perverse effects and limits of aid

Behind the question, "Is humanitarianism a commitment?", Rony Brauman warns against the use of humanitarianism in the public arena. Investing the political realm with the moral expectations of a better world, humanitarianism might unintentionally be helping to make "survival of the fittest" more palatable.

Rony Brauman focuses on the humanitarian environment and practices in war, in order to try to understand and analyze its political and ethical stakes. Starting with the creation of the Red Cross at the end of the XIXth century, he then focused on the contemporary postcolonial period, switching between various scales and reporting on contradictory points of view and issues.

Not having seen the genocidal drift of Hutu Power in 1994 coming, the international community grants Paul Kagame's RPF the impunity of victims. Yet such power also lends itself to criminal acts. The authors express their indignance that NGOs and international organisations - invoking the duty of remembrance - join in the endless evocation of the past that masks the political phenomena at the root of the current violence.

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

Interview with Jean-Hervé Bradol and Marc Le Pape. The book is published by Manchester University Press and will be out in January 2017.

Throughout the 1990s, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was forced to face the challenges posed by the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis and a succession of major outbreaks of political violence in Rwanda and its neighbouring countries.

Interview with Michaël Neuman and Fabrice Weissman, research directors at Crash. On Wednesday 28 September, MSF is invited to attend a UN Security Council briefing on resolution 2286, adopted in May 2016, which strongly condemns attacks against medical personnel and establishments in conflict situations.

A few days after the start of the operation 'Protective edge', Jonathan Whittall, Head of Humanitarian Analysis at MSF posted an opinion in which he questions MSF's role in Gaza. Michaël Neuman, Director of research at MSF Crash responds.

We often hear it said within MSF that the aid system is unable to provide effective relief, or that the aid system's ability to provide aid is in decline. Rony Brauman and Michaël Neuman aim at exploring MSF's relationship with the aid system, while showing how the ambitions of the aid system itself have evolved.

For a few months now, the world's response to the organized expulsion of the Muslim community out of the Central African Republic (CAR) can best be described as strikingly mute.

This case study is describing the difficulties and dilemmas that Médecins Sans Frontières faced in 1994 and 1995 when confronted with the abuses and crimes of the new regime that had taken over in Rwanda in July 1994.

The ‘Hunting and killings of the Rwandan refugee in Zaire/Congo' case study is describing the constraints and dilemmas faced by Médecins Sans Frontières' teams in 1996 and 1995 when trying to bring assistance to the Rwandan refugees in Eastern Zaire.