testimony

Read more about Humanitarian aid, genocide and mass killings. Médecins Sans Frontières, the Rwandan experience, 1982-97

Brendan Bannon

Dossier

Extreme violences: MSF experience in Rwanda

18/10/2017

Several texts by members and associates of the CRASH published between 1994 and 2014 are united in this collection. In 2017, a book joins these publications: Humanitarian aid, genocide and mass killings: Médecins Sans Frontières, the Rwandan experience (1982-1997)

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Sebastiao Salgado

Article

Une enquête sur les actions de la France au Rwanda et les polémiques qu’elles suscitent

15/12/2008

Marc Le Pape nous propose un compte rendu du livre d'Olivier Lanotte, La France au Rwanda (1990-1994) Entre abstention impossible et engagement ambivalent (Peter Lang, Bruxelles, 2007).

Read more about Une enquête sur les actions de la France au Rwanda et les polémiques qu’elles suscitent

Read more about France in Rwanda. Guilty neutrality

To cite this content :
Claudine Vidal, Jean-Hervé Bradol, France in Rwanda. Guilty neutrality, 11 February 2019, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/conferences-debates/france-rwanda-guilty-neutrality

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France in Rwanda. Guilty neutrality

Des humanitaires face au génocide : l’expérience rwandaise

Agnes — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 15:49:24 +0000

The Conversation

Agnes Mon, 01/15/2018 - 16:49

10/01/2018

media

Marc Le Pape & Jean-Hervé Bradol

Marc

Le Pape

Marc Le Pape has been a researcher at the CNRS and then at the EHESS. He is currently a member of the scientific committee of the CRASH. Formerly with the CNRS, Marc Le Pape is currently a researcher at the l'Ehess (Centre d'études africaines). He has carried out research in Algeria, Côte d'Ivoire and Central Africa. His recent studies have focused on the Great Lakes region in Africa. He has co-directed several publications: Côte d'Ivoire, l'année terrible 1999-2000 (2003), Crises extrêmes (2006) et dans le cadre de MSF : Une guerre contre les civils. Réflexions sur les pratiques humanitaires au Congo-Brazzaville, 1998-2000 (2001) and Génocide et crimes de masse. L'expérience rwandaise de MSF 1982-1997 (2016).

By the same author

Jean-Hervé

Bradol

By the same author

How much is known about the daily experiences of humanitarian workers in extreme situations such as major conflict or disaster? In their new book, Humanitarian Aid, Genocide and Mass Killings: Médecins sans frontières, the Rwandan experience, 1982-97, Marc Le Pape and Jean-Hervé Bradol set out to answer some of these questions. The book is also informed by Bradol’s experience of working for Médecins Sans Frontières in Rwanda during the genocide. Interview with the authors, done and published by The Conversation.

Read the interview

You investigated humanitarian operations in the Great Lakes region between 1990 and 1997. This was a period of extreme violence against Rwandophone populations. You specifically looked at the records of Doctors Without Borders in Paris. What did you hope to learn?

Marc Le Pape: The actual day-to-day work of humanitarian teams in situations of extreme violence is generally little known and understood. That’s why our investigations focussed on messages from the field, while most studies are far more concerned about getting the macro-political or macro-humanitarian picture (...)"

Living through the horrors of genocide: humanitarian workers in Rwanda

Violences extrêmes: l'expérience rwandaise de MSF

Agnes — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 14:24:27 +0000

Date de publication

18/10/2017

Agnes Mon, 10/16/2017 - 18:31

humanitarianism and politics

Jean-Hervé Bradol & Marc Le Pape

Jean-Hervé

Bradol

By the same author

Marc

Le Pape

By the same author

Rwandan refugees at the border between Burundi and Rwanda, April 1994
Copyright: Xavier Lassalle

Some articles of this dossier are only available in French.

Les articles du dossier

Xavier Lassalle/MSF

Article

Rwanda : l’histoire longue du génocide

06/04/2019

Un ouvrage propose une synthèse sur le génocide des Tutsis en 1994, depuis le début de la guerre jusqu’à la mise en place de la politique mémorielle. Au-delà, il retrace l’histoire du Rwanda sur le temps long du XXe siècle, en insistant sur les constructions coloniales et ethniques.

Read more about Rwanda : l’histoire longue du génocide

Roger Job

Article

From War To Genocide: Criminal Politics in Rwanda 1990–1994; Humanitarian Aid, Genocide and Mass Killings: Médecins Sans Frontiéres, The Rwandan Experience, 1982–97

07/10/2018

Bert Ingelaere

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.

Read more about From War To Genocide: Criminal Politics in Rwanda 1990–1994; Humanitarian Aid, Genocide and Mass Killings: Médecins Sans Frontiéres, The Rwandan Experience, 1982–97

John Parkin

Article

Debate: Judi Rever will not let anything stand in the way of her quest to document a second Rwandan genocide

06/06/2018

Published in March 2018, Judi Rever’s investigative work, In Praise of Blood, quickly garnered international attention. It is an indictment of both the Rwandan patriotic front (RPF) and its leader, current Rwandan president Paul Kagame, and foreign governments and international institutions – the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), in particular – that allowed crimes committed against Hutu civilians to go unpunished.Judi Rever’s book is more than a work of investigation. It reads like a prosecutor’s closing argument: the massacres are described in such a way as to classify them as genocide. And it is precisely this combination of investigation and the pursuit of evidence that would stand up in a court of law that is problematic.

Read more about Debate: Judi Rever will not let anything stand in the way of her quest to document a second Rwandan genocide

France 24

Media Relay

Rwanda: Bras de fer entre HRW et le gouvernement

31/10/2017

Rony Brauman est l'invité de France 24 dans le cadre d'un reportage sur des exactions extrajudiciaires commises par les forces de l'ordre et dénoncées dans un rapport de l'ONG Human Rights Watch, publié en juillet 2017.

Read more about Rwanda: Bras de fer entre HRW et le gouvernement

MSF-Crash

Book

Humanitarian aid, genocide and mass killings. Médecins Sans Frontières, the Rwandan experience, 1982-97

04/11/2016

Read more about Humanitarian aid, genocide and mass killings. Médecins Sans Frontières, the Rwandan experience, 1982-97

Remco Bohle

Speaking out case study

The Hunting and Killing of Rwandan Refugees in Zaire-Congo: 1996-1997

03/04/2014

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.

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Remco Bohle

Speaking out case study

Rwandan Refugee Camps in Zaire and Tanzania 1994-1995

03/04/2014

This case study is describing the constraints and dilemmas met by MSF when confronted with camps under the tight control of "refugee leaders" responsible for the genocide of the Rwandan Tutsis from April to June 1994.

Read more about Rwandan Refugee Camps in Zaire and Tanzania 1994-1995

Corinne Dufka

Speaking out case study

The violence of the new Rwandan regime 1994-1995

03/04/2014

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.

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Roger Job

Speaking out case study

Genocide of Rwandan Tutsi 1994

03/04/2014

This case study is describing the difficulties and dilemmas met by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) during the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis in April, May and June 1994.

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Klaas Fopma

Op-Ed

Rwanda: les idiots utiles de Kagame

28/01/2012

Cette tribune a été publiée dans le journal Marianne, le 28 janvier 2012. Les découvertes du juge Trevisic ont relancé la polémique sur le Rwanda, une partie de la presse exonérant Kagame de ses responsabilités passées et présentes. Rony Brauman, Jean-Hervé Bradol et Claudine Vidal tentent de mettre en lumière les véritables enjeux du génocide rwandais.

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Xavier Lassalle

Post de blog

Rwanda: un rapport balistique qui fait péter les plombs

16/01/2012

L'expertise balistique au sujet de l'attentat commis en 1994 contre l'avion qui ramenait à Kigali les présidents du Rwanda et du Burundi a provoqué de nombreux commentaires dans la presse, actant comme Le Monde d'une «vérité à la portée historique et diplomatique».

Read more about Rwanda: un rapport balistique qui fait péter les plombs

Sebastiao Salgado

Article

Une enquête sur les actions de la France au Rwanda et les polémiques qu’elles suscitent

15/12/2008

Marc Le Pape nous propose un compte rendu du livre d'Olivier Lanotte, La France au Rwanda (1990-1994) Entre abstention impossible et engagement ambivalent (Peter Lang, Bruxelles, 2007).

Read more about Une enquête sur les actions de la France au Rwanda et les polémiques qu’elles suscitent

Aleksandr Glyadyelov

Article

Rwanda, vérité et mensonge

01/03/2006

Rony Brauman confronte deux visions du drame Rwandais à travers les ouvrages respectifs de leurs auteurs, Pierre Péan et Abdul Ruzibiza.

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Wim Van Cappellen

Op-Ed

L'Etat français et le peuple rwandais

03/11/2004

La France a une responsabilité considérable dans ce qui est arrivé au Rwanda, et la dénégation constante de cette responsabilité rejaillit sur tout le corps politique français. Cette tribune a été publiée dans le journal La Croix, le 3 novembre 2004.

Read more about L'Etat français et le peuple rwandais

Xavier Lassalle

Article

Violence de la mémoire

01/03/2004

Dix ans après le génocide rwandais, Rony Brauman évoque la question de la « mémoire » du génocide et de sa possible instrumentalisation.

Read more about Violence de la mémoire

Ian Berry

Article

Terror and Impunity in Rwanda

01/08/2000

Stephen Smith

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.

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Xavier Lassalle

Op-Ed

Le Rwanda à huis clos

15/05/1998

Cette tribune a été publiée dans le journal Libération, le 15 mai 1998. La décision de créer une mission parlementaire d'information sur le Rwanda a été une heureuse surprise. Mais entendre à huis clos les responsables administratifs et militaires de l'engagement français au Rwanda est une mauvaise décision.

Read more about Le Rwanda à huis clos

Ian Berry

Article

Rwanda : l’esprit humanitaire contre le devoir d’humanité

30/06/1994

history of humanitarianism

Tout en pointant les responsabilités de la France dans son soutien au régime à l'origine du génocide tutsi au Rwanda, Rony Brauman critique les humanitaires qui déplorent l'intervention armée de la France dans le cadre de l'Opération Turquoise.

Read more about Rwanda : l’esprit humanitaire contre le devoir d’humanité

Extreme violences: MSF experience in Rwanda

Guerre et humanitaire

Jason-04 — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Date de publication

25/07/2016

Jason-04 Sun, 04/16/2017 - 19:40

ICRC

IHL

humanitarian principles

Darfur

international criminal court

security of humanitarian personnel

former Yugoslavia

Rony Brauman

Rony

Brauman

Medical doctor, specialized in tropical medicine and epidemiology. Involved in humanitarian action since 1977, he has been on numerous missions, mainly in contexts of armed conflicts and IDP situations. President of Médecins sans Frontières from 1982 to1994, he also teaches at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) and is a regular contributor to Alternatives Economiques. He has published several books and articles, including "Guerre humanitaires ? Mensonges et Intox" (Textuel, 2018), "La Médecine Humanitaire" (PUF, 2010), "Penser dans l'urgence" (Editions du Seuil, 2006) and "Utopies Sanitaires" (Editions Le Pommier, 2000).

By the same author

Aid delivered on humanitarian grounds is defined as selfless assistance provided to people in serious difficulty, with our common humanity our only bond. In principle, it is distinguished from other forms of aid that are motivated by political support or ethnic solidarity. Although this definition is universally accepted, it does not take into account the various meanings that have held sway during its short history nor the confusion and contradictions in current uses of the term. In practice, humanitarian aid is described as assistance provided to civilian populations suffering from a severe crisis, with the implicit qualification that the players involved are considered legitimate by general opinion – and only under this condition. This latter point can be evaluated by determining the situations in which the word is – or is not – used. Few observers, for example, have described as “humanitarian” the aid provided to the victims of natural disasters in Pakistan (2005 earthquake and 2010 floods) by Taliban organisations or by Hezbollah to Lebanon following the 2006 war. The term is widely used, however, to characterise aid provided by the Western occupation forces in Afghanistan. The variations in meaning over time can be assessed by noting that it would have been and would still be incongruous to apply this term to the Marshall Plan (1947) or the Berlin airlift during the Soviet blockade (1948-1949), even though the same thing was done during the siege of Sarajevo (1992-1995). During the Vietnam war, no one worried about a “humanitarian crisis” or employed the term “humanitarian” to describe the assistance given to the civilian population by the American military. The civilian aid that “anti-imperialist” organisations sent to the country, such as medicine, bicycles and generators, came under the rubric of political solidarity and it would have seemed out of place and even offensive to call it humanitarian. The Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s also provided aid to civilians, but only those supporting the invasion deemed it humanitarian. Numerous examples illustrate that while the term “humanitarian” is sometimes fluctuating and vague and at other times normative and bold, it is always caught up in power relationships that are only magnified by war.

In an attempt to grasp and analyse the political and ethical issues related to wartime humanitarian aid, it is essential to keep in mind the varying ways the term is used by experts and the public. As inconsistent as they may sometimes be, these various definitions nevertheless share a common rationale as long they are primarily dependent on general political views toward the supposedly “relevant” players and the various situations, as above-mentioned. Beginning with the creation of the Red Cross, we will therefore examine both the environment and practices of wartime humanitarian aid, without claiming to write its history. We will review its inception in the late 19th century then directly address the contemporary post-colonial period, examining the issue at various scales of analysis and presenting contrasting perspectives and objectives.

Civilising war

Evacuating soldiers injured on the battlefield, removing them from hostilities as soon as they are away from the fighting and protecting workers providing them with aid summarises the contents of the first diplomatic humanitarian treaty signed in Geneva on 22 August 1864 by 12 States. Until that point in the 19th century, the term “humanitarian” referred to a kindly disposition and confidence in humanity’s ability to improve. Appearing for the first time in France in 1835 in the writings of Alphonse de Lamartine, a poet and member of Parliament, the word meant “for the good of humanity”. The fact that it was used ironically and even mockingly is evidenced by the 1884 edition of the French Academy dictionary, which defines it as follows: “designates certain opinions and doctrines claiming the good of humanity as their goal”. With the signing of the Geneva Convention and the creation of the Red Cross, humanitarianism was no longer the expression of optimistic anthropology or pacifist universalism, but also and primarily a set of norms and an apparatus for providing assistance. Relief societies had previously been created, and efforts widely publicised by the press had been carried out by philanthropists for the sick and wounded on various battlefields, but they had always been private initiatives. Here we should note the role of information during an era of daily news. At a time of rotary presses and telegraphs, far more people were exposed to the suffering of war; descriptions of carnage on distant battlefields could be read the following day in European homes. For example, the horrifying spectacle of thousands of British soldiers dying of dysentery had been covered in the daily newspaper, The Times, during the Crimean War (1853-1856), giving rise to a protest movement to which the authorities responded by improving the inadequate medical care system. Florence Nightingale, already well known in Great Britain for her commitment to social justice, reform of the Poor Laws and improvements to public health, played a key role with the support of the British authorities.

Against this backdrop, an assembly of 16 States met in August 1864 on the banks of Lake Leman, adopted a convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field". The Geneva Convention affirmed the permanent commitment of the signatories, soon joined by most of the other major powers, to provide care to sick and wounded soldiers “regardless of their nationality”. Recognisable by its emblem, a red Maltese cross on a white background adopted in tribute to the Swiss flag, the medical services were to henceforth be respected, protected by law and not left to the discretion of military leaders. The Red Cross can trace its true origins to this promise of inviolability for its medical facilities. The political order that demanded sacrifice and killing was accepted as an unstoppable reality, as evidenced by the existence of armed violence from time immemorial. Without any possibility of eliminating war, attempting to civilise it was the only option. “Inter Arma Caritas” (Amidst Arms, Charity): it was not war that was called into question, but the excessive suffering it engendered, leading to the first international law to be codified. An ardent Protestant and admirer of Napoleon III, Swiss philanthropist Henry Dunant founded the Red Cross, whose purpose he described in “Un Souvenir de Solférino” (A Memory of Solferino, 1859). He wrote the book after seeing dying soldiers abandoned on the Solférino battlefield (1859), where he had travelled in an attempt to meet with the French emperor. In this book, which became a best-seller in Europe, he proposed “[…]during a period of peace and calm, [of] forming relief Societies whose object would be to have the wounded cared for in time of war by enthusiastic devoted volunteers fully qualified for the task”. These societies, as well as evacuated soldiers, he wrote, would be protected under an “international principle sanctioned by a convention inviolate in character” and recognised by States. Together with the pacifist Frédéric Passy, Dunant received the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.

Three subsequent conventions held in Geneva in 1906, 1929 and 1949 dealt with the “conduct of hostilities”, which were subject to growing obligations concerning prisoners and civilian populations, including those in occupied territories. Additional protocols in 1977 [Bouchet-Saulnier F., 2013] addressed combatants and casualties of internal armed conflicts. The scope of humanitarian law gradually expanded, limiting the right to destroy lives and property and requiring certain types of material assistance. The obvious tension between the permission to kill and the incitation by modern states to keep people alive immediately emerged as an insurmountable contradiction to pacifist figures of the 19th century, such as Nightingale and the future Nobel Peace Prize winner Alfred Fried, who saw nothing but an attempt to make war a palatable endeavour. While this conflict is no longer a major issue, it retains a certain relevance under a new form – the rhetoric about “humanitarian wars”. The line between those who should be protected and sacrificed changes over time; the “limits of the intolerable” [Fassin D., Rechtman R., 2004] that every society draws vary according to time and place. For example, Czar Alexander II prohibited certain munitions, such as explosive bullets. Yet while he banned them during wars between “civilised nations”, namely the signatory States, he authorized them for conflicts against “savages”, i.e. colonised populations. The Saint Petersburg Declaration (1868), which prohibited certain projectiles, confirmed the customary rule banning the use of arms causing “unnecessary suffering”. Incorporated into the Hague Regulations of 1899 and 1907, the Declaration is referred to in the preamble of subsequent conventions signed in The Hague on the “laws and customs of war”. Geneva law and Hague law are the two branches of international humanitarian law, adopted as a universal standard by States, most of whom unleashed violence against civilians during the wars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This collaboration exemplifies a projection of power, as evidenced by the issuance of prohibitions – a position of dominance that the world’s “civilised nations” claim only for themselves.

Political benefits

The normative framework of the Geneva conventions, guaranteed and promoted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the States themselves as signatories, justifies dating wartime humanitarian aid to the creation of the ICRC and the adoption of the convention in 1864. The power relationships and balances of power in which the Committee operated, however, explains why the care provided to the wounded under the humanitarian emblem during later wars did not respect the neutrality principle to which its founders ardently aspired. In practice, the Red Cross national societies created by the convention’s signatory States exclusively served their own countries' soldiers and took part in war propaganda beginning in 1870 [Hutchinson J., 1996]. A society belonging to a country not involved in a conflict was nevertheless permitted to care for victims of any nationality. The British Red Cross, for example, provided aid during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, reserving medical care for its own soldiers during conflicts involving Great Britain. [Gill R., 2013]. During the Boer war (1899-1902), private organisations independent of the Red Cross tried to provide aid to civilian casualties, in this case populations considered as enemies. These included the Society of Friends, a Quaker organisation, and the Boer War Committee, set up by pacifist feminists. Between medical care for sick and wounded soldiers, visits and assistance to military and civilian prisoners, and aid to civilian populations caught up in the war, the presence of civilian relief workers on and near battlefields gradually became commonplace. Pacifists’ objection to wartime humanitarianism was eventually overcome by the reality of saved lives, which an anti-war stance of non-intervention would have condemned to death. Another objection was raised by military personnel during negotiations on the conduct of hostilities. According to certain strategists, imposing restrictions would lead to a longer war and increased suffering; they believed that the intensive, unrestrained use of violence was the only way to achieve a rapid victory that would ultimately save more lives. Aid to displaced or occupied populations, an important aspect of wartime humanitarian relief, has continually revived this debate, which re-emerged in the 1990s with talk about the “war economy”. This term refers to belligerents’ diversion of aid resources and their use for war purposes, thus leading to the prolongation of conflicts to the detriment of the victims for whom the aid was intended [Jean F., Rufin J.-C., 1996]. It should be noted that the objection raised by military strategists is similar to that raised by pacifists concerning combatants, i.e. both take a more theoretical than empirical view of the world. The strategists see the war as a purely military balance of power while the pacifists privilege a concept of non-violent human and social relations.

Relief provided to populations suffering from food scarcity and a series of ensuing epidemics in Belgium and northern France during World War I provides a general idea of the practical challenges and difficulties involved in addressing this issue. According to the British, who had placed Belgium under blockade, food aid was protecting the Germans from the riots that would likely have broken out otherwise, thus facilitating the occupation by alleviating its cruelty [Becker A., 1998]. Churchill, in particular, supported this position.

For the Germans, who requisitioned most of the country’s food supplies to feed their troops, the aid legitimised the blockade and the presence of foreigners in the occupied zone. For the most part, provisions were collected and distributed by the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), an American organisation headed by the industrialist Herbert Hoover. The food, property of the United States, which was then neutral, was distributed by a Belgian committee under the supervision of CRB representatives. The operation, which lasted nearly three years, may have freed the occupiers from this obligation, but there is no evidence they would have provided aid themselves had relief not been forthcoming. In any case, the aid proved useful to the various belligerents, with each party noting the benefit its enemy would derive as the reason for opposing it. Paradoxically, this was undoubtedly the reason that it was allowed at all: its very existence was constantly conditioned on using it for political ends (“instrumentalisation”) during wartime before it came under attack for the same reason. In other words, it is reasonable to assume that because the political cost of rejecting aid was higher than the cost of accepting it, the warring parties authorised the provision of essential, sometimes vital, aid to hundreds of thousands of civilians in occupied territories. Both then and now, in addition to the theoretical rights and obligations of international humanitarian law, it is generally these changing and contradictory set of interests that enable relief organisations to operate in conflict zones.

From Biafra to Indochina

The first generation of wartime humanitarian action emerged in imperial Europe during the era of telegraphs and railroads. The second generation arose in the middle of the Cold War during the period of decolonisation, air transport and television. There is general agreement that this second era originated with the Biafran war (1967-1970), which was provoked by the secession of Nigeria’s eastern province. A relief operation comprising various Red Cross societies, mainly French and Scandinavian, was set up under the direction of the ICRC in territory controlled by secessionist forces and surrounded by government soldiers. Aid organisations affiliated with the Protestant and Catholic churches also participated in the operation. An airlift out of Sao Tome Island, a Portuguese colony at the time, supplied the international teams with drugs and food and the combatants with weapons and munitions. The magnitude of aid provided to the Biafrans as well as the wide range of relief organisations, including the Red Cross, churches and NGOs, would suffice to make this operation the inaugural event of a new era of humanitarian aid. But an additional factor made this relief effort particularly significant: the condemnation of genocide as a key element in communications about the suffering in Biafra. There was a striking contrast in the messages used to mobilize public opinion regarding the war in Vietnam (1965-1975), characterised as a “heroic” combat against American imperialism, and the war in Biafra, described as a “massacre of innocent people”. 3,000 children were reportedly dying every day. Horrifying images of emaciated children epitomized the agony under western cameras of the civilians trapped in the Biafran enclave. African governments rejected Biafran independence, which would have required drawing a new border, because they viewed the post-colonial borders as inviolable. The suffering of innocent victims was highlighted to justify continuing the war, with children, symbols of the ongoing extermination, held up as the primary casualties. Financed by the French special services, this psychological warfare was developed by a political communications firm and relayed by churches, numerous media outlets and certain humanitarian organisations [Hentsch T., 1973]. The general amnesty declared by the Nigerian authorities upon the surrender of the separatist forces, in addition to the protection previously granted to the millions of Biafrans living outside the war zone, proved the genocide accusation to be unfounded. Despite its disturbing connections with psychological warfare, otherwise known as propaganda, humanitarian testimony would eventually become a key aspect of humanitarian action. The food and medical aid provided for more than two years under often dangerous conditions saved the lives of many Biafran civilians and fighters. But did it help prolong the conflict? This cannot be ruled out but, to be precise, it is necessary to put such criticism in perspective by comparing this life-saving relief to other forms of outside support. The diplomatic and military assistance that France provided in the autumn of 1968 while negotiations were getting underway played a major role in encouraging the secession movement’s most hard-line positions, which were opposed to any form of compromise. The resistance movement’s uncompromising stance must primarily be attributed to then French president General de Gaulle’s political support for the separatists. De Gaulle became involved in the conflict under pressure from Nigeria’s French-speaking neighbours, which were seeking to weaken the region’s English-speaking giant, against the backdrop of the rivalry between France and Great Britain in Africa, with London supporting the Nigerian government.

The practice of sending humanitarian teams into rebel zones without any government authorization predates the Biafran war, but it became established as a model during this conflict due to its scope and visibility. Yet it would remain unrivalled for a number of years afterward although it might have seemed likely for the conflicts in Mozambique, Angola, Vietnam, Bolivia and Columbia, to mention just a few of the most intense clashes of the 1970s. Only the ICRC and occasionally religious NGOs operated in rebel areas. Several explanations are possible for this Biafran exception. The war’s religious aspect was a key element in European involvement: the future Biafra defined itself as a Christian country struggling against Muslim forces. The other conflicts were viewed in ideological terms, claiming objectives of anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist solidarity. On top of these political considerations, it should be added that a solidarity-based involvement in the Third World mainly borrowed from the “development” lexicon. Beginning in the second half of the 1970s, with the influx of Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees and the increasing number of conflict areas in the Third World, humanitarian aid enjoyed a growing reputation and public support, leading to rapid development that continues to this day.

War relief

From the standpoint of organising relief, armed conflicts can be characterized by three main types of effects: large population movements within a country and its neighbours; the disorganization of the health care system; and the weakening or collapse of the economy. Humanitarian organisations strive to meet the critical needs caused by these situations. Curative and preventive medical care, food aid, water supplies and provision of shelter are the essential relief services provided by the Red Cross, UN agencies and NGOs, along with local teams, who play a vital role that is often unknown.

Assistance to a country’s internally displaced persons and to refugees, i.e. those seeking asylum in a neighbouring country, make up a substantial portion of relief aid. Central to the growth of contemporary humanitarian aid, this issue mainly focused on Europe after the two world wars, when the major concern was caring for and resettling refugees and stateless populations in Europe. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which was established in 1951, has been tasked since the 1970s with granting refugees legal status and protection and providing material assistance. ****While the UNHCR was originally established to assist opponants fleeing Eastern European Communist regimes, its mandate was later expanded by international conventions to help refugees as a whole. During the 1970s, after a period of post-colonial conflicts, war and political violence led to more uprooting in Southern countries, transferring durably the refugee issue to what was still called the Third World.

The end of the Indochina wars in 1975 was marked by the exodus of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing repression in Vietnam and Cambodia, followed by the Khmer-Vietnamese war (1979). The conflicts in the Horn of Africa during the same period led to the creation of huge refugee camps in Sudan and Somalia. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the resumption of conflicts in southern Africa (Mozambique, Angola) and Central America (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala) had the same effect. All these wars took place in the polarised context of East-West rivalry, which endowed the refugees with political value. With most of them fleeing violence by pro- Soviet dictatorships or revolutionary wars, they benefited from the concern of the West, which viewed them as evidence of the Communist regimes’ failures. Material assistance, provided mainly by the West, was an example of “soft power” by which the liberal camp could demonstrate its superiority. Under these circumstances, the right to asylum was no longer understood as a form of legal status entitling the refugee to permanent resettlement in a host country but as a right to a temporary haven and collective material support in a refugee camp.

Refugees

Refugee camps were the focal point of humanitarian action during this period. It was here that NGOs and UN aid agencies developed their new skills and practices, separate from those related to development aid, such as site planning, logistics, specific organisational and coordination methods, and relations with the political authorities. The decision about where to locate a camp must take into account hygiene issues, transport facilities, access to water and of course the space available based on the size of the refugee population. The host country is responsible for taking this decision, but it does so in coordination with the UNHCR. While it is essential to weigh the technical and practical aspects of this decision, political issues also play a role due to continuing ties between refugees and rebel movements. Opportunities granted to the rebels by host country authorities are often sources of tension with the home country government. For that reason, the distance separating border camps from war zones is a sensitive political topic for the host country, as clearly evidenced by, among many other examples, the controversy over Salvadoran camps in Honduras during the 1980s. The Honduran authorities wanted to move the refugees away from the border to demonstrate that they did not support the Salvadoran guerrillas. This relocation effort gave rise to a major international campaign against an initiative then described as “deportation” by activist organisations. The relocation never took place. The Honduran government presumably wanted to avoid appearing hostile to the peasants fleeing military repression. It is also likely that the access provided to Salvadoran guerrillas in the camps they controlled in Honduras, which were located right along the border, helped keep the Salvadoran army on its own territory. The ardent nationalism and strong territorial tensions characterizing relations between the two governments, both of which were pro-American and anti- Communist, made the camps a means by which the Honduran military could continue its low- intensity conflict with its Salvadoran counterparts. While refugee camps are sites intended for civilian aid and protection, they cannot avoid the power relationships at work in the respective societies or the balance of power between the States concerned. During these same years, the Cambodian, Afghan, Eritrean, Nicaraguan and Mozambican refugee camps, not to mention the most prominent conflicts of the 1980s, were the locus of similar political scenarios. Yet United Nations financial and legal assistance (funding for accomodation facilities, compensation for the host country’s social services, granting of refugee status, food aid) and NGO material aid (health care, water, nutrition, sanitation, sometimes schooling) still found its way to the refugees, providing them with extensive services.

For humanitarian workers, awareness of political tensions and dynamics, often invisible to outside players, is not a simple academic exercise but potentially a major ethical challenge, as evidenced by the exodus following the war and genocide in Rwanda (April-July 1994) [Terry F., 2002]. More than one million Rwandans crossed the border into Zaire in June 1994 while nearly 500,000 made their way to Tanzania. It quickly became clear that these camps were sheltering thousands of combatants and that the Rwandan “interim government”, known to be the genocide’s political leaders, was rapidly reorganizing and using UN and NGO financial and material resources for their own ends. The management of food stocks, tents and various goods provided by the aid system, like the hiring of refugees to work for humanitarian groups, are significant levers of power and funding for those who control them. As a result, some NGOs began questioning their very presence in the camps during the first few weeks, when it appeared likely that plans were underway for the recapture of Rwanda and the final massacre of Rwandan Tutsis, with the organisations’ unwitting help. The extremely urgent situation, caused by a devastating cholera epidemic that killed more than 30,000 refugees in just a few weeks, relegated these serious issues to the background, only to return to the foreground two months later once the epidemic had ended. These NGOs, who were in a minority, decided to end their participation once the life-threatening emergency was over, as they had no power to stop the aid diversions and their criminal purposes. Others, however, felt that it was not their place to express an opinion on the political nature of camp management and that their only duty was to provide assistance to the camps’ population. It is difficult to come down definitively on one side or the other of these two notions of humanitarian responsibility, both of them based on an ethics of solidarity. It should be noted that in addition to assessing the two sides’ judgements in this specific case, humanitarian aid’s general principles of neutrality and impartiality do not enable us to decide between these conflicting positions, each of which can make legitimate arguments on its behalf. History, however, ended up backing those who decided to leave because the camps first became a base for attacking Rwanda then a target for reprisals and a counter-offensive by the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA). The war in Zaire, which has since become the Democratic Republic of Congo (1997), has experienced little respite since that time. From the beginning, it has been marked by large-scale massacres committed by the RPA and armed groups under its control. The eastern part of the country, particularly the two Kivu provinces, remains the site of an international peacemaking and peacekeeping operation employing 26,000 people, of whom 22,000 are soldiers.

Displaced persons

The term “IInternally Displaced Persons”, or “IDPs” in aid jargon, refers to people forced to flee their homes due to war but who have not crossed an international border. During the 1990s, the IDP phenomenon became a humanitarian aid issue for three major reasons that a look back will clarify. Firstly, during this period, a number of Cold War-related conflicts found a political settlement, leading to the repatriation of refugees in Mozambique, Angola, El Salvador and Cambodia, among other countries, in the early part of the decade. Secondly, certain countries previously closed to international relief organisations opened their doors to the massive deployment of aid during crisis situations. And lastly, the end of Security Council paralysis following the dismantling of the Soviet Empire, resulted in the deployment of peacekeeping contingents in countries facing serious unrest. While the camps did not disappear, their locations changed due to the United Nations’ proactive containment policy, as evidenced by the conflicts in Sudan (South Sudan, then Darfur), Bosnia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

There is little difference between the assistance provided to IDPs and refugees in the camps, both of whom are characterized by uprooting and mass gatherings in relatively small areas. Medical care, shelter, food, drinking water and sanitation are the essential services provided. Similar dilemmas can arise, as in Bosnia (1991-1995), when NGO officials and UN agencies accused European leaders of exploiting humanitarian aid to hide their impotence at ending the war, which was instigated by Serb nationalists. They also publicly questioned their role, concerned about being “complicit in ethnic cleansing”. The population displacements were not the unintentional effect but rather the key objective of this war, and Europe was content with providing “minimum service”, which was condemned as a “humanitarian alibi”. In fact, France advocated saving the Yugoslav Federation while Germany had decided to immediately recognize Croatia, precipitating the country’s dismantlement. While Europe failed to prevent the escalation of violence and forced displacements, it is clear in hindsight that Europe did manage to contain the conflict within its borders.

Dunantists and Wilsonians.

The 1990s were marked by increased military deployments by the UN – a “wilsonisme botté” (“hard Wilsonianism”), an expression coined by French political scientist Pierre Hassner, referring to the growing trend of multilateral interventionism under American leadership. From 1990-1995, some 50,000 UN peacekeepers were deployed worldwide, equivalent to the total number during the UN’s entire 45 years in existence. The doctrine of this new interventionism, with its goal of stabilising conflict zones, was stated in the “Agenda for Peace, Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peacekeeping”, a document presented in 1992 by UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The plan to create an armed force that could be mobilised at any time to serve the UN never got off the ground, but a growing number of international contingents was sent to crisis areas while NGOs and UN agencies increased the scope and professionalism of their services, particularly the High Commissioner for Refugees and World Food Programme (WFP). The war in Somalia (1990- ) served as a laboratory for this new form of militarized interventionism, beginning with the spectacular landing of American troops in Mogadishu port on 8 December 1992 – an event that was filmed live. The failure of this operation, largely due to a lack of understanding of the political dynamics at play as well as the direct involvement of the American forces in the conflict, has generated extensive body of literature. The last US Rangers discreetly left Somalia in March 1994 and the American refusal to intervene in any way during the Rwandan genocide, which began the following month, was the first repercussion.

So-called humanitarian military operations, however, were not condemned in principle and their existence created a new situation for humanitarian NGOs. The UN asked them to merge their efforts with its own and play a peacemaking role, which raised difficult questions. While peace itself is a humanitarian objective, the same does not hold true for the specific means of “imposing” it – in other words, the political order created to implement it, which can involve designating an enemy. To help populations under the control of armed groups refusing a peace agreement supported by the United Nations – populations that are often in the most difficult situation – the NGOs must not be confused with those who are fighting these groups.

NGOs that conceive their work in a restrictive manner and view international contingents as one of the parties to the conflict are sometimes called “Dunantists”. In this regard, they stand in contrast to “Wilsonians”, who identify with the UN’s political goals and consider it a neutral player due to its multilateralism. The Dunantists, such as ICRC and MSF, openly identify as “principled organisations” that value independence, neutrality and impartiality, thus implying that the Wilsonians are turning their backs. In effect, during conflict situations, solely focusing on providing support to State social services, such as health, training and school renovation, can easily be confused with a counter-insurgency strategy. At this point, “winning hearts and minds” and humanitarian aid overlap. This strategy is rejected by Dunantist humanitarian groups, which hold all belligerents, regardless of affiliation, at the same arm’s length. Their primary concern is reaching populations isolated by war in line with the impartiality principle that requires a humanitarian organisation to focus its efforts on essential needs. It is possible to fully support this position, while believing that these essential needs, and thus priority responses, are based on subjective and changing preferences rather than an objective and fixed definition. Impartiality can be sometimes be defined as providing the greatest good to the largest number of people and sometimes as meeting the most urgent needs. These two concepts are mutually exclusive in some cases and neither one can legitimately lay claim to being more humanitarian than the other. It should also be noted that “winning hearts and minds” does not only apply to counter-insurgency strategies but just as much to insurgency strategies. Humanitarian organisations working in areas controlled by an opposition movement cannot avoid political instrumentalisation any more than those operating in government zones, with their acceptance by armed rebel groups dependent precisely on the NGOs’ political usefulness. Contrary to widespread belief, and as emphasized above, such instrumentalisation is not a perverse effect of humanitarian aid but a constant feature and a condition of its implementation.

Darfur: a genocidal war?

Assistance to Darfur war (2003- ) victims illustrates this aspect of humanitarian action and highlights two of the major developments discussed above – operational growth and professionalisation. The effect, if not the goal, of the government’s violent response to the armed rebellion that broke out in 2003 in Sudan’s western province was the flight of hundreds of thousands of villagers, who gathered near Darfur’s cities. The war and terror operations conducted by pro-government militias raged in 2004 while the United Nations was preparing to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. Under international pressure, notably by NGOs and the UN humanitarian representative in Sudan, who were calling attention to the risk of another genocide, the regime opened Darfur to aid organisations. More than 10,000 humanitarian workers, including about 1,000 expatriates, set to work from 2005 to 2009 turning this region into the site of the largest humanitarian operation of the past 60 years. It is highly likely that the Khartoum regime counted on this gesture to improve its international image and probably intended to take advantage of this mobilisation to keep the displaced populations at their new locations and thus strengthen its political control [De Waal A., Flint J., 2008]. If that was indeed the case, its strategy proved only partially successful. In 2009, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir was indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court (ICC) while the camps, holding more than two million displaced persons, gradually passed under the partial control of the armed opposition movements. International aid saved tens of thousands of people, not only through the physical protection offered by the camps but also by preventing death caused by malnutrition and the related diseases that occur under such circumstances.

Serving as a site where humanitarian organisations could demonstrate their operational capacities, Darfur also acted as a backdrop for an intense controversy over an international armed intervention designed to put a stop to the violence, which was characterized as genocidal by the intervention’s supporters. This operation, given impetus by neoconservatives, grew so extensive between 2004 and 2009 that it became an issue in the presidential campaigns of the United States in 2004 and France in 2007. Some NGOs, particularly human rights groups, campaigned in favour of the operation, while others, mainly humanitarian aid organisations, were publicly opposed or simply did not take part in the appeals. Like the controversy over the Biafran war, the debate primarily centred on whether to relabel a civil war genocide; in that case, the supposed plan to exterminate the Darfurians would reduce aid to a sham at best and complicity at worst. The aerial bombings of villages, the militias’ terrorist violence, and the massacres of civilians were only too real, especially during the first 15 months of the conflict. These facts laid the groundwork for the decision of the International Criminal Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber to issue an arrest warrant for the crime of genocide against President al-Bashir and several senior government officials, including the Sudanese commissioner for humanitarian aid. If these officials are ever handed over, it will be up to the ICC to distinguish between a counter-insurgency war and a genocidal war – in this case, the only distinction between the two being the intentions ascribed to their authors. According to the indictment, genocide was carried out in two stages: first by violent means and then by depriving the victims of sustenance; the displaced persons camps were described as concentration camps in which famine and epidemics finished the task begun by bombings and militia attacks. The effectiveness of the above-mentioned relief effort in the Darfur camps, however, was evidenced by morbidity, infant mortality and educational access indicators that were far better than those in the rest of the country – facts contradicting the indictment but that were ignored by the prosecutor. The announcement of the arrest warrant was followed by the expulsion of many NGOs, mostly international but also Sudanese. Attention then focused on the expected effects of a sudden reduction in aid as well as political reactions and condemnations, which obscured the ethical and political issues raised by the accusation of genocide by attrition. In other terms, if this indictment were to proceed, it would make the UN, its Member States and NGOs the “useful idiots” of a genocidal regime through incompetence or blindness.

Ambiguous justice

In addition to this extreme case, relations between humanitarian organisations and the ICC have been marked by a double ambiguity. United in a “Coalition for the ICC”, numerous NGOs (including MSF) campaigned for the adoption of the Rome Statute (1998) to end impunity and promote the general interest, with justice being seen as a prerequisite for peace. For those particularly active in armed conflicts, such as ICRC and MSF, the issue of their possible testimony before the ICC was immediate. Being viewed as a potential witness for the prosecution would complicate the negotiations that are always necessary to gain access to war zones, where acts of violence take place. For that reason, the ICRC, the humanitarian organisation mandated by the Member States, was granted a special status exempting it from any obligation to cooperate with the ICC. Granted to the ICRC on a permanent basis, this privilege can be claimed by other humanitarian groups on a case-by-case basis consistent with the intent of the statute. While the ambiguity of a „support to the court without participation‟ may have been predictable and plausible, the same cannot be said for relations between politics and international justice. It is not, of course, utopian to expect criminal prosecution to have a dissuasive effect but it is futile to think there can be any war without war crimes. Inevitably, therefore, the question becomes who risks being indicted and who does not. To date, only Africans have been indicted, not because of racial bias as some have claimed but because only countries and political players without Security Council protection actually face the threat of prosecution, which is the case for most African nations. Can international justice be dispensed more fairly in a world dominated by power relationships? Is this conceivable when political crimes involve whole sections of society, diluting the concept of individual responsibility in complex processes and interactions – a concept that forms the very foundation of modern justice? Some people are sceptical while others see the possibility of new political opportunities for shaking up the balance of power for the benefit of oppressed populations [Hazan P., 2007]. Everyone must decide for themselves. In any case, the ambiguity here lies in the fallacy of humanitarian organisations’ initially positive response, while viewing political balances of power as secondary.

The war in the former Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide led to the first international jurisdictions since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials – the Hague (1993) and Arusha (1994) tribunals followed by the International Criminal Court (2002). The Rwandan genocide was the direct catalyst for the UN’s adoption of the “Responsibility to Protect” resolution, known as R2P, in 2005. Meeting the need “to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner », and seeking to “protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”, the R2P divided the humanitarian sector. Some, including the author of this report, viewed in R2P a dangerous rehabilitation of the “just war” concept, while others focused on its dissuasive effect, with the use of force a last resort and lesser evil. R2P, however, does not impose on the Security Council members to use force in response to mass violence but enables them to do so on the basis of Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The “responsibility to protect” was invoked for the first time during the Libyan crisis in March 2011, resulting in the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi. Resolution 1973, which only authorized setting up a no-fly zone above Benghazi, led to the overthrow of the regime, which makes a certain degree of sense given the regime’s threat to the upraised population. This very extensive interpretation supported by the nations that invoked humanitarian considerations during Security Council debates in order to hasten and legalise the preventive use of force. No one can say what would have happened had NATO’s “Unified Protector” operation not taken place, but its aftermath in Libya, characterized by a proliferation of armed groups of all kinds, seems to have made R2P something of a nuisance. For example, it was not invoked in Security Council Resolution 2127 authorizing France to protect civilians and disarm militias in the Central African Republic. There was clear evidence of mass violence, however. Whatever the reasons for sidelining R2P in this case, in practice it would not have provided the Security Council with any new tool. Since its creation, the council has had legal instruments enabling it to use force in the event of a “threat against international peace and security”, according to the provisions of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, subject to the agreement of its permanent members.

Increased risks?

The rapid growth of humanitarian efforts since the 1970s has led to a proliferation of players, including new NGOs and institutional donors, an expanded mandate for certain UN agencies, such as UNHCR and Unicef, the creation of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and humanitarian military operations. Nearly absent from the media until the late 70’s, humanitarianism is now rife and plays sometimes a central role in the coverage of conflicts. Governments appoints ministers of humanitarian affairs; courses, seminars and university theses are devoted to the issue; and numerous personal accounts and articles are published by people involved in this field. At the same time its resources, recognition and budgets kept expanding - parallel to increasingly numerous and large-scale field projects-, the aid community began discussing growing threats and attacks against humanitarian staff.

Both civilians and humanitarian teams were said to become the combatants’ objective and target. The end of the Cold War and its supposedly stabilizing qualities were said to be the initial cause, leading to a transformation of conflicts, which were nowadays intra-national battles between factions free of any outside control. Armed groups were described as no longer motivated by a political cause but by greed and sectarianism, a transformation which resulted in the blurring of the line between civilians and combatants, and the non-compliance with humanitarian principles. This discussion is based on actual “security incidents”, i.e. violence committed over the past 20 years, particularly the assassination of an ICRC representative during the attack of a humanitarian convoy in Sarajevo in 1992, the murder of six ICRC members in Chechnya in 1996, the deadly attack against the UN headquarters in Baghdad in 2003, the assassination of five Médecins Sans Frontières staff members in Afghanistan in 2004, and the killing of 17 employees of Action Contre la Faim in Sri Lanka in 2006.

The worrying trends laid out in this discussion, like the overall analysis to which it belongs, are nevertheless debatable. It can be argued that this period was actually marked by a growing presence of humanitarian organisations very close to the conflict zones and a spectacular increase in the number of their workers in areas that had previously been largely inaccessible. In view of these developments, the risks run by humanitarian staff working in conflict situations have actually remained stable. While it may be true that most of the conflicts are now domestic in nature, even though all of them have a regional dimension, it is debatable whether civilians are targeted more than they were before the Cold War. Indiscriminate bombing, terror strategies, executions of hostages, militias, massacres of civilians and rapes have all been a common element of most conflicts in which modern humanitarian organisations have operated throughout the 20th century. Moreover, war-related deaths have continually declined since the end of the Cold War [Human Security Report, 2013]. Do atrocities trouble people’s consciences more today than in the past? Does this discussion indicate a change in sensibilities, i.e. less tolerance for mass violence? We do not have sufficient hindsight and research to confidently answer this question. It should be noted, however, that characterising the post-Cold War era as the period of civilian massacres unthinkingly relegates the innumerable victims and civilian targets of the “age of extremes” (Eric Hobsbawn) to oblivion.

A question of principles

In reality, the greater danger facing humanitarian teams only concerns a small number of countries, in relation with international military operations. These dangers mainly involve hostage- taking that does not target humanitarian workers as such but as a category of people who are valuable for transaction and protection purposes; the intention is to trade them for cash or use them as human shields. In these situations, humanitarian organisations tend to delegate negotiations with hostage takers to specialized firms, as companies do in other circumstances. Former police or intelligence officers then conduct searches and negotiations with the utmost discretion. This secretive modus operandi is undoubtedly justified when the negotiations involve freeing a company employee. In the case of humanitarian hostages, the validity of secrecy and the effectiveness of simply relying on a financial approach remain to be seen, judging by experience. Political factions vying for control of territory are generally concerned about maintaining the population’s support and allowing humanitarian organisations to operate is one way to do so, as mentioned above. An admission of weakness for local political leaders and a source of grievance for the population, the kidnapping of humanitarian workers in armed conflict areas is not only a tragedy for the victims but also a challenge for political groups who need to restore their damaged political authority. Reducing these challenges to a commercial transaction means ignoring the reality of these balances of power and losing the opportunity to use them for freeing hostages. Humanitarian workers have a special trump card, which explains why a significant number of them have been liberated without a ransom payment after local and international campaigns, public condemnations and political pressure by local players.

Whether the issue is staff safety or the management of the aid operations themselves, the discussion of basic humanitarian principles – neutrality, impartiality and independence – plays a limited role in our analysis of situations and organisational positions. These principles have significance in terms of signalling a commitment to having no other goal than helping victims and acting only out of concern for alleviating their situation. These principles are, in particular, spelled out in international humanitarian law as the rights and obligations of the various parties to a conflict and are important elements in negotiations between relief organisations and political authorities. They have little analytical value, however, because, each one can be interpreted differently, as we discussed above. While fully intended to be neutral and impartial, humanitarian aid for refugees does not appear as such to all local political players. The clandestine work practiced by the occasional NGO in rebel areas displays the same ambivalence. When determining priority needs, a humanitarian organisation is less likely to consider general principles than operational objectives, resource allocations and institutional interests. Needs are implemented through negotiations and acceptable compromises with political authorities, while keeping each party’s objectives and requirements in mind. Humanitarian ethics during times of both war and peace reside not in an illusory attempt to keep politics at arm’s length, but in knowing what types of politics to pursue and what limitations to impose.

***

Translation by Karen Tucker

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Bouchet-Saulnier F., Dictionnaire pratique du droit humanitaire, La Découverte, 2013.

Fassin D., Rechtmann R., Les Constructions de l’intolérable, Etudes d’anthropologie et d’histoire sur les frontières de l’espace moral, La Découverte, Paris, 2004.

Gill R., Calculating Compassion, Humanity and relief in war, Britain, 1870-1914, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2013.

Hazan P., Juger la guerre, juger l’histoire, PUF, Paris, 2007.

Hentsch T., Face au blocus. La Croix-Rouge internationale dans le Biafra en guerre (1967-1970), Institut des hautes études internationales, Genève, 1973.

Hutchinson J., Champions of Charity, War and the Rise of the Red Cross, Westview Press, Oxford, 1996.

Jean F., Rufin J.-C. (dir.), Economie des guerres civiles, Hachette Pluriel, Paris, 1996.

Terry F., Condemned to Repeat? The paradox of humanitarian action, Cornell University Press, New York, 2002.

De Waal A., Flint J., Darfur, A New History of a Long War, Zed Book, London, 2008.

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War and humanitarian aid

Génocide et crimes de masse. L’expérience rwandaise de MSF, 1982-97

babayaga — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Date de publication

28/11/2016

Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/28/2016 - 13:17

Jean-Hervé Bradol & Marc Le Pape

Jean-Hervé

Bradol

By the same author

Marc

Le Pape

By the same author

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

Where did the idea for the book come from?

Marc Le Pape (ML): Jean-Hervé and I travelled to Rwanda and neighbouring countries in the 1990s and beyond, to work in our respective areas - sociology for me and humanitarian medicine for him. We began working together in 1995 in response to the genocide of the Rwandan Tutsi and the inertia of the international community observed at the time. Since then, we've never stopped debating the issue and, in a way, the book's origins date back to that time.

As the 20th anniversary of the genocide approached in 2014, we thought it likely that questions would come up about the role and humanitarian response of an international NGO like Médecins Sans Frontières both before, but also during and after, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Thinking about it, we realised we didn't have all the information we'd need to answer certain questions accurately. And so we decided to write a book, bringing together our experiences as a humanitarian doctor and a sociologist.

Jean-Hervé Bradol (JHB): As Marc has said, we had the conviction that pairing our disciplines would present the facts in a particularly interesting light. We would associate sociology, which adopts a distant viewpoint and uses very specific analytical tools, with on-the-ground experience of the field, of the events as they happened and of the humanitarian practices of the time.

So we reviewed the existing literature on Rwanda, the genocide of the Tutsi, population displacements across the borders into neighbouring countries and the mass violence that was committed. Most of the books that look both at Rwanda and at the humanitarian operations conducted in the Great Lakes region tend to be political analyses of the relationships between military and humanitarian actors, studies of the international response to the genocide and the workings of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), assessments of the emergency response or similar. There are also macro - and micro - level analyses, medical publications, and the memories and testimonies of the medical staff that were part of the response.

No emergency organisation, however, has published an account of its interventions, based on internal archives and documents. Our account answers several questions. Where were the teams working, at what moment and under what conditions? What difficulties did they face? What lessons did they learn?

Our research covered several MSF mission countries in which Rwandophone populations were living. We did not, however, attempt to look at all the humanitarian programmes in the region. We wanted to focus on the work of the teams in the field, and it was based on this criterion that we consulted the MSF archives in Paris - they contain documents originating from all the operational sections in the MSF movement working in the Great Lakes region at the time.

The archives had already been used by Laurence Binet, journalist and Crash director of studies at the time, in a series of publications on the most important dilemmas when speaking out publically in the history of the MSF movement. The first four were published in 2004 and looked at the Great Lakes region before and after the genocide. Her work helped us enormously.

As well as the archives and testimonies, we used research which introduced previously unknown sources, and reports and public statements issued by international NGOs on the Great Lakes region between 1990 and 1997.

This book is an original account, and unique in its genre. No other organisation that worked in the region has ever publically decided to produce anything similar.

You asked yourselves three specific questions. Where was MSF working? What did the work involve? What difficulties were raised at the time, in some cases publically, about the work the organisation was trying to do?
Why did you decide on that particular methodology?

ML: I had asked myself these questions personally. I had patchy knowledge of the medical operations in Rwanda and in neighbouring countries, but a global account of the work undertaken by the MSF movement was lacking. With the archives, we could get a complete picture of all the work done in the Great Lakes region because it was not only in Rwanda, but also in Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Zaire (the Democratic Republic of Congo).

JHB: Exactly. We had fragmented knowledge, but nobody had put all the pieces together to give the whole picture.
The book starts with MSF's first intervention in Rwanda in 1982 and runs right up to the end of 1997, the last year in which the scale of the massacres of Rwandophone peoples set them apart from other populations in the region.

What does the book teach us about the events of the time? What did you learn?

JHB: It's striking to see the extent to which aid workers, repeatedly from 1994 onwards, became eyewitnesses to violence, murder and massacre on a large scale in Rwanda and the surrounding countries. Aid organisations usually work a certain distance from the scenes of such events, and their staff rarely witness these kinds of atrocities directly. The identity of the perpetrators most often remains unknown, which wasn't the case here. It was therefore a violent experience for MSF and one unlike anything the organisation had experienced before: \"the presence of humanitarian aid workers as people were sorted into those who would die and those to be spared." Extract from the book

Rwandan staff were also among the victims; sometimes they colluded in or co-authored the killings. More than two hundred Rwandan MSF staff members were executed in this period - in fact, the organisation has never lost as many staff as it did during this time.

ML: In fact, aid workers continued to pay the price of working in such close proximity to the violence far beyond 1994. Don't forget that three expatriates from Médecins du Monde were assassinated in Rwanda in January 1997.

JHB: In Burundi in the same period, more than 20 expatriate staff from international organisations were assassinated. The levels of violence and of exposure to violence observed were extremely high. We had believed this was the case, but the archives, in which we found a certain number of quotes from direct testimonies, confirmed our intuition. And particularly from the MSF teams, people who were trying to save their own lives, their colleagues' lives, and who were being forced by the militia to massacre their Tutsi colleagues, under the orders of the architects of the genocide. The organisation was entirely immersed in intense, extreme violence.

ML: Another significant observation was the difficulties and tensions brought about by working in such high-risk situations, in situations where the authorities were constantly imposing restrictions and where the risks, given the proximity and scale of the massacres, were acute.

It raised many questions. How were the teams to work in these conditions? How were they to work in camps in which hundreds of thousands of people had taken refuge and violent organised groups (military and militia) were also present? Reading the archives gave us some insight into the very high levels of tension on the ground.

An extract from the book: "The repetition of mass atrocities in the presence of teams of humanitarian workers sparked two non-mutually exclusive reactions within MSF. The first was to try and maintain operations as political violence sent needs through the roof and the capacity of aid workers to take action was reduced. (...)"

JHB: Indeed. The teams on the ground, given what they were facing, did what they could to continue working despite the danger, often to provide assistance to the displaced or refugees, and often in horrific conditions. There was a desire to keep providing an effective response. Teams worked in camps with several hundred thousand people, almost on the scale of a city, which went up and came down in just a few days.

Between 1990 and 1994, MSF was providing assistance to the displaced Rwandans who were fleeing the military advances of the Tutsi exiles - organised into the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) - and, from October 1993, to refugees arriving in Rwanda from Burundi. Then, from 1994, the organisation witnessed the arrival of several million Rwandans, who were concentrated in huge camps in Tanzania, Zaire and Burundi. The population movements were massive, refugee camps opened and closed at a frenetic rhythm, leaving aid workers with the feeling that they were permanently starting from scratch.

The teams were also aware that some of the emergency measures, for example food distributions, were inadequate. From an operational and technical point of view, we didn't have the equipment or infrastructure to handle situations like Rwanda. And we found evidence of this in conversations that took place between the headquarters and field teams who, at times, were so consumed by technical and operational questions that they were no longer able to take stock of the political and social contexts.

It is not the first time that we have seen the limitations of emergency assistance. Our limited operational capacity to respond to the severe acute malnutrition in Somalia in 1992, for example, was already an indicator. The shortfall in the skills and capacities of emergency organisations that was observed in the 1990s, which were dominated by a multiplication of humanitarian catastrophes, is largely acknowledged.

What happened in Rwanda had an important impact on the development of policy and technical practices for the international response to armed conflicts and serious crisis situations. It resulted in an aid reform both in terms of political codes of conduct, with the adoption of a common code initiated by the Red Cross, and of the minimum technical standards to be attained in each sector.

"The second [reaction] was to try and resist attempts by the perpetrators of political violence to instrumentalise humanitarian aid at the risk of being treated as undesirables by the authorities (legal and rebel), prevented from working, expelled or even executed."

JHB: We realised pretty quickly that those behind the mass violence had infiltrated the aid system. The militia, the most criminal political groups present at the time, had people at every level of the aid system, and were misdirecting part of the food supplies that were destined for the Rwandan IDPs and refugees. The aid that was misdirected was serving the political violence directly, particularly when it was used to purchase weapons to reward militia taking part in acts of violence. Some of the food was used to feed the machine that was behind the mass killings.

The situation would cause tensions in the humanitarian community. The French section of MSF stopped working in the refugee camps in December 1994 and the other sections during 1995. They no longer wanted to contribute to strengthening and legitimising those responsible for the genocide. The organisations working in the region at the time had to choose between withdrawing from the camps or assuming their medical responsibility, "they either had to abandon their relief to avoid supporting those responsible for the genocide, or carry on providing assistance to civilians." Extract from the book

ML: There were major tensions within the MSF movement over this question, but there were also tensions with other institutions, the United Nations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Food Programme (WFP) in particular. In November 1994, MSF appealed to the United Nations Security Council to deploy an international security force to protect the Rwandan refugees from the violence and threats being perpetrated in the camps by those responsible for the genocide. The request was never approved.

JHB: Relationships between the different sections weren't always contentious. They all agreed, for example, that the extermination of the Tutsi people qualified as genocide, and they lobbied together for it to be recognised as such, while also criticising the responsibilities of the French government.

MSF called for an international military intervention on three occasions between 1994 and 1997. This was exceptional for the organisation. Can we talk about them?

JHB: When MSF denounced the genocide at the end of April 1994, it created huge tensions with the authorities in place in Rwanda. The organisation replaced its medical team in Kigali and worked with the ICRC to help the perpetrators' victims and those that they were threatening. The massacres continued, and MSF declared "Genocide calls for a radical, immediate response. [...] But genocide cannot be stopped by doctors".

Two further MSF declarations were published in November 1994 and in November 1996. They called for an emergency deployment in Eastern Zaire of "an armed intervention force to set up safe areas and ensure access to assistance for civilians".MSF-France, MSF-Holland, "Call for immediate dispatch of an armed intervention force to protect civilians",MSF-France, MSF-Holland, "Call for immediate dispatch of an armed intervention force to protect civilians "MSF-France, MSF-Holland, "Call for immediate dispatch of an armed intervention force to protect civilians", 15 November 1996. Their appeals fell on deaf ears, there was no such deployment.

Tensions arose between MSF and the RPF. Our teams witnessed the first massacres they committed in the zones they now controlled. Two sections (Switzerland and France) were expelled from Rwanda, mainly because they refused not to speak out about the new regime's crimes, and particularly the Kibeho massacre in April 1995, which was committed by the RPF in front of MSF staff and the United Nations armed forces. MSF refused not to speak out, condoning by its silence the Rwandan authorities' rhetoric which played down the massacre. Some actors present at the time believe that at least 4,000 people were killed in the Kibeho camp.

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To cite this content :
Jean-Hervé Bradol, Marc Le Pape, Humanitarian Aid, Genocide and Mass Killings. MSF, The Rwandan Experience, 1982-97, 28 November 2016, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/blog/war-and-humanitarianism/humanitarian-aid-genocide-and-mass-killings-msf-rwandan-experience

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Humanitarian Aid, Genocide and Mass Killings. MSF, The Rwandan Experience, 1982-97

Génocide et crimes de masse. L’expérience rwandaise de MSF, 1982-1997

Kesaven-02 — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 01:00:00 +0000

04/11/2016

Kesaven-02 Fri, 11/04/2016 - 02:00

To cite this content :
Jean-Hervé Bradol, Marc Le Pape, Humanitarian aid, genocide and mass killings. Médecins Sans Frontières, the Rwandan experience, 1982-97, 4 November 2016, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/publications/war-and-humanitarianism/humanitarian-aid-genocide-and-mass-killings-medecins-sans

Introduction : avec le regard des équipes de terrain

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Jean-Hervé Bradol & Marc Le Pape

Jean-Hervé

Bradol

By the same author

Marc

Le Pape

By the same author

Our latest book, by Jean-Hervé Bradol and Marc Le Pape, will be out next January. "Humanitarian aid, genocide and mass killings. Médecins Sans Frontières, the Rwandan experience, 1982-97" is published by Manchester University Press.

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. Humanitarian workers were confronted with the execution of close to one million people, tens of thousands of casualties pouring into health centres, the flight of millions of others who had sought refuge in camps and a series of deadly epidemics. Where and in what circumstances were the MSF teams deployed? What medical and non-medical assistance were they able to deliver?

Written by Jean-Hervé Bradol, director of studies at MSF-CRASH (Centre de Réflexion sur l'Action et les Savoirs Humanitaires) and Marc Le Pape, member of the CRASH Scientific Committee, this book is based on various hitherto unpublished private and public archives. It recounts the experiences of the MSF teams working in the field. It also describes the tensions (and cooperation) between international humanitarian agencies, the crucial negotiations conducted at local, national and international level and the media campaigns. The messages communicated to the public by MSF's teams bear witness to diverse practical, ethical and political considerations. How to react when humanitarian workers are first-hand witnesses to mass crimes? How to avoid becoming accomplices to criminal stratagems? How to deliver effective aid in situations of extreme violence?

This book is intended for humanitarian aid practitioners, students, journalists and researchers with an interest in genocide and humanitarian studies and the political sociology of international organisations.

Buy the book

Chapitre I De la persécution des rwandophones en Ouganda au génocide des Rwandais tutsis

Chapitre II Les camps de réfugiés rwandais en Tanzanie et au Zaïre (1994-1995)

Chapitre III Le nouveau Rwanda

Chapitre IV Des réfugiés en fuite dans le Zaïre en guerre 1996-1997

Epilogue Efficacité de l'aide et répétitions des crimes de masse

Table des cartes

Sigles et acronymes

Sélection bibliographique

Remerciements

Index

Table des matières

Humanitarian aid, genocide and mass killings. Médecins Sans Frontières, the Rwandan experience, 1982-97

MSF et le CICR : questions de principes

babayaga — Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Date de publication

01/05/2013

Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/01/2013 - 17:15

ICRC

humanitarian principles

Biafra

Rony Brauman

Rony

Brauman

By the same author

How do Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) differ, and how are they alike? The question came from the Editor-in-chief of this Review, but it is regularly discussed at MSF, which might just as well have queried a member of the ICRC on the same subject.

It comes up all the more frequently because, since the early 1990s, the two organisations have often worked in close cooperation, particularly in cities at war. Their central leaderships meet regularly; their members now speak the same language, and agree about where to draw the line, in particular, regarding the proper relationship between civilian humanitarian agencies and the military. In short, their‘Dunantist' mission- inherent for one, acquired for the other - seems to bring them together to the point where there is no need to talk about the difference or differences between them, the main point being what they have in common.

This is what I discuss below. I should first explain that it is not my intention here to go into the specifics of the relief efforts, which for MSF are basically limited to medical care, while for the ICRC they have many other facets. As a result, any attempt to make a comparative assessment of these organizations' overall action would be very difficult. Instead, I focus on their operational choices in conflict situations, the principles underlying those choices, and the public expression of these principles, while noting that, in contrast to the ICRC, working in war zones accounts for no more than a third of all MSF operations. Defining the scope of the comparison in this way facilitates discussion of the two organizations' discourse and action in similar situations. However, it leaves intact a major difficulty with the argument, which relates to their very different structures. When the ICRC makes a public pronouncement, it speaks with one voice. Its appeals and statements are clearly signed ‘International Committee Geneva', in line with the words appearing on the emblems. The same is not true for MSF. It consists of five national sections known as operational centres, which are attached to partner sections. Each one has its own history and organizational form - in short, its culture - and disagreements between, and within, the sections are rife. This complicates and undermines, but does not prohibit, the treatment of MSF as a homogeneous entity. This article is not, therefore, the expression of a shared doctrine, but of ideas running through the overall MSF movement, which it does not claim to represent.

The myth of Biafra

It is commonly acknowledged that MSF was established in response to the commitment to remain silent made by French Red Cross personnel working under the auspices of the ICRC during the war in Biafra (1967-1970). Hence, MSF began by rejecting a predetermined neutrality that the French doctors viewed as passive complicity with the Nigerian government, which had been accused by its adversaries of committing genocide. The silence of all parties, including the ICRC, about the annihilation of the Jews under the Third Reich formed the backdrop to this accusation. I had signed; I was a perjurer. Upon my return [from Biafra] to France', wrote Bernard Kouchner, ‘I formed a committee against genocide in Biafra. My reasoning was simple. I did not want to repeat the mistake of the ICRC, which, during the 1939-1945 war, had not condemned the Nazi extermination camps. That was the origin of Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World). In this passage, Kouchner described the raison d'être behind ‘bearing witness' - a moral challenge, an action slogan, a call for mobilization. It was necessary to free oneself from an organization that, bound by diplomatic constraints, was repeating the ‘mistake' made during the Second World War. Speaking out, denouncing, standing up for victims against their murderers - such was to be the thrust of the new humanitarian commitment embodied by MSF, founded in 1971 - in opposition, therefore, to the ‘culture of silence' imposed by the Red Cross.

The historian Marie-Luce Desgrandschamps has shown what this account owes to retrospective reconstruction, stressing in particular that the articles published by the French doctors were well received in Geneva. The ICRC even asked the newspaper Le Monde for permission to reprint large excerpts from one of them in the International Review of the Red Cross, which was done in January 1969. It is true that in these articles Bernard Kouchner and Max Récamier eloquently described the horrors of the Biafran war and the hard work of the humanitarian volunteers, and did so without making accusations against the Nigerian government. Some of the French doctors felt the need to go further and to denounce the atrocities committed by the federal troops, while others confined themselves to a more tactful reminder of the government's commitments. In fact, Desgrandschamps notes, there was dividing line running ‘apparently not only between the small number of French doctors and the ICRC, but also within the ICRC itself, between the staff in Biafra and those responsible for managing the whole operation'. The ICRC's publication of the article from Le Monde, like the subsequent return of its authors to Biafra, again with the Red Cross, proves that the tensions were far from the breaking point that was described years later.

Nevertheless, the myth of a condemnation leading to a break with the Red Cross, of a refusal to consent through silence to the alleged genocide against the Biafrans, emerged as a story of origins - not at the time, incidentally, but at the end of the 1970s when humanitarian action and its spokespersons began to interest the media and even to make headlines occasionally. It was only then that the myth became the distinctive brand of MSF, in the eyes of its members and the media: ‘Aiding the victims is a humanitarian approach; denouncing their executioners remains a militant one. This mix is what makes MSF such a valuable organization', Le Monde editorialized, on the day of the announcement in 1999 that MSF had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Contrary to what was abundantly said and written on that occasion, it must be pointed out that the concept of humanitarian intervention was never mentioned in connection with Biafra; that term (coined by Bernard Kouchner) dates from the 1980s and refers to the ‘right' that humanitarian doctors gave themselves to cross borders clandestinely in order to reach certain war zones to which access was prohibited. As to the accusation of genocide, which was understandable in the light of the atrocities committed by the federal army, we know that it was mainly a political tool, a means of mobilizing support for Biafra's independence. What was known at the time as ‘bearing witness' therefore belongs in the category of psychological action or, in more mundane terms, war propaganda.

Is this to say - this episode being at best only a misunderstanding, and at worst a political manipulation - that once the myth has been deconstructed, MSF will at last yield to the ICRC's arguments and define itself as the ICRC's medical wing? No, but the issue continually arises, as evidenced by the later history of MSF: public statements of position, and denunciation, where necessary, have been both a constant affirmation of MSF and an internal stumbling block throughout its existence. Thus, the charter adopted by MSF at its founding stated that: ‘Doctors Without Borders observes neutrality and ... complete independence, barring it from any interference in the internal affairs of the States, governments and parties in whose territory it is called upon to serve.' As if to dispel any uncertainty, the charter reaffirmed that MSF members must ‘refrain from passing judgement or publicly expressing an opinion - favourable or unfavourable - with regard to events and to the forces and leaders that accept their aid'. A stronger condemnation of the positions taken by some of the founders - of whom only a small majority had worked in Biafra - would be hard to find. No doubt the intention was to give prior assurances to the governments of the countries in which the brand-new organization planned to work. Not being founder of MSF, and having discovered no traces of the debates between them, the author is not in a position to say with certainty what reasons led to the adoption of these provisions. The fact remains that, in adopting such a charter, MSF aligned itself with the tradition of a silent humanitarian agency, wholly focused on medical aid, a role that would not have been disowned by the ICRC - which, for that matter, remained the primary model for MSF members. As we will see, throughout its history, MSF has been, and remains, torn between a desire to speak out strongly and a discreet approach more conducive to good relations with the political authorities.

What are we talking about?

In an article entitled ‘Speaking out or remaining silent in humanitarian work', Jakob Kellenberger, the former president of the ICRC, recalls that, in order to carry out its exclusive mission of protecting and assisting victims of armed conflict, the ICRC must ensure that its presence is accepted by all parties. This is the essential condition for implementing its mandate throughout the world. He adds that the ICRC does not refrain from commenting publicly in some situations, but that it must avoid any one-sided or overly explicit condemnation of one party. Bearing in mind that the ICRC can then be accused of helping to maintain an acceptable image of the oppressors, he notes that the action of numerous advocacy organizations nullifies this argument and exempts the ICRC from having to review its priorities. It must be acknowledged that, in many situations, MSF acts no differently, at times even going so far as to renounce in writing any public expression not explicitly approved in advance by the governmental authorities. Such was the case in Sri Lanka during the governmental assault on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam between January and April 2009, which ended in the crushing of the separatists and the death by bombing of tens of thousands of civilians. Having decided to conduct its terminal offensive in secret, the government had declared the combat zones off-limits to all humanitarian organizations except the ICRC, which alone was granted access to them in order to evacuate the wounded by sea. In this extreme state of affairs, MSF agreed, in the words of the president of the French section, to ‘ abdicate [a strategy of roundly criticizing institutions], and wait for the order of all-out war to be replaced by one in which humanitarian aid can play its part.

It is not the aim of this article to reconstruct the tortuous path of the various public positions and controversies and the tensions that they aroused. Having recalled that the demand for a critical or even denunciatory discourse is, along with medical care in crisis situations, MSF's ‘signature' - that which distances it de facto from the ICRC - I turn instead to the interpretation of the principles common to both organizations, the ‘Dunantism' to which MSF also lays claim, and which unites them. As Marie-Luce Desgrandschamps has shown, it was ultimately because of their political support for the cause of Biafran independence that several of MSF's founders questioned the validity of the ICRC's neutrality. While their successors surely do not identify with that position, they nonetheless, like the founders concerned, reject an ‘apolitical' humanitarianism that takes refuge in a predetermined strict neutrality, which forbids them to make any public statement that could be interpreted as partisan. The ICRC's bias toward confidentiality is not, of course, a vow of silence: the ICRC makes public declarations, but does so mainly in the form of appeals to warring parties to respect their treaty obligations. It may also, as was the case following the massacre in Douéké, Côte d'Ivoire (March 2011), bring to light atrocities and indirectly implicate the guilty parties without naming them. On an exceptional basis, during the Darfur war in 2004, for example, the ICRC has gone as far as to pinpoint the specific responsibility of one government in the commission of mass abuses. It can be easily imagined that, as the guardian and promoter of humanitarian law, and therefore as a partner in diplomacy, the ICRC would remain within the limits assigned to it by the law, while retaining the ability to act that the law specifically confers on it. It should also be noted that the ICRC's public presence has intensified in the past two years.

While for its part denying any statutory obligation to remain silent, MSF amended its charter in 1991, deleting the lines referring to ‘interference in the internal affairs of States' and prohibiting the public expression of a judgement, and replacing them with references to the principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence. This adjustment of its founding text in light of subsequent practices conflicting with it does not, however, allow MSF to speak as freely as the human rights organizations. Like the ICRC, MSF gives priority to providing tangible aid on the ground, a priority to which it subordinates any other aims. Nevertheless, it avails itself of the ‘right' to speak out publicly against repeated abuses of which its members are the sole witnesses, asserting that it puts in question its presence in the field when the latter appears to be part of the machinery of oppression. This is what the Belgian section of MSF did, for example, when denouncing the torture practised in Misrata in January 2012 by the new Libyan authorities who expected the doctors to merely patch up the victims so that the interrogations could resume. What MSF rejected in this instance was not just torture, which is practised in many other countries in which it operates, rather, it refused to be an active accomplice, helping to optimize the results of torture. This decision in turn elicited a response from the ICRC in the form of an operational update underscoring its delegates' presence in the detention centres - an indirect criticism of MSF's position. The need to avoid becoming the medical enabler of oppression, whether it involves torture, forced population displacement, or famine, is the main purpose of the public statements of position that may, if necessary, lead to a withdrawal or an expulsion of MSF teams. When it is impossible to prevent the commission of a crime, an outside party can always avoid taking part in it. MSF's history is punctuated by such positions, which stem from an analysis of its political responsibilities rather than from bearing witness in the strict sense. Cambodia (1980), Ethiopia (1985), Bosnia (1994), the Rwandan refugee camps in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo (1994), the war in the Congo (1996-1997), North Korea (1999), Darfur (2005), and Libya (2012) are among the high points of this history, to mention only conflict situations, which are not the only examples in this regard as MSF works in many contexts other than wars.

Principles with varying interpretations

None of these positions is immune from criticism, and all have been the subject of internal discussions and, occasionally, public controversy. Sometimes what is at issue is the cogency of these positions, but for the most part it is the fact that they violate the principle of neutrality. In the first place, while compromise is always necessary for action, if that compromise crosses a certain threshold it becomes a surrender of principle. There is no perfectly reliable means of determining where that threshold lies. The danger exists that if this question is continually invoked it will amount to empty rhetoric - and it must be acknowledged that ‘first, do no harm' has become a widely echoed slogan in humanitarian forums. Yet if we are aware of the risk that our action may adversely affect those whom it was intended to help, we can guard against it. If, for example, we agree that, in extreme cases, abstention may be preferable to action (putting into practice the Hippocratic oath), that gives us one of the main tools we need to negotiate with warring parties, or simply to exert pressure on them, as it leaves us the option of publicly implicating them. Second, as the concept of neutrality is vaguer and more open to interpretation than a simple refusal to take part in political controversies, such public positions do not in themselves undermine the principle of neutrality. Indeed, the historian Irène Hermann reminds us that:

in time of war or conflict, ‘neutrality' may indicate a guarantee that a person will not be subjected to the ambient violence, and it is then similar to inviolability. In a less traumatic context, it is currently acquiring a second, derived meaning, and thus, like the word impartiality, designates those who do not belong to any camp. Lastly, the concept has many analogies to the notion of independence and thus relates to the possibility of taking decisions without needing to refer them to a higher authority.

Any criticism addressed publicly to a political authority can be described (generally by the latter and its supporters) as breaking with ‘political' neutrality. Strictly speaking, however, it can be argued that it is the assent to political authority that constitutes such a break.
These lines are being written as war rages in Syria. Having succeeded in setting up three surgical units in opposition-held territory, without obtaining the government's permission to work there, MSF is continuing its efforts to establish itself legally, through one of its other sections not present in the ‘liberated areas' (the South African section). In February 2012, on the basis of evidence gathered from wounded Syrians whom it was caring for in Jordan, MSF denounced the official authorities' use of medical facilities to capture alleged opponents. It may be argued that taking such a public position is tantamount to accusing one of the warring parties and therefore represents a breach - one more! - of the principle of neutrality. On the other hand, it may be asserted that the authorities' action signals a breach of the principle that medical facilities are inviolable, and that to publicize the violation of a basic principle cannot be considered a breach of that principle. For its part, the ICRC is conducting a large-scale aid operation in Syria alongside the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (the National Society), providing food and water to more than a million people. Acting through a National Red Cross or Red Crescent Society can make for outstanding efficiency, as was the case during the worst moments of the war in Somalia, but it may raise issues in other circumstances, such as the Syrian armed conflict. While there can be no doubt that the members of the National Society's local branches are endeavouring to act in the best interests of the victims, whoever they may be, the fact remains that this organization, like its counterparts, defines itself as an ‘auxiliary of the public authorities', and therefore of the armed forces. This accounts in part for the hostility to which it has been subjected by Syrian armed groups (without, of course, justifying the murderous attacks carried out by some of them against the National Society's employees) and leads to questions about the impartiality of the ICRC's operations in Syria (as MSF's presence in opposition-held territory may also do). Inasmuch as the ICRC's observations concerning its visits to prisoners of war and civilian internees are confidential, that is, restricted to the authorities - in that country as elsewhere - we are unable to incorporate them into our analysis.

While recognizing that the goods provided by the ICRC are very useful and even essential to those who receive them, one may ask whether the ICRC's distribution priorities conform to the principle of impartiality, because, under such constraints, they cannot be commensurate with the scale of the needs. There again, however, we must first bear in mind the variable meanings of this seemingly clear and unequivocal concept (impartiality). Reflecting on the principles of commitment of the international humanitarian organizations, the philosopher Jennifer Rubinstein rightly highlights the tension between two equally humanitarian aims - prioritizing those worst off and maximizing harm reduction. These are two different ways of meeting the needs created by a crisis - two ways of operating that are certainly not always mutually exclusive, but that can in some cases conflict with each other and be reflected in different operational set-ups. Thus, MSF-Holland clearly states its aim of reaching ‘those most abused and/or most in need in any context - over attempts to have the greatest impact for the greatest number'. In other words, when the two aims cannot be achieved simultaneously, the former takes precedence over the latter. There is a similar order of priorities in Iraq, where MSF is focusing on complex surgeries, while the ICRC's action extends beyond its traditional areas of activity (prisoners, the missing) to repairing infrastructure (water, electricity) and building agricultural capacity.

Political meaning of the action

MSF's and the ICRC's choice of priorities in Syria can be recognized here, though we must be careful not to characterize them as representing exclusive leanings. Like their counterparts, both organizations plan their various programmes in accordance with one or another of those priorities. The point here is not to judge them morally, but to emphasize that, as we saw in other respects with regard to neutrality, impartiality lends itself to very different or even opposing practical interpretations that are also equally valid in terms of general humanitarian aims. In all situations, humanitarian organizations are compelled either to decide between these operational strategies or to combine them. It is therefore in their interest to clarify them, in the first place for themselves, for to do otherwise is to be content with putting forth abstract principles - useless moral and legal standards that they would be hard-pressed to enact. With regard to Syria, the ICRC chose to base its public communication on a ‘constructive dialogue' with the government. This choice, reflected in the satisfaction, however cautious and conditional, expressed by the ICRC president after meetings with the highest authorities in Damascus, can only intensify the questioning of its impartiality. States are of course required to respect the impartiality of the ICRC and other humanitarian organizations, but in the final analysis the humanitarians are the ones who must be accountable for their decisions. In fact, contacts with the opposition groups were only fleetingly mentioned in the news releases and statements issued after the president's most recent visit to Damascus in September 2012. The failure, for security reasons, of several attempts to send cross-border convoys to people under the control of the opposition forces, and the difficulty of identifying contacts regarded as credible among them, are the main reasons for the ICRC's absence from the Syrian ‘liberated areas', with the ICRC affirming its stubborn determination to reach all victims of the conflict from Damascus.

Operations that are illegal under the law of the country concerned and international humanitarian law are rare for MSF. On the one hand, they are closely dependant on specific political configurations; on the other hand, MSF wishes to maintain proper relations with governments as this is generally the necessary condition for maximizing the services provided. However, given the simple fact that some aid organizations have succeeded in establishing themselves in parts of Syria under the control of opposition groups, an observer is forced to conclude that, in the ICRC's view, laudable humanitarian efforts are being made by Damascus, whereas the opposition continues to require appeals for compliance with humanitarian law. In pointing out this asymmetry, it is not the ICRC's action that we are discussing, but its discourse about such action and hence the political meaning that the organization attributes to it. It is undoubtedly here, in the political meaning attributed to the action, that the basic difference between the two organizations resides. For MSF, as soon as it becomes thinkable, and hence possible, to set up medical services in an area controlled by an opposition force, it is necessary to do so. If it is deemed useful to set up illegal medical services, then the only considerations that are taken into account are practical ones (whether a neighbouring country will authorize access, whether there is a liberated area, whether credible partners can be identified). From MSF's point of view, therefore, to decide instead to give priority to dialogue with the legal authorities in order to operate from government-controlled areas stems from a legitimist concern that MSF rejects, or from what amounts, by default, to a political choice, rather than a purely pragmatic one. Institutional constraints, like security problems and operational procedures, are specific and must be kept in mind if we are to understand this difference in positioning, but they do not fully account for it. The particular cultures of the two organizations - the way that they present their histories to themselves and others, and either do or do not discuss, internally and publicly, their relationships with political authorities and forces - must also be considered.

During the Libyan war, the ICRC immediately established itself in the ‘liberated areas', a decision that was remarkable for its rarity. Although this way of operating was introduced in Biafra under the auspices of the Red Cross, which made that choice after the Christian organizations had done so, it has become an identity marker for MSF and an exception for the ICRC. It is symbolically significant for MSF because it is consonant with its story of origins. This modus operandi indicates the way in which the organization believes it can be most useful in some war situations, and justifies the considerable resources devoted to it. Beyond the Syrian context, however, in war situations and in peacetime, MSF allocates its resources in accordance with criteria that are subject to the same elastic interpretation of its principles and to the same ethical discussion as the ICRC's. To assert one's impartiality is to express an intention that is undoubtedly valuable, but that says nothing about the content of the action.

Acting and denouncing

The question of publicly condemning atrocities committed by warring parties is, however, addressed differently by the two organizations, as we saw with regard to the issues of torture and attacks on medical facilities. However, we are a long way from a striking contrast. Although more inclined than the ICRC to take public positions for the reasons set out at the beginning of this article, and because it is not bound by an obligation of confidentiality, MSF actually ventures to do so less often than when it was first founded, mainly because anti-totalitarian activism, which was the basis of its public condemnations during the 1970s, lost its relevance with the end of the Cold War. Another reason is that, in the context of the liberal neo-interventionism of the 1990s, greater emphasis was placed on critical analysis of the ways in which aid was being strategically manipulated. In these new conflicts, the critique of humanitarian rhetoric and of the use of aid for counterinsurrection purposes took precedence over the denunciation of crimes that had been exposed by the media and by human rights organizations, particularly Human Rights Watch; such organizations became then far more active in armed conflict situations than they had been previously. Breaking with the Wilsonism of its roots, MSF gradually moved closer to Dunantism. Did it go so far as to merge with it? It may sometimes appear so, to the regret of a significant portion of MSF's membership. In any event, MSF's rapprochement with the ICRC makes any clear distinction between the two organizations on this point impossible. Yet if there is one episode of recent history that led to criticism within MSF, it was the ICRC's silence about the torture in Abu Ghraib. Many MSF members, including the author of this article, believed that the ICRC itself was the source of the leak of its report on Iraqi prisons. There was great disappointment when it transpired that the information came from an employee of the United States administration, for what we had seen as the building of a political relationship of forces turned out in the end to be no more than an accident. ‘We are active in more than 70 countries and we visit more than 460,000 detainees. That's our mission. If we commented publicly on each of our visits, we would no longer have access to prisoners', the ICRC spokesperson explained at the time. No doubt, but it may be assumed that publishing the photographs and disclosing the report's content through indirect channels, as the ICRC could have done discreetly, would have been a strong incentive for the US authorities to take rapid steps, with considerable benefits for the victims. The risk that such practices might have led to curtailment of the ICRC's access must be placed alongside the increase in public esteem, and therefore in subsequent negotiating power, that might have been elicited. Such, at least, is the political risk calculation, defensible in the context described, that we favoured.

Here, too, we must guard against applying this criticism too broadly, because, as has been noted, aid workers have very limited room for manoeuvre when making public denunciations. In Syria, working under the auspices of organizations linked to the opposition, MSF still is not significantly freer in its speech or movements than is the ICRC. Each organization can rightly maintain that the information work carried out by the human rights groups and the media essentially eliminates any moral ambiguity hanging over their organization's presence (with reference to the ICRC-at-Auschwitz paradigm mentioned above). That is to say, they are not participating in an effort to deceive, as everyone knows the reality of the abuses and massacres. Nevertheless, this shows that the ‘strict independence' claimed by the Dunantists must be understood, not as an illusory assertion of sovereignty over their own action, but as a search for a negotiating framework - a quest for acceptable compromises.

Principles - and then what?

MSF and today's ICRC are close in terms of their origins, their culture of action in armed conflict situations, their budget, and the concern that they show for keeping their distance from the political ambitions of the various forces operating in the places where they work. Their relations, which were asymmetrical and ambivalent during MSF's first twenty years of existence, have strengthened since the 1990s, particularly since the 1994 war in Rwanda, when, with MSF working under the emblem and authority of the ICRC in Kigali, they both denounced the genocide taking place. In a gesture of mutual recognition, each one now regards the other as a yardstick against which other humanitarian agencies are measured. While, in each organization's eyes, some of the other's activities do not entirely correspond to its own standards, they are both fully qualified, because of their sustained efforts to improve the quality and effectiveness of their operations, to claim such a leadership position - at the risk, however, of becoming technocratically blind to their errors or to the pernicious effects of their action.

Starting from an approach based on common legal and ethical principles - neutrality, impartiality, and independence - the two organizations take action in accordance with procedures that are sometimes similar and sometimes dissimilar, reflecting, in their differences, the extent of what is possible within their ‘thin moral', in the words of the philosopher Michael Walzer. The task of comparison that was entrusted to me has not been completed; in my view, this would require a detailed examination of comparable programmes implemented in a single context, which would reduce the scope of the analysis to a single operational assessment. However interesting such an exercise might be, it was set aside in favour of a discussion of common principles, which better illustrate positioning choices that differ while deriving from an identical framework. The ‘distributive justice of wartime', which is the two organizations' raison d'être and the basis of their legitimacy, affords them only the illusion of a common idiom, that of the shared principles that they tirelessly put forward. Far from advocating that they abandon these principles outright - they serve a valuable purpose as a compass - we maintain that many other considerations, stemming from different political and operational cultures, play a role in the decision-making process. Since a compass does not show the terrain, it cannot help us to plot any improbable ‘good humanitarian path'. Confusion between the actions or images of MSF and of the ICRC would not be in the interest of either organization, whether we are talking about the procedures for their public statements or their positioning on the ground. Far from seeking to become more like each other in the quest for a mirror image, they, and their counterparts, should keep striving to meet the demand for consistency and practical utility.

Lastly, while critical discussion and internal debate, and the value attached to them, are characteristic of MSF and present in its various sections, they are barely audible in the ICRC. This is a striking contrast between the two organizations.

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To cite this content :
Rony Brauman, Médecins Sans Frontières and the ICRC: matters of principle, 1 May 2013, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/blog/humanitarian-actors-and-practice/medecins-sans-frontieres-and-icrc-matters-principle

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Médecins Sans Frontières and the ICRC: matters of principle

40 ans aux côtés des superflus

Kesaven-02 — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 01:00:00 +0000

Date de publication

11/12/2011

Kesaven-02 Sun, 04/16/2017 - 19:40

Rony Brauman

Rony

Brauman

By the same author

Founded on 21 December 1971 by a group of doctors with the support of the medical journal Tonus, MSF is currently celebrating its 40th anniversary. It is a time for both emotion, which is much needed, and for questioning, which is no less necessary. Created in France, structured in Europe, present in more than 60 countries and awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, MSF is now recognised as a flagship organisation in the world of international aid in the areas of healthcare and emergency relief. As a member of this organisation for 33 years – I had joined initially for only a few months – I'm certainly not the best person to view MSF with the cool eye of an analyst. But let me take the perspective of a player, as subjective as that may be and which is not necessarily that of a propagandist. And let me first point out that during these militaristic times the “right to intervene” – associated with the name of MSF's best-known founder, Bernard Kouchner, and adopted in 2005 under the name "responsibility to protect" – was put into effect in Libya by NATO. Some MSF founders can celebrate this anniversary as a victory.

In a previous column, I wrote what I thought about "humanitarian neo-Leninism", a remedy that causes more harm than good1 . I'm only bringing this up to highlight one of the most problematic aspects of humanitarian work in the multimedia age, namely the reduction of politics to the conflict between the light of democratic compassion and the darkness of despotic violence. Manichaeism, a religious doctrine dating to the 3rd century, was certainly able to exist without waiting for modern humanitarianism, but it seems to be enjoying a renewed vigour that is not unfamiliar to us humanitarians. That drones and jet fighters have become the instruments of contemporary humanitarian aid is a strange anniversary gift for an association that has long made advocacy and denunciation a cornerstone of its work.

Let me be clear that it is not my aim to exclusively attack any one example of Western neoimperialism. Sri Lanka, for example, skilfully exploited "rescuer" rhetoric during the deadly assault against the LTTE guerrillas' last remaining bases two years ago. The government presented it as a humanitarian operation, the largest ever conducted to liberate and rescue a civilian population held hostage by the LTTE. MSF's silence in the face of such butchery, which, by the way, was denounced by the United Nations, prompted intense debate within the organisation. For some, the risk of expulsion had to be avoided at all costs while others felt the need to confront the issue head on.

Many questions are raised, many objections come up as we review the history of an association which has made violence and suffering the focus of its work. How can we talk about success when we are so involved in the world's misfortunes? It is not cynical, however, to view our history from the perspective of success. Neither certain parties' opportunistic use of rhetoric and humanitarian imagery, nor our own errors and blindness, should obscure what our teams manage to accomplish day after day at their various sites in the grip of war, disease and poverty. The ambiguity of humanitarian work and the mistakes they give rise to are not failings but the fog and uncertainty of the real world. Free to choose and also to refuse thanks to its financial independence, MSF can answer for both its actions and failures. And it does so, at the risk of tarnishing its image by revealing the compromises and prevarications that are the rule in our work2 – not only to avoid the false consciousness of a blameless rescuer but especially because we believe this is an essential condition if we are to identify with our work.

To cite this content :
Rony Brauman, 40 years helping the disregarded, 11 December 2011, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/publications/humanitarian-actors-and-practice/40-years-helping-disregarded

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40 years helping the disregarded

Kit Culture

babayaga — Mon, 25 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Date de publication

25/05/2009

Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/01/1970 - 01:00

logistics

standardization

Jean-Hervé Jézéquel

Jean-Hervé

Jézéquel

Deputy Project Director for West Africa at International Crisis Group.

Jean-Hervé Jézéquel first worked as a Consultant for Crisis Group in Guinea in 2003, before joining as the Senior Analyst for the Sahel region in March 2013. He has also worked as a Field Coordinator in Liberia, a West Africa Researcher and a Research Director, for Médecins sans Frontières.

By the same author

Analyzing the same event from different perspectives is a favourite trick of historians to spice up their narratives. It also works pretty well to describe humanitarian interventions.

During the last round of fighting in North Kivu, a UN agency proudly announced on its website that it had sent 60 metric tons of essential drugs to DRC. This gift from the Norwegian and Italian governments allowed the UN agency to assist hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people through the delivery of emergency medical kits.

Yet this story appears somewhat different when described by actors in the field. According to various Congolese sources, a UN team had made a quick visit to a health centre during the fighting in North Kivu. They delivered a medical kit to the Congolese staff, asked them to sign on a receipt and left as quickly as they had appeared. As they had not been informed of the exact contents of the kit, the Congolese staff were suspicious. They decided not to open the kit, fearing that they might be accused them of misappropriation. They sent a delegation to the provincial Ministry of Health in Goma to get official instructions. In return, the Ministry sent staff on site to officially open the emergency kit. This 'committee' opened the box to discover that the instructions were written in a strange European language (Norwegian?) that nobody understood. Fortunately, medical terminology is often derived from Latin and the Congolese medical staff managed to decipher most of the contents. They were happy but a little bit baffled by some of the items: among other things, this emergency kit contained treatment against diabetes as well as antimalarial drugs that the Congolese authorities had excluded from their national protocol a few years ago... at the request of the same UN agency that had now just delivered them.

This story is not just another example intended to stress the inadequacy of humanitarian assistance. It is an attempt to draw attention to what could be referred to as kit culture's effect. Kits are without any doubt very useful logistical tools that facilitate humanitarian interventions. Yet, in Congo as well as many other places, the Kit is has become than a tool, it is increasingly the embodiment of THE humanitarian gesture itself, as if dropping a kit constitutes the raison d'être of humanitarian interventions. Indeed the delivering of kits is part of (and facilitates) a broader dynamic of bureaucratization through which humanitarian assistance is increasingly standardized, quantified, publicized and adjusted to global rules of reporting and accountability. We should not throw away humanitarian kits but we should definitely be more alert to the unexpected impact of technical progress in the humanitarian field. And of course...Needless to say, UN agencies are not the only actors who fall into the kit culture's pitfall.

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To cite this content :
Jean-Hervé Jézéquel, Kit Culture, 25 May 2009, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/blog/humanitarian-actors-and-practice/kit-culture

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Kit Culture

MSF et la protection : une question réglée ?

Charlene-01 — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Date de publication

01/04/2008

Charlene-01 Tue, 04/01/2008 - 02:00

protection