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publications

War and Humanitarianism

How can aid workers help war victims without falling prey to, or becoming complicit with, their persecutors?

Humanitarian organisations have an ambiguous relationship with the violence of war. Seeking to relieve its severity, they contribute to its continuation to varying degrees while subjecting themselves to becoming targets. This collection of studies explores the way aid workers attempt to “humanise” war and face the risk of becoming victims of or complicit in the war.

After days of heavy fighting between Hutu and Tutsi rebels, many Hutu refugees are on the run for the continuing violence. Remco Bohle Opinion

Patrick de Saint-Exupéry: a counterfaiter in Congo

10/27/2021 Mego Terzian

In his book, La Traversée. Une odyssée au cœur de l’Afrique, Patrick de Saint-Exupéry challenges the reality of Hutu Rwandan refugees’ hunt and massacre facing the advancement of the Rwandan Patriotic Army and their Congolese allies in 1996-97. This systematic exercise of denying reality – especially the denial of the Mapping Report written by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1143 pages, published in June 2009) – but also this denial of Human Rights Advocacy groups’ investigations, and those of journalists’ witnesses present in DRC at the time – does not spare MSF’s teams who came to help these refugees in 1996-97. However, as a front-line witness of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, MSF was also one of the organizations noticing the intense violence perpetrated by the new Rwandan political regime in Zaire / DRC back in 1996 and 1997, mostly against a population constituted at three-quarters of women and children. 

 

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Violences extrêmes. Enquêter, secourir, juger République démocratique du Congo, Rwanda, Syrie MSF-Crash Book

Extreme violence. Investigating, Saving, Judging Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Syria

09/23/2021 Laëtitia Atlani-Duault Jean-Hervé Bradol Marc Le Pape

Over the last few years, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Syria have been places where situations of extreme violence took place. As witnesses and investigators of such, the authors of this book shed light on three key-moments that marked these tragic episodes:  the investigation, the intervention of emergency relief teams and the implementation of justice procedures leading to judgement.

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Residents of Al Mishlab, Raqqa returning back home to check their houses and belongings. The houses in Mishlab that still stand are scorched and reduced to piles of rubble, and the streets are full of rubbish and abandoned belongings: cooking pans, broken children’s toys and documents. Shops are burned and looted, and the empty bullet cases underfoot are an indication of the violence of this war. Diala Ghassan/MSF Analysis

Humanitarian Field Practices in the Context of the Syrian Conflict from 2011 to 2018

03/15/2021 Hakim Khaldi

This article was first published in Issue 2, Volume 2 of The Journal of Humanitarian Affairs. 

How can a medical humanitarian organisation deliver emergency assistance in Syria when there is nowhere in the country where civilians, the wounded and their families, medical personnel and aid workers are not targeted? Not in the areas controlled by the government, nor in those held by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or the different rebel groups. So what action could be taken, and how? Remotely or on site? At the very least, we had to decipher the diverging political and military agendas, and then adapt, persist or sometimes just give up. In this article, I will present the full range of methods used to acquire knowledge and obtain information as well as the various networks used to carry out this venture. I will also show how Médecins Sans Frontières’ operations became a balancing act, punctuated by episodes of adapting to the various difficulties encountered.

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Deux femmes responsables de matériel MSF en Iran MSF Analysis

MSF and kidnappings - the secrets and the dilemmas

09/18/2020 Fabrice Weissman

On the 31st January, a symposium was held at Sciences Po in support of Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal, researchers at Sciences Po's Center for International Research (CERI) who were arrested in Iran on June 5, 2019. Roland Marchal was released on 20th March 2020 in exchange for an Iranian engineer detained in France. On 6th May Fariba Adelkhah was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment for "propaganda against the political system of the Islamic Republic, and collusion to undermine national security". The researcher was offered conditional release on condition that she terminates her research, but she refused. 

The symposium brought together diplomats, journalists, humanitarians and researchers, with the aim of "nourishing reflection about prisoners and hostages, from a political, legal and ethical point of view". Fabrice Weissman presented the experience of Médecins Sans Frontières in the face of kidnappings.  
 

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Vue de l'intérieur de l'hôpital MSF à Kunduz, après son bombardement, octobre 2015 Victor J. Blue Analysis

War Breaks Out: Interpreting Violence on Healthcare in the Early Stage of the South Sudanese Civil War

11/22/2019 Xavier Crombé Joanna Kuper

This article seeks to document and analyse violence affecting the provision of healthcare by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and its intended beneficiaries in the early stage of the current civil war in South Sudan. Most NGO accounts and quantitative studies of violent attacks on healthcare tend to limit interpretation of their prime motives to the violation of international norms and deprivation of access to health services. Instead, we provide a detailed narrative, which contextualises violent incidents affecting healthcare, with regard for the dynamics of conflict in South Sudan as well as MSF’s operational decisions, and which combines and contrasts institutional and academic sources with direct testimonies from local MSF personnel and other residents. This approach offers greater insight not only into the circumstances and logics of violence but also into the concrete ways in which healthcare practices adapt in the face of attacks and how these may reveal and put to the test the reciprocal expectations binding international and local health practitioners in crisis situations.

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The shared MSF / ICRC helicopter exchanging passengers in Gumuruk. In the rainy season helicopter is the only reliable way to move around Pibor County in South Sudan. Robin Meldrum/MSF Analysis

Ending the Code of Silence on Abductions of Aid Workers

11/22/2019 Fabrice Weissman

This article discusses the policy of absolute secrecy on abductions adopted by aid organisations. It argues that the information blackout on past and current cases is to a large extent a function of the growing role of private security companies in the aid sector, which promote a ‘pay, don’t say’ policy as a default option, whatever the situation. The article contends that secrecy is as much an impediment to resolving current cases as it is to preventing and managing future ones. It suggests abandoning the policy of strict confidentiality in all circumstances – a policy that is as dangerous as it is easy to apply – in favour of a more nuanced and challenging approach determining how much to publicise ongoing and past cases for each audience, always keeping in mind the interests of current and potential hostages.

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The shared MSF / ICRC helicopter exchanging passengers in Gumuruk. In the rainy season helicopter is the only reliable way to move around Pibor County in South Sudan. Robin Meldrum/MSF Analysis

Oases of Humanity and the Realities of War. Uses and Misuses of International Humanitarian Law and Humanitarian Principles

06/28/2019 Rony Brauman

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.

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