Opinions

Rony Brauman discusses several aspects and issues related humanitarian action as well as the good reasons to wish Médecins sans frontières a happy 40th anniversary.

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.

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.

On June 17, 2016,MSF announced that it will no longer accept funds from the European Union and Member States, as a sign of protest against the closure of European borders to migrants and asylum seekers.

At the core of humanitarian action is the notion of humanity between humans, which leads to an inherent and inevitable struggle with real moral dilemmas. It means showing solidarity to one person and having to explain to another why you can't make resources available to them.

Jean-Hervé Bradol, director of studies at MSF-CRASH, discusses the humanitarian emergency left in the wake of Boko Haram's occupation of Borno State, Nigeria.

World Refugee Day will have served as a near universal reminder of the cynicism of European immigration and asylum policies: dissuasion that sacrifices thousands is the sole pillar of its policy for dealing with people fleeing war, persecution or untenable living conditions.

Michaël Neuman warns that misleading data are suggesting humanitarian aid work has become more dangerous, taking particular aim at the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) for helping perpetuate this myth. 

We welcome Abby Stoddard, Katherine Haver and Adele Harmer's response to our critical article on the production and the use of security data in the humanitarian sector and to our book in general. In a field that has been very much lacking debate, if not controversies, we're extremely glad to see a various range of readers engaging in the discussion. 

Michaël Neuman, co-editor of "Saving Lives and Staying Alive. Humanitarian Security in the Age of Risk Management" responds to Chris Lockyear and Andrew Cunningham's review of the book.

Andrew Cunningham, currently an independent humanitarian researcher and analyst and Chris Lockyear, the Director of Operations for ACF USA and a former Operations Manager for MSF Operational Center Amsterdam (MSF-OCA), have sent the following response to "Saving lives and Staying alive". Let the debate live!

This post was published as a reaction to the attack on the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that took place on October 3rd, 2015.