Opinions

MSF Gaza 3 MSF Opinion

Who are the gravediggers of humanitarian law?

04/29/2026 Rony Brauman

This article was initially published the 29th of April 2026, in the book « Gaza, un génocide colonial », by the author Colette Braeckman. Rony Brauman develops a critical reflection on the war crimes committed in Palestine, on the limits of humanitarian law as well as the complicity of Europe in the methodical erasure of Palestinians. 

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Gaza Nour Alsaqqa/MSF Opinion

Who killed humanitarian law?

10/02/2025 Rony Brauman

This article by Rony Brauman was originally published in French on October 2, 2025, in the thematic dossier "Deux ans après : penser depyuis le 7 octobre" (“Two Years Later: Reflecting on October 7”), by the Palestine Media Agency (Agence Média Palestine). The author reflects on the events of October 7, 2023, as well as on the disproportionate violence of Israeli reprisals response.

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msf car Frederic Seguin/MSF Opinion

How do you explain the spectacular increase in serious security incidents recorded by MSF France in recent years?

05/16/2025 Fabrice Weissman

Since 2009, Médecins Sans Frontières has been recording events affecting the physical security of its staff deployed in the field in an online database called SINDY. Over the past two years, there has been a sharp increase in the number of severe security incidents recorded by MSF. Whereas in 2021, only 5 severe events were recorded, and one death reported, 37 severe events were recorded in 2024, resulting in the death of 10 people. How can this trend be explained?

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MSF MSF Opinion

Le dilemme de la coopération

04/10/2024 Michaël Neuman

Cet article de Michaël Neuman a été initialement publié dans le numéro 489 du 1 Hebdo "Que peut faire l'humanitaire ?" paru en mars 2024. L'auteur y décrit les stratégies de coopération utilisées par les ONG et particulièrement MSF pour intervenir dans des zones de conflits.

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Occupied Palestinian Territories: the mental aftermath of an endless conflict Alfredo Caliz/El País Semanal Opinion

Liste de lecture Gaza, octobre 2023 – janvier 2024

01/15/2024 Elba Rahmouni Michaël Neuman

Nous proposons ici la lecture d’articles publiés dans les médias entre le 14 octobre 2023 et le 10 janvier 2024 au sujet de la guerre Israël / Palestine par des intellectuels, des chercheurs et des journalistes, ainsi que deux témoignages d’écrivains palestiniens. Ces analyses permettent, nous semble-t-il, de mieux comprendre la situation tragique qui a cours en l’inscrivant dans une pluralité de dimensions : historique, démographique, politique et géopolitique.

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Cox's Bazar Michaël Neuman Opinion

In Cox’s Bazar

10/31/2023 Michaël Neuman

This article was published in the London Review of books website on September 8, 2023. The former evokes the dire conditions in which roughly 1 000 000 Rohingyas live in Cox’s Bazar, the largest refugee camp in the world. In this coastal district in south-east Bangladesh, the humanitarian deployment is impressive, but commitment by donors is waning. Between March and June, monthly food allocations fell from $12 to $8 per person. The difficulties of accessing care, the social control to which they are subjected and the lack of prospects are many reasons explaining the perils faced by the Rohingya population.

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Camps of internally displaced people in and around Goma MSF/Michael Neuman Opinion

Goma’s IDPs: a catastrophe in plain sight

06/16/2023 Michaël Neuman

Michaël Neuman describes his visit to Goma’s IDP camps, where he spent two weeks. He shares his dismay at the low level of assistance provided by the aid sector, especially when we recall that the Sphere standards, born precisely out of the failure of the humanitarian response in this same region of Goma in the mid-1990s, were conceived and championed by all of us.

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Plumpy’Nut is being handed out in Ndougoury village. Djerabe Ndegrgar Opinion

Resale of therapeutic food: who benefits from demonising mothers?

12/30/2022 Michel-Olivier Lacharité

This article was published on December 26th, 2022 on the Souk, the MSF associative website.
Accusing the mothers of malnourished children of being lawless fraudsters is a well-worn trope in malnutrition treatment programmes worldwide – and one that has resurfaced recently in Nigeria, stirred up by health workers and the media. These types of accusations obscure a series of tricky truths on the control of resources, the quality of malnutrition treatment programmes, and on the extreme precariousness in which many families live. We see all of this in northwest Nigeria’s Katsina state, where we are currently conducting the largest malnutrition programme in the history of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

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illustration micro-enquête sur les vocabulaires MSF (OCP) MSF/Antoine Kremer Opinion

Micro-enquête sur les vocabulaires MSF (OCP)

09/30/2022 Marc Le Pape

Dans ce blog, Marc Le Pape s'intéresse au vocabulaire couramment utilisé à MSF-OCP pour exprimer des points de vue ou des critiques, et aux connotations attachées à celui-ci. Il dresse ainsi une liste de termes positifs, péjoratifs et interprétatifs dont il analyse et illustre les usages.

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Les secours humanitaires médicaux en temps de guerre Peter Bräunig/MSF Opinion

Medical aid in the time of war

04/08/2022 Michaël Neuman Thierry Allafort-Duverger

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.

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