Following a series of coups d'état in recent years in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, the Sahel region is undergoing a major redefinition. In a context of high insecurity, what are the possibilities for accessing populations? What are the conditions under which our teams are operating, and can we do more? This interview with Hamadoun Dicko, who is in charge of access issues in the Sahel for MSF, was originally published association's website of MSF-France.

In this paper, Jacob Burns analyzes MSF's activities in the provision of social support.  In the introduction, he suggests a rough outline of different ‘social’ problems that MSF has turned to between the 1980s and the 2010s. The second part of the paper is a report of a field visit conducted in October – November 2023 to Goma, DRC.

In this article, historian Eleanor Davey examines the concept of failure in the humanitarian sector through the experience of MSF and its reform process, known as La Mancha, which began in the early 2000s. The text highlights the challenges faced by MSF in recognising and resolving internal inequalities within the organisation.

Challenging the idea that humanitarian actors can act free from politics by virtue of their principles, this chapter argues that the politicization of humanitarian aid is in fact the primary condition for its deployment. Humanitarian actors can only act if they maintain a balance between their own interests and those of people in positions of power. This raises a crucial ethical question: At what point do humanitarian organisations consider that deals reached with political powers cross the blurred but very real line beyond which humanitarian assistance does more harm than good?

On September 14th, 2023, the Journal of Humanitarian Affairs, the academic journal in open access, hosted jointly by the Crash, The Humanitarian Affairs Team at Save the Children UK (HAT) and the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of Manchester (HCRI), has published a new issue entitled “Humanitarian numbers”. The latter focuses on the technical aspect of numbers, dealing with two main questions: What datafication means? How well does the quantitative represent reality?

This interview by Didier Billion and Marc Verzeroli was originally published in the Revue internationale et stratégique. To examine the concept of de-westernization, Rony Brauman describes the current state of international relations, marked by fluid alliances and new power relationships. He states and details his reservations about whether universal values truly exist and how the international criminal justice system functions.

The central question raised in this discussion relates to two profoundly intermeshed issues for humanitarian practitioners and organisations: the use of history for humanitarian organisations, and the need for them to preserve and maintain archives