This book describes and analyses the work of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the Great Lakes Region between 1982 and 1997. It explores the everyday, operational and political dilemmas faced by MSF staff in the field and the debates that followed, as they asked themselves: ‘how should we react and what action should we take’ in the wake of mass violence (p. 4). In effect, the authors ask: (how) could MSF prevent itself being manipulated or becoming complicit in the everyday atrocities in the field?

To mark Editions MFSH’s publication of Les coulisses du monde des catastrophes « naturelles », on 14 November 2018, CERI (Centre de recherches internationales Sciences Po - CNRS) presented a discussion with its author, Sandrine Revet, CERI anthropologist and co-founder of the Association pour la Recherche sur les Catastrophes et les Risques en Anthropologie (ARCRA), and Rony Brauman. CRASH recommends this book to anyone with an interest in natural disasters and international relations.

Although much has been written about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, two recent volumes offer fresh perspectives and add considerable insights. Guichaoua’s From War to Genocide: Criminal Politics in Rwanda 1990–1994 takes the reader deep into the belly of the beast. The book describes and analyzes the real politics of the politics of genocide based on extraordinary detailed evidence with respect to the strategies and tactics of key military and political players. Bradol and Le Pape’s Humanitarian Aid, Genocide and Mass Killings: Médecins Sans Frontières, The Rwandan Experience, 1982–97 offers a unique understanding of the consequences of this murderous political game from the point of view of humanitarian aid workers in general and the NGO Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières – MSF) in particular.

Tomorrow’s war?  Bertrand Badie is pessimistic given the extremely high tension in the Middle East. Modern conflicts in the region are defined by their uncertain, composite and heterogeneous nature, as well as by their permanence, as there are no winners and no losers. The situation can be interpreted vertically as a “superposition of logics of conflict” and horizontally as an “aggregate of logics of coalition”. Bertrand Badie explained that a conflict situation is really dangerous when it combines several logics of conflict and several logics of alliance, making it virtually impossible to reach a compromise. Today, we can distinguish fives layers of conflict in the Middle East, a level of superposition never previously attained, according to this specialist in international relations.

Philippe Lançon works as a journalist for the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, and Libération newspaper. His book, Le lambeau was published in April. As the author and subject of his narrative, he relates his experience as a hospital patient after surviving the terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo during its editorial meeting on 7 January 2015. Although a “novice" when it comes to hospitals and operating theatres, he is a seasoned journalist. He is currently writing for Libération’s culture page, but previously reported on armed conflicts (Iraq and Somalia). So he’s no novice when it comes to casualties of war. In 2015, he became a reporter reporting on himself and on hospital surgery.

La guerre humanitaire sonne comme un oxymore. Dans Guerres humanitaires ? Mensonges et Intox, cette longue interview avec Régis Meyran, Rony Brauman réfléchit notamment à ce que peut et doit être aujourd’hui la guerre humanitaire, dans la continuité du « droit d’ingérence » tel qu’il fut théorisé par Mario Bettati et Bernard Kouchner avec la fin de la guerre froide, puis de « la responsabilité de protéger » telle qu’elle fut élaborée en 2000 par Kofi Annan, alors secrétaire général de l’ONU. 

Thanks to the migrant crisis, or the reception crisis as it would be more appropriate to call it, the issue of hospitality is back in the forefront. On 17 May, the Maison des Métallos organised a conference with two social science researchers - Michel Agier and Benjamin Boudou - and an NGO manager Cécile Poletti to discuss existing tensions between private hospitality and public hospitality. 

Voici une recension du livre de Jean-Hervé Bradol et Marc Le Pape, Génocide et crimes de masse. L'expérience rwandaise de MSF 1982-1997 (CNRS éditions, 2017), rédigée par Clara Egger dans la Revue française de science politique en avril 2018.

Kevin MacMahon's review of "Saving Lives and Staying Alive: Humanitarian Security in the Age of Risk Management" (Michaël Neuman and Fabrice Weissman, London: C. Hurst & Co, 2016) is published in the Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict (2016, pages 69-70).

Voici une recension du livre de Justine Brabant "Qu'on nous laisse combattre et la guerre finira. Avec les combattants du Kivu" (Editions La Découverte, 2016), rédigée par Marc Le Pape et publiée dans le numéro 228 de la revue Tiers Monde. Nous avions reçu Justine Brabant en juin 2016 à l'occasion d'une conférence du Crash dédiée à son livre. 

Christophe Chatelôt, journaliste au journal Le Monde, revient sur deux livres traitant du génocide des Tutsi, l'un de Jean-Hervé Bradol et Marc Le Pape du Crash, intitulé "Génocide et crimes de masse, l'expérience rwandaise de MSF", l'autre de Filip Reyntjens "Le génocide des Tutsi au Rwanda". 

Michaël Neuman's review of "Medical Humanitarianism: Ethnographies of practice" edited by Sharon Abramowitz and Catherine Panter-Brick (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015)