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

For the publication of the Dictionnaire d'Ethique et de philosophie morale, the former president of Médecins Sans Frontières, Rony Brauman, offers a definition of humanitarian aid. 

With the end of the Cold War came the hope of a "New World Order". yet the tragedies of war and famine continue to dominate our headlines. Humanitarian law is still violated every day. Emergency aid from the United Nations and donor governments remains inadequate and military interventions often fail to restore durable peace.

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

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