migrations

Camp de rétention de Dar El Jebel Michaël Neuman / MSF Opinion

Libya: the forgotten ones

03/02/2020 Michaël Neuman

Michaël Neuman spent ten days in Libya with Médecins Sans Frontières teams working in detention centres for migrants. From his stay, he brings back the following impressions that illustrate the gloomy situation of the people who are held there, for months or years, and the even more difficult situation of all those subject to kidnapping and torture.

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Condition of migrants in Paris Antoine Kremer/MSF Analysis

Médecins Sans Frontières-France: tensions arising from the “Migration” projects

05/07/2019 Michaël Neuman

In the summer of 2015, the French section of Médecins Sans Frontières started aid projects for migrant populations in Greece and France. The launch of these operations was the occasion for lively discussions within the association, both in terms of public positioning (how to justify an intervention in a rich country and not get lost in "political" territory?), and in terms of revising our operating methods, knowing that the primary needs of migrants were not primarily medical. Some people then recalled the association's militant practices in the 1990s, which were sometimes considered as abuses. By retracing the history of the French Mission, Michaël Neuman seeks to understand, with regard to the migration issue, the complex articulation between operational constraints, political positioning and militant practices.  

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Aquarius Forced To End Operations Ikram N'gadi Op-ed

Sea Search and Rescue Operations Outlawed

Le Monde
12/12/2018 Michaël Neuman Mego Terzian

Dont acte, la politique de harcèlement judiciaire, administratif, politique aura eu raison de l’Aquarius, déployé entre 2015 et le milieu de l’année 2018 en mer Méditerranée.
Tribune de Mego Terzian (Médecin, président de Médecins sans frontières) et Michaël Neuman (Directeur d'études au CRASH de MSF) publiée le 07 décembre 2018 dans Le Monde.

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Detention Centres - Tripoli, Libya Guillaume Binet/Myop Op-ed

The state: from sieve to smuggler

09/10/2018 Jean-Hervé Bradol

Numerous politicians, from Daniel Cohn-Bendit to Marine Le Pen and including Emmanuel Macron, denounce what they claim is collusion between organisations helping migrants (humanitarian workers) and smugglers (criminals). One group operates in full public view, the other out of sight, but both are said to be working together to help people illegally cross borders.

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Bourbon Argos: Search and Rescue Operations October 2016 Borja Ruiz Rodriguez/MSF Op-ed

Humanitarian reasons versus political interests

07/11/2018 Rony Brauman

Humanitarian organisations coming to the rescue of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea are kindly required either to watch them drown or to hand them over to human traffickers and torturers. We have seen countless political statements, opinion polls and editorials on the need to take a harder line against African migrants and accusing NGOs of being the accomplices of “smugglers”. We have even heard it said that these NGOs are organising the departures of those aspiring to migrate to Europe coincide with the presence of a rescue ship, making relief workers conscious actors in a criminal enterprise.

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opération de secours Andrew McConnell/Panos Pictures Op-ed

NGOs are not in collusion with smugglers

07/10/2018 Michaël Neuman Thierry Allafort-Duverger

Humanitarian aid organisations carrying out rescues at sea were made into the accomplices of human traffickers. This accusation is as absurd as it is unacceptable. Not only do rescue operations at sea save people from drowning, but they evacuate people in situations of immediate danger in Libya, MSF recalls.

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Un groupe de 150 Syriens traverse la frontière entre la Grèce et la Macédoine. Alessandro Penso Op-ed

Consultations on asylum and immigration bill: MSF denounces ‘‘a fool’s game”

01/12/2018 Michaël Neuman

Abstaining from participation in a meeting taking place this coming Thursday, MSF feels that "government officials have listened politely at best and shown condescension and contempt at worst in response to positions expressed in meetings, op-ed pieces published in the press and questions asked in meetings by NGOs" and do not hide "a policy that is sliding into harsh repression".

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Le camp de La Linière, à Grande Synthe, en Juillet 2016 Charles Habib Analysis

Sheltering, hosting or receiving refugees: the unresolved ambiguities of the La Linière refugee camp

07/05/2017 Michaël Neuman Franck Esnée

Following the dismantlement of the Basroch camp in Grande-Synthe and the resettlement of refugees in the new La Linière camp, in the spring 2016, Michaël Neuman and Franck Esnée wanted to focus their analysis and story on the “camp” – as an object –, its nature and management. This article was originally published in Alternatives Humanitaires #5, in July 2017. 

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