Opinions

Ngala, Nigeria: Emergency aid to victims of violence and displacement Sylvain Cherkaoui/COSMOS Opinion

Mortality emergency threshold: A case for revision

06/25/2018 Fabrice Weissman

The crude mortality rate (CMR) is one of the most widely used indicators at MSF and the humanitarian sector to evaluate the severity of a health crisis within a given population. It is widely recognized that a CMR equal to or greater than one death per 10,000 persons a day signifies an emergency situation requiring an immediate response. However, the usage of the standard emergency threshold as “1/10,000/day” is very questionable: it goes against the official recommendations endorsed by humanitarian organizations and ignores the worldwide decline in mortality rates over the last 30 years.

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Rwanda John Parkin Opinion

Debate: Judi Rever will not let anything stand in the way of her quest to document a second Rwandan genocide

06/06/2018

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.

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13 avril 1994. Réfugiés rwandais à la frontière entre le Burundi et le Rwanda Xavier Lassalle/MSF Opinion

Genocide from an historical, legal and political standpoint

04/05/2018 Jean-Hervé Bradol

The publication of the journalist Judi Rever’s book, In Praise of Blood, on the crimes committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s armed rebellion has rekindled discussion over the existence of a “double genocide”, one committed against the Tutsis under the orders of Rwanda’s interim government which took power in April 1994 following the assassination of President Habyarimana, and the other against the Hutus by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) which seized power in July 1994. There is little or no controversy about the reality of the genocide of the Tutsis in the world of Rwandan studies, but the claim that the Hutus were in turn victims of genocide sparks reactions as violent as they are confused. The cause of this confusion can be found in the different definitions of a term used in at least three fields: history, law and politics.

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Une femme et deux enfants traversent une route dans le camp de réfugiés de Domiz, au Kurdistan Irakien Yuri Kozyrev/Noor Opinion

When camps become cities

03/06/2017 Rony Brauman

There can scarcely be any more sensitive marker of geopolitical transformations than the refugee. Not the individual refugee as such, but the phenomenon of refugees, the representations that make them visible and the discourse around them. From this point of view, 2016 was a year of upheaval, the like of which Europe had not seen since the war in the former Yugoslavia.

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Des enfants mangent de la pâte nutritive Sven Torfinn Opinion

Famine in Somalia : warning against the warning!

09/19/2011 Rony Brauman

In the context of emergency appeals in the Horn of Africa, Rony Brauman recalls the contemporary definition of a famine. While recognising the progress made in major crisis response mechanisms, he questions the alarmist attitude of the UN.

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Opinion

Genocide, a word with many meanings

09/01/2004 Rony Brauman

Rony Brauman analyses the de-politicization and criminalisation process of the conflict in Darfur, resulting from an exclusively ethnic reading of this crisis and by the inappropriate use of the concept of "genocide".

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Le prélèvement sanguin d'un enfant Gijs Van Gassen Opinion

Doctor WHO?

09/03/2012 Rony Brauman

In this chronicle "Alternatives Internationales", Rony Brauman discusses the return of using community health workers as primary access points for healthcare, in the recommendations of the WHO and practices of some governments.

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Camp au Congo Lynsey Addario Opinion

Zones to Protect

03/01/2009 Rony Brauman

Humanitarian law was designed as a normative framework, not as an indictment. With this in mind, Rony Brauman tries to define what constitutes a human shield.

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Opinion

Darfur: the International Criminal Court is wrong

09/10/2010 Rony Brauman

Rony Brauman criticises the International Criminal Court's indictment of the Sudanese president for genocide. If the prosecutor's argument is followed, humanitarian organisations working in the displaced people's camps should be charged with complicity in genocide.

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