Humanitarian medicine is intented for marginalized people, hit by a crisis or deprived of access to medical care. This book helps us understand how the specificity of humanitarian medicine stems from real-life situations, more than from the medical act in itself.
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.
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.
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)
Marc Le Pape, sociologist and member of MSF-Crash Scientific Committee, is interviewed by Boris Martin, Editor-in-chief of Alternatives Humanitaires, about his and Jean-Hervé Bradol's latest book "Humanitarian aid, genocide and mass killings: MSF, the Rwandan experience (1982-1977)".
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.
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.
Interview with Jean-Hervé Bradol and Marc Le Pape. The book is published by Manchester University Press and will be out in January 2017.
MSF Crash's directors of studies, Rony Brauman and Michaël Neuman talk about MSF's refugee camp experience.
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.
