Article
“We don’t do mental health”: a review of Médecins Sans Frontières’ first “psy” mission
This article was published on March 27th, 2023 in the journal Alternatives Humanitaires, in an edition focused on mental health.
history of humanitarianism
Article
Historicising Humanitarian Action. Synchronicity in Historical Research and Archiving Humanitarian Missions
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
Cahier
Humanitarian Medicine
Humanitarian medicine is intented for marginalized people, hit by a crisis or deprived of access to medical care. This book helps us understand how the specificity of humanitarian medicine stems from real-life situations, more than from the medical act in itself.
Post de blog
The Humanitarian Exhibition (1867-2016)
The Swiss editor Georg just published in open access a collection of articles edited by Sébastien Farré, Jean-François Fayet and Bertrand Taithe. This book is devoted to the emergence of humanitarian exhibitions either within wider events or in their own right, as an attempt to focus attention and make sense of the aid humanitarians provided. The book argues that this exhibition process was central to the narration of the humanitarian project. It did not simply represent humanitarian work, it helped shape its essential identity and sense of purpose. Entail the development of new ways of thinking about needs and emergencies.
Dossier
Racism and Humanitarian Action
This Crash dossier gathers a selection of Crash publications published over the last twenty years: all of them, in different manners, tackle the themes of racism and humanitarian action. They also evoke the way discussions about racism have been addressed at Médecins sans Frontières.
Media Relay
Looking back on Rony Brauman's "Activist of Humanitarianism" career.
Rony Brauman looks back on his humanitarian career in the France Culture program "A voix nue". This series of podcasts (recorded in French) of 5 episodes entitled "Activist of Humanitarianism" is an opportunity for the former president of MSF to retrace the key events that have marked his career and explains - while trying to move away from the Bourdieusian biographical illusion - how his political commitment has structured his vision and his practices of humanitarian action.
Post de blog
Humanitarianism in the Modern World. The moral economy of famine relief
“Humanitarianism in the Modern World. The moral economy of famine relief” published by Cambridge University Press, is an open access book written by a team of three people, whose aim is to provide a history of contemporary humanitarianism through the prism of famines. Norbert Götz, Georgina Brewis and Steffen Werther are treading on fertile ground, as the number of publications on the history of humanitarianism has multiplied in recent years. However, the contribution they present here is rich and original.
Article
From bureaucratic inertia to “policy fragility”
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.
Article
The Challenges of Globalization of International Relief and Development
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.