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publications

Humanitarian Actors and Practices

 

How do humanitarian aid workers think and act?

This work focuses on how humanitarian organisations operate, including their members, affiliations, messages, practices and cultures. Aid to refugee, displaced, deported, exiled and interned populations plays a central role in humanitarian action both now and in the past. What types of aid are provided to internees and displaced persons? What kinds of obstacles and dilemmas does it face? What sorts of practical, political and ethical questions are raised by the participation of humanitarian organisations in population displacement and internment policies?

Jean-Christophe Nougaret/MSF Jean-Christophe Nougaret/MSF Analysis

About the possibility of controlling an HIV epidemic hotspot

11/14/2021 Elba Rahmouni Pierre Mendiharat Léon Salumu Luzinga

This article was first released in the 18th volume of the Humanitarian Alternatives magazine. Designed to reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS in a Kenyan district, a Médecins Sans Frontières project successfully exceeded the “90-90-90” target set by UNAIDS. A look back on the results that the authors of this article - Pierre Mendiharat, Deputy director of operations at MSF France and Léon Salumu Luzinga, Program manager at MSF France, interviewed by Elba Rahmouni - believe are encouraging but by no means a guarantee that the epidemic will be over by 2030.

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rwanda Yves Ndjadi Book

Extreme violence. Investigating, Saving, Judging Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Syria

09/23/2021 Laëtitia Atlani-Duault Jean-Hervé Bradol Marc Le Pape

Over the last few years, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Syria have been places where situations of extreme violence took place. As witnesses and investigators of such, the authors of this book shed light on three key-moments that marked these tragic episodes:  the investigation, the intervention of emergency relief teams and the implementation of justice procedures leading to judgement.

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MSF et les Rohingya 1992 - 2014 Kaung Htet Speaking Out Case Studies

MSF and the Rohingya 1992 - 2014

11/19/2020 Laurence Binet

The case study "MSF and the Rohingya 1992 - 2014" brings to light two decades of MSF advocacy activities as part of its humanitarian assistance to the Rohingya people in Bangladesh and Myanmar and explores the questions and dilemmas the organisation was confronted with surrounding speaking out.
 

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Deux femmes responsables de matériel MSF en Iran MSF Analysis

MSF and kidnappings - the secrets and the dilemmas

09/18/2020 Fabrice Weissman

On the 31st January, a symposium was held at Sciences Po in support of Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal, researchers at Sciences Po's Center for International Research (CERI) who were arrested in Iran on June 5, 2019. Roland Marchal was released on 20th March 2020 in exchange for an Iranian engineer detained in France. On 6th May Fariba Adelkhah was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment for "propaganda against the political system of the Islamic Republic, and collusion to undermine national security". The researcher was offered conditional release on condition that she terminates her research, but she refused. 

The symposium brought together diplomats, journalists, humanitarians and researchers, with the aim of "nourishing reflection about prisoners and hostages, from a political, legal and ethical point of view". Fabrice Weissman presented the experience of Médecins Sans Frontières in the face of kidnappings.  
 

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Conférence sur les Pratiques de MSF à Ouganda Aurélie Baumel Interview

From bureaucratic inertia to “policy fragility”

09/08/2020 Jean-Hervé Bradol

Interview by Helai Hosseini. A first version was published on the website of the MSF France association on 31 July 2020.

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, voices have risen within MSF denouncing the racist and discriminatory nature of our organization. Equal opportunity, they say, is not offered to all our employees. Founded in France in the early 70s by a handful of doctors and journalists, the organization has grown and become international,  now employing over 46,000 people around the world, nearly 39,000 of whom are recruited locally. How has MSF’s policy towards its personnel evolved down the years? What is currently being done to fight inequalities? Here is Jean Hervé Bradol’s take on the major phases that have marked MSF’s transformation and the ways in which discussions are engaged today.

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Inside MSF's hospital in Qayyarah, Iraq Maya Abu Ata/MSF Analysis

The Challenges of Globalization of International Relief and Development

11/27/2019 Philippe Biberson François Jean

First Published December 1, 1999 - Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (NVSQ) - Volume 28 Issue 1.

This article begins with a look at the role played by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) since its inception in 1971, and then looks at the challenges facing MSF today. It focuses on the confusion of humanitarian and political roles and on the goals MSF has laid out for itself to address this confusion. Humanitarian aid has become the favored response of governments to political crises, and governments have increasingly turned to NGOs to carry out their policies. In turn, NGOs have become increasingly dependent on governments for financial support. These changes have politicized aid delivery and made it difficult for NGOs to maintain their independence. In addition, as the number of NGOs increases and their activities become more specialized, there are pressures toward institutionalization and bureaucratization. To respond to these challenges, MSF has identified several goals, including maintaining organizational independence and flexibility and avoiding bureaucratization.

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