Publications

Definitions are often the first step toward granting or denying a person's rights. Now in thoroughly revised and updated edition, the Guide provides precise meaning and content for terms such as terrorism, refugee, genocide, and intervention concepts.

The much publicized figure of the child soldier in Africa is placed in context in this historiographical survey: the author ties it to the general subject of children in war – which has affected America and Europe at different times – and reveals the necessity of developing a history of child status in Africa.

Rony Brauman decribes how the qualification of the conflict in Darfur as genocide leads only to a dead end and warns against the abuse of this concept.

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".

Fabrice Weissman reminds us that while the clarity of the humanitarian emblem is no guarantee of absolute safety, it is nevertheless an essential prerequisite to it.

Using the example of Liberia, Fabrice Weissman examines the public statements of NGOs and their positions with regard to denunciation and/or calls for international intervention. 

For nearly two decades, François Jean practiced humanitarian action based on a deep, pragmatic desire to understand, constant self-questioning, and broad intellectual curiosity. It will be clear to anyone reading his collected works, From Ethiopia to Chechnya: Reflections on Humanitarian Action, 1988-1999, that his writings resonate with dilemmas we face today.

This article questions the independence of humanitarian action in Afghanistan, at a time when aid initiatives from military forces blurs differences, and when NGOs financed mostly by institutional funding risk becoming mere "implementing partners" of an aid policy driven by a political agenda.

During the planning stages of military intervention in Iraq, humanitarian organizations were offered U.S. government funds to join the Coalition and operate uneder the umbrella of Operation Iraqi Freedom.