus started its full deployment in mid-2004 in a context of acutely high mortality among internally displaced persons (IDPs) gathered in camps and civilians remaining in rural areas. 

Fabrice Weissman is interviewed by Joanne Myers, Carnegie Council, about MSF work in Darfur. He talks about MSF humanitarian medical work, its issues and difficulties. 

Jean-Hervé Bradol and Fabrice Weissman respond to Collectif Urgence Darfour's call for armed intervention in Darfur to "stop the massacres," and to promises along these lines by candidates in France's presidential election.

Fabrice Weissman looks at the major stages of the Darfur conflict since 2003 from the perspective of a humanitarian medical organisation. He questions the predominant reading of this crisis, and cautions against the illusions of international armed intervention in the region.

Aid organisations have been held hostage to the showdown between the Sudanese government and the international community.