War and humanitarianism

   This reading list gathers articles and videos published between February and June 2024.

Following a series of coups d'état in recent years in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, the Sahel region is undergoing a major redefinition. In a context of high insecurity, what are the possibilities for accessing populations? What are the conditions under which our teams are operating, and can we do more? This interview with Hamadoun Dicko, who is in charge of access issues in the Sahel for MSF, was originally published association's website of MSF-France.

The rehabilitation of international humanitarian law (IHL) has become a priority for those who think that the horrors of contemporary wars are largely due to the blurring of the distinction between civilians and combatants and for those who think that campaigning for the respect of IHL could result in more civilised wars. Similarly, respect for humanitarian principles is still seen by many as the best tool available to protect the safety of aid workers. In this text, I argue that both assumptions are misled. The distinction between civilians and combatants, a cornerstone of IHL, has been blurred in practice since the late nineteenth century. In addition, humanitarian agencies claiming to be ‘principled’ have been victims of attacks as much as others. History and current practice tell us that neither IHL nor humanitarian principles provide safety or can guide our decisions. Accepting their symbolic value, rather than their unrealised potential to protect and solve operational dilemmas, would free humanitarian agencies from endless speculations.

We were pleased to welcome Pierre Hazan, author of the book Négocier avec le diable. La médiation dans les conflits armés for a conference and debate on Thursday December 15th, 2022, 18:30, at MSF (34 avenue Jean Jaurès, 75019 Paris). The conference was livestreamed and translated simultaneously to English.

Conference and debate, May 17th, 2022, from 18:30 to 20:30 (Paris time), MSF (14-34 avenue Jean Jaurès, 75019 Paris). The conference was livestreamed and translated simultaneously to English.

In a country with a solid medical infrastructure and faced with a large-scale international mobilisation, what is the place of MSF in Ukraine and beyond? "We are not currently in the front line of emergency care provision," write Thierry Allafort Duverger and Michael Neuman, who see our work in limited areas, particularly with those "left behind," and in the longer term.

The film Empire of Silence, directed by Thierry Michel, examines the massacres committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1996 to the present. In this blog, Marc Le Pape introduces the film’s structure, some of the principal witnesses to the mass executions and some of the military and political actors responsible for them, and Congolese reactions to their impunity.

The members of the Crash team were happy to welcome you all to an online conference-debate with anthropologist Vanja Kovačič, on Thursday 17th of February, at 6:30PM. The conference was in English and simultaneously translated into French. The author introduced her recently-published book "Reconstructing lives Victims of war in the Middle East and Médecins Sans Frontières" (Manchester University Press, translated in French and Arabic.)  

The comic book "Le Grand Voyage d'Alice" was drawn by Gaspard Talmasse and published by La boîte à bulles on November 17th. The preface of this comic book was written by Dr. Jean-Hervé Bradol, former president of MSF and director of studies at the Reflection center of MSF (MSF-Crash). The book won the MSF prize at the Carnet de voyages Festival in Clermont-Ferrand, held from November 19th to the 21st.