Partant de l'expérience de MSF, Rony Brauman tente d'analyser les pratiques et les discours des ONG placées devant des exigences contradictoires.

« Never again »: in the wake of the second World War, the terror caused by the Holocaust led the community of states to condemn genocide as a crime and to create a new international organization, the United Nations. And yet, half a century later, the international community did nothing to prevent the first undeniable genocide since that of the Jews: it let the massacre of the Rwandan Tutsis and merely sent humanitarian aid, even though it was nearly over.  

Catastrophes naturelles ou d'origine humaine : Rony Brauman expose les principes généraux de l'intervention humanitaire.

In 1993, Médecins Sans Frontières left Somalia and denounced the methods of UN troops who were violating the very humanitarian principles in whose name they intervened.

In the world today entire populations are at immediate risk of death from either famine, war, epidemics or displacement. The people of Southern Sudan, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Mozambique, Peru, Sri Lanka, Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as the Tuaregs, the Kurds and Burma's Moslems are those who face the most serious threats.

Rony Brauman s'oppose au discours tiers-mondiste qui attribue au Nord l'essentiel de la cause des malheurs du Sud.