Dying to help: A drift towards humanitarian martyrdom
In this piece published by The New Humanitarian, Fabrice Weismann discusses Médecins Sans Frontières' decision to keep working in Afghanistan in the name of a “humanitarian imperative” – and in contradiction of its own security policy. Read the full piece on The New Humanitarian's website.
Covid-19 Reading List - Part 4
After a few months of respite the coronavirus epidemic has resumed its spread. With the second wave becoming a reality in many European countries, the Crash team decided to share some recent reading on the biomedical, political and social aspects of the pandemic in an attempt to shed some light on this tragic Season 2. As in previous editions, some articles are in English and some in French, and they are taken from both mainstream and specialist sources.
The invention of impartiality: the history of a humanitarian principle, from a legal, strategic and algorithmic perspective
The principle of impartiality, which is often reduced to a principle of mathematical distribution, was originally coined by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), at that time on a quest for legitimacy. However, reducing impartiality to a resource distribution algorithm strengthens the overarching position held by non-territorial organisations. This is the theory put forward by the author in his latest book.
Are Covid-19 vaccines really a common good for humanity?
The benefit of the vaccine is only real in the context of a rational and comprehensive biomedical, social, political and economic response, adapted to the local assessment of the health crisis and its impacts.
MSF and kidnappings - the secrets and the dilemmas
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.
From bureaucratic inertia to “policy fragility”
Interview by Helai Hosseini. A first version was published on the website of the MSF France association on 31 July 2020.
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, voices have risen within MSF denouncing the racist and discriminatory nature of our organization. Equal opportunity, they say, is not offered to all our employees. Founded in France in the early 70s by a handful of doctors and journalists, the organization has grown and become international, now employing over 46,000 people around the world, nearly 39,000 of whom are recruited locally. How has MSF’s policy towards its personnel evolved down the years? What is currently being done to fight inequalities? Here is Jean Hervé Bradol’s take on the major phases that have marked MSF’s transformation and the ways in which discussions are engaged today.
