The CRASH team invited you to the screening-debate “France in Rwanda. Guilty neutrality” on Monday 11th of February 2019 from 6 to 8pm, in the 1rst floor room of the 8 rue Saint-Sabin. A documentary film by Robert Genoud and Claudine Vidal (Director Emeritus for research at the CNRS, member of the CRASH scientific committee at MSF), and produced by EUP. Before and after the screening, Claudine Vidal and Jean-Hervé Bradol, both actors of MSF mobilization between 1994 and 1998 launched the discussion.

Le 15 octobre 2018, Fabrice Weissman est intervenu dans Les 10 heures de l'éthique 2018, journée organisée par l’Espace Ethique. Dans sa présentation, il dresse une critique du discours dominant des organismes d’aide sur les principes humanitaires auquel il propose de substituer un questionnement éthique sur les politiques d’assistance.  

Bombardements de structures civiles (notamment des hôpitaux), situation sociale et économique catastrophique, malnutrition élevée, le Yémen est depuis mars 2015 le terrain d’un affrontement violent aux composantes multiples. . Débat avec la grand reporter Manon Quérouil-Bruneel, Marc Goutalier, politologue et consultant à l'Observatoire des Pays Arabes et Michaël Neuman, directeur d'études pour Médecins Sans Frontières.

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.

Rony Brauman takes a critical look at "humanitarian wars" and argues for political solutions that could include Islamists. He recently published "Humanitarian Wars? Lies and intox "(Textuel, 2018). This interview was published on July 03, 2018 in l'Opinion.

Tomorrow’s war?  Bertrand Badie is pessimistic given the extremely high tension in the Middle East. Modern conflicts in the region are defined by their uncertain, composite and heterogeneous nature, as well as by their permanence, as there are no winners and no losers. The situation can be interpreted vertically as a “superposition of logics of conflict” and horizontally as an “aggregate of logics of coalition”. Bertrand Badie explained that a conflict situation is really dangerous when it combines several logics of conflict and several logics of alliance, making it virtually impossible to reach a compromise. Today, we can distinguish fives layers of conflict in the Middle East, a level of superposition never previously attained, according to this specialist in international relations.

La guerre humanitaire sonne comme un oxymore. Dans Guerres humanitaires ? Mensonges et Intox, cette longue interview avec Régis Meyran, Rony Brauman réfléchit notamment à ce que peut et doit être aujourd’hui la guerre humanitaire, dans la continuité du « droit d’ingérence » tel qu’il fut théorisé par Mario Bettati et Bernard Kouchner avec la fin de la guerre froide, puis de « la responsabilité de protéger » telle qu’elle fut élaborée en 2000 par Kofi Annan, alors secrétaire général de l’ONU. 

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.

The publication of the journalist Judi Rever’s book, In Praise of Blood, on the crimes committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s armed rebellion has rekindled discussion over the existence of a “double genocide”, one committed against the Tutsis under the orders of Rwanda’s interim government which took power in April 1994 following the assassination of President Habyarimana, and the other against the Hutus by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) which seized power in July 1994. There is little or no controversy about the reality of the genocide of the Tutsis in the world of Rwandan studies, but the claim that the Hutus were in turn victims of genocide sparks reactions as violent as they are confused. The cause of this confusion can be found in the different definitions of a term used in at least three fields: history, law and politics.

Voici une recension du livre de Jean-Hervé Bradol et Marc Le Pape, Génocide et crimes de masse. L'expérience rwandaise de MSF 1982-1997 (CNRS éditions, 2017), rédigée par Clara Egger dans la Revue française de science politique en avril 2018.

Le 6 mars 2018, l'équipe du Crash vous a convié à une conférence-débat en présence de Rony Brauman, pour la sortie de "Guerres humanitaires ? Mensonges et Intox", et Michel Feher, philosophe. Cette rencontre était animée par Michaël Neuman.

Rony Brauman has just published “Guerres humanitaires ? Mensonges et intox”. This book, a collection of interviews co-authored with Régis Meyran, explores a number of recent armed interventions that have all shared the goal of saving lives. Reviewing conflicts in Somalia, Libya, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, Brauman discusses the reasons advanced for justifying these wars and the accompanying lies.