Couverture du livre Niger 2005, une catastrophe si naturelle
Book

Niger: A Not-So Natural Disaster

Xavier
Crombé

Xavier Crombé was Director of Studies at MSF-Crash from 2005 to 2008. He is currently working at the Research Unit on Humanitarian Stakes and Practices (UREPH) of MSF in Switzerland to publish a collective essay dealing with issues related to violence in healthcare facilities. He is also teaching humanitarian and migration issues at Sciences Po Paris.  

Jean-Hervé
Jézéquel

Deputy Project Director for West Africa at International Crisis Group.

Jean-Hervé Jézéquel first worked as a Consultant for Crisis Group in Guinea in 2003, before joining as the Senior Analyst for the Sahel region in March 2013. He has also worked as a Field Coordinator in Liberia, a West Africa Researcher and a Research Director, for Médecins sans Frontières.

Twenty years after the charity concerts for the Sahel Nigerien politicians, institutional donors, aid agencies and humanitarian organisations clashed on the nature and substance of the crisis affecting Niger in 2005. Identifying the causes of, and adequate responses to, the situation also gave rise to profound disagreements. Having set up their most ambitious emergency nutrition programme to date, Médecins Sans Frontières found itself at the forefront of these controversies.

This book, an MSF initiative, is a collection of contributions from researchers, consultants and humanitarian actors. Each contributor gives a different perspective of the Nigerien crisis and discusses what they consider to be the key issues involved. In particular, the authors examine and question the conflict that arose during the summer of 2005 between the 'development' and 'emergency' camps. They also discuss the nature and durability of the changes that occurred in the wake of the crisis, and call for further reflexion on the preconceptions and implicit choices that condition relations of assistance and aid in Africa. One consensus however stands out: the death of tens of thousands of children every year, like the pauperisation and marginalisation of an ever increasing number of Nigeriens, are not the result of natural disasters: still less a fatality.

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To cite this content :
Xavier Crombé, Jean-Hervé Jézéquel, Niger: A Not-So Natural Disaster, 1 octobre 2007, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/natural-disasters/niger-not-so-natural-disaster

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