CRASH - Fondation Médecins Sans Frontières

The appointment of David Miliband as president and CEO by a major relief agency is another nail in the coffin to claims of humanitarian independence. As a native European who has spent decades negotiating with warring parties around the world, I know all too well the dangers of being perceived as a ...

While European Union members are debating the lifting of arms embargo on Syria, populations living in opposition held territories continue to be severed from desperately needed humanitarian aid. Yet, there is a controversy among aid agencies on the best ways to scale up relief activities in Syria.. ...

Tensai, United States What are your tangible suggestions for improving negotiations with Syrian government for cross border access, and why do you believe that greater pressure from OCHA and ICRC would yield results?­ With regard to the question of access, the main challenge faced by aid organ ...

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the ICRC (1863-2013) and in light of the recently launched issue of the Review on "The future of humanitarian action", the Harvard Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR) and the International Review of the Red Cross are pleased to co- ...

What do the Syrian National Coalition, a foreign jihadi group, a Gulf State and the Iranian and American governments all have in common? All are providing varying degrees of 'humanitarian' aid to the side they support in the Syrian conflict, but none are able to curtail the immense suffering alone ...

On January 8th, nine Nigerians, all working on the poliomyelitis vaccination campaign, were murdered in Kano, in the north of the country. A few weeks before, several Pakistani (nine in December, seven in January), again members of poliomyelitis vaccination teams, were also killed. These barbari ...

Discussions on the merits of remote control management of humanitarian projects have been particularly intense over the last few years. MSF is not an exception and we are pleased to share this contribution published in Humanitarian Exchange Magazine (January 2013, No. 56) by Joe Belliveau, the ope ...

In June, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) opened a hospital in the Idlib region in northern Syria, an area under rebel control. Located behind the front lines, the hospital has 15 beds and a staff of approximately 50, including 10 international MSF workers. Designed to perform ...

Last October, the Israeli Minister of Defence resolved under judicial order to declassify documents dating from January 2008. These archives contain the implementation details of the embargo imposed on Gaza in 2007, following Hamas' rise to power. They specify that only essential items and humanita ...

The humanitarian vocation has been defined as bringing "a measure of humanity, always insufficient, into situations that should not exist" (Rieff, 2002 p. 19). This definition raises three important considerations. The first is humanity. As MSF aid workers, the measure of humanity that we provide i ...

LA CROIX: What are the humanitarian needs of people living near Alep? Jean-Hervé Bradol: The priority remains treating the uninterrupted flow of the wounded. To date, Syrian medical staff have been providing their care through a network of private hospitals. These semi-clandestine centres treat ...

On 19th of September, PHAP hosted a discussion on the compromises and negotiations the humanitarian aid community must contend with during crisis situations with Michael Neuman and Antonio Donini... ...

On 4th August 2006, 17 Sri Lankans working for Action Contre la Faim (Action against Hunger/ACF) and all wearing the NGO's tee-shirt were executed inside their own compound, the same day Sri Lankan government forces reclaimed control of the town of Muttur which had fallen into rebel hands on August ...

Epidemiological studies estimate that nearly nine million people were suffering from active tuberculosis (TB) in 2010, causing upwards of one and a half million deaths. More than 90% of these deaths took place in low- or middle-income countries, thus reinforcing an old idea that TB and poverty are ...

This article is about humanitarian exoticism and culturalist convictions: those to which members of NGOs currently adhere. They become apparent when NGO workers, motivated by empathy or the desire to explain certain types of behaviour, attempt to find cultural traits that are characteristic of the ...

Two operational situations have recently caused Médecins Sans Frontières to confront the question of torture and the instrumentalisation of medicine by those who practise it. The organisation suspended its activities in Libya at the detention centres in Misrata in January, having concluded that its ...

On January 26, the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hosted a discussion on the compromises and negotiations the humanitarian aid community must contend with during crisis situations. Michael Neuman, research director with the ...

In "Wartime rapes: men, too", I discussed an article, "The rape of men", by Will Storr published in The Observer on 17 July 2011 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/17/the-rape-of-men). The newspaper summarises the article as follows: "In this harrowing report, Will Storr travels to Uganda ...

Two scientific studies published last year confirmed the origin of the cholera epidemic that struck Haiti in October 2010. It was indeed caused by massive amounts of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae in the Artibonite river delta, originating from the sewage in the Minustah soldiers' camp. Before being ...

In a report titled "A Dangerous Delay", Oxfam and Save the Children rebuke everyone - governments, humanitarian organisations, the United Nations - who participated in the humanitarian response to the food crisis that struck the Horn of Africa in recent months. The subtitle says it all, highlightin ...

Since the beginning of the 2000s, a number of English-language researchers have regularly asked the following question: why do international aid organisations (United Nations agencies and NGOs) pay so little attention to rapes of men and boys committed during armed conflicts?... ...

From international NGOs to UN agencies, from donors to observers of humanitarianism, opinion is unanimous: in a context of the alleged ‘clash of civilisations', our ‘humanitarian space' is shrinking. Put another way, the freedom of action and of speech of humanitarians is being eroded due to the ra ...

For the past several months, news about food shortages and famines affecting large segments of the East African population have been fueling donation appeals from major public and private aid organizations. Low rainfall and - in Somalia's case - recent stirrings in the 20-year-old civil war explain ...

Reporting on her meeting in January 2010 with M. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the then UN special representative for Somalia - Ambassador Susan Rice noted in a leaked diplomatic cable posted by Wikileaks: "(Ould-Abdallah), noted the high number of foreign fighters who have joined the armed opposition, in ...

The United Nations announces a famine and that 12.4 million people are threatened by drought in the Horn of Africa. Radio and television repeatedly broadcast an appeal for donations to UNICEF, brandishing disturbing figures. Oxfam accuses the French government of being tight-fisted.  Rony Brauman q ...

One year after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, a number of observers and actors are questioning the international aid : reconstruction is at a standstill, homeless people are still facing the same situation and the deadly cholera epidemic reminds us that international aid has not helped to improv ...

The main objective of the United Nations Development Millennium Goals ¬- a consensus if ever there was one - is to end poverty. Wiping out illiteracy, ensuring access to safe drinking water and education, and reducing maternal and child mortality are seemingly unarguable aims. And indeed, one can a ...

For several weeks now the international press has been announcing the report to be published on 1st October by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) describing the human rights violations in DRC between 1993 and 2003... ...

The United Nations has again raised the question of the implication of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) - in power in Rwanda since July 1994 - in crimes committed between 1993 and 2003 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A draft UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (HCHR) report circulating on t ...

UN Women was created in July 2010, after intense negotiations between United Nations member states and women's rights organizations. This new structure will take over the mandates of the four UN organizations heretofore devoted to gender issues . It was created in response to the observation that d ...

Using Niger as an example, this text seeks to explore the dilemmas involved in medical responses to child malnutrition when such malnutrition is endemic (strong, permanent presence) and gives rise to seasonal peaks (epidemics) each year. It is this form of malnutrition that continues to have a majo ...

The debate over humanitarian intervention is keeping the northeastern US's left wing intelligentsia in a continual stir, torn between its opposition to imperialism and its devotion to human rights. Progressive interventionists aren't at all pleased with the regular reminders by their opponents that ...

Should military forces be dispatched to a foreign country to save its population from massacre, famine, epidemics, or oppression? Debated in the 1990s as the "right or duty to intervene", the application of military might to rescue populations in danger is today debated as the "responsibility to pr ...

Was the flotilla boarded by the Israeli army on a "humanitarian" or "political" mission? Is there a "humanitarian crisis" in Gaza or not? The answers to the questions everyone has been asking over the last few days say nothing about the situation itself but do tell us something about the already we ...

On March 3, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen sent a direct appeal to the humanitarian community. Acknowledging the limits of military force - "hard power" - in the stabilization and reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, he wants to create a closer partnership with the NGOs, whom he sees ...

Emotions generated by the brutal and murderous character of a natural disaster are not calmed by the feeling that the victims bear a certain responsibility for the origins of the drama—whether because they are engaged in conflict (war), or poor sanitary or economic practices (epidemics, famines). C ...

The article written by my friend Christian Troubé, "The end of humanitarianism without borders?", published by Grotius.fr (June 2009 edition), and based on a description of humanitarianism of ‘yesteryear', strikes a cord with many of today's humanitarian figures. But acknowledged historical facts ( ...

The earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and neighboring areas has led to a worldwide surge of solidarity which we must fully appreciate because no country could face such a disaster on this scale alone... ...

The public arena is once again the stage for discourse and undertakings of Titanic proportions. Some endeavour to adjust our planet's thermostat while others devote themselves to wiping out the scourge of disease... ...

In January 2009, eight regional and national NGOs got together to create the "International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect*." The photo on their website's homepage sets the tone: strapping lads in fatigues, surrounding a group of children against a background of tropical vegetation  - ...

In 2008, Southern Ethiopia was the epicentre of a vast nutritional intervention: more than 100,000 malnourished children received assistance from a mix of actors including both international actors and local health facilities. Given the structural factors affecting levels of malnutrition in this pa ...

According to Wikipedia, "a humanitarian crisis is an event or series of events which carry with them a critical threat to the health, safety or wellbeing of a collectivity, usually over a wide area... ...

Influenza A H1N1 is turning into a pandemic. What will the number of cases be, what groups will be the most affected, how virulent will the virus be, and how long will it last?... ...

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... ...