Download or read book MSF and Srebrenica 1993 2003 written by Laurence Binet and published by Médecins Sans Frontières. This book was released on 2015-06-01 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The case study ‘MSF and Srebrenica 1993-2003’ explores the constraints and dilemmas raised when MSF spoke out about the events that occurred in Srebrenica’s Muslim enclave. The enclave was besieged in 1993 and then seized by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995. 8,000 men over the age of 16 were massacred, despite the presence of United Nations peacekeeping forces supposedly providing protection in what had been declared a ‘security zone’. With teams present in the enclave throughout, Médecins Sans Frontières testified to what happened and called on the various countries involved to hold inquiries and establish where military and political responsibility lay for the fall of the enclave and abandon of the people of Srebrenica. By agreeing to provide a minimally acceptable level of relief to a besieged population, wasn’t MSF contributing to the strategy of the besieging troops while concurrently softening their image? Could MSF call for the evacuation of civilians who wished to leave thereby risking abetting the ethnic cleansing policy of the besieging army? Having trusted the UN Protection Force’s commitment to protect the enclave and its population, must MSF accept partial culpability for or complicity in the UN’s abandonment of the enclave and the ensuing massacre of the population? Didn’t MSF give the population the false impression that it would be safe as long as the team was present? Is it the role of a humanitarian medical organisation to issue an appeal for an investigative parliamentary commission then, once it is established, to actively monitor it with a critical eye? Contrarily, how can MSF not try to understand the circumstances and responsibilities, which, at the global level, led to the abandonment and massacre of a population to which its teams had provided relief? Can MSF be content with calling for a parliamentary investigation without ensuring that it asks the types of questions likely to elicit answers that shed light on the events? Should Srebrenica be viewed as an accident of history or as a clear-cut example of the impossibility of protecting populations under international mandates established by the UN?

Download or read book MSF and the war in the former Yugoslavia 1991 2003 written by Laurence Binet and published by Médecins Sans Frontières. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 14 December 1995, the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords ended the separatist war in former Yugoslavia and created the State of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Twenty years on, MSF reveals how the organization spoke out about a conflict marked by ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, targeted assaults of humanitarian organizations and individuals, and the unfulfilled promises by the International Community. MSF claimed that mass distributions of aid were simply a ‘humanitarian alibi’ of the international community that lacked the will to take political and military measures to end the conflict. Some MSF leaders even called for an armed intervention against the Bosnian-Serb artillery bombing Sarajevo. In December 1992, MSF published a report describing the Bosnian Serb policy of ethnic cleansing. They denounced the Bosnian Serbs for hindering supplies to Srebrenica and Gorazde Muslim besieged enclaves. They raised awareness and denounced the lack of protection of the population when the enclaves came under attack in 1994 and 1995 despite being declared safe zones by the UN. In August 1995, MSF denounced a lack of access to the Serb refugees and from 2000, MSF advocated for parliamentary commissions to be set up to investigate the military and political responsibilities of the States involved in the Srebrenica crisis. This Speaking Out Case Study explores the variety of questions and dilemmas MSF faced, Among them: to what extent should MSF risk the lives of its staff in order to operate in conflict zones? Should MSF condemn obstacles set up to limit the access to the population if it meant no longer having any access at all? Should MSF denounce the fact that humanitarian aid was presented by the international political leaders as the only solution to the conflict and call for military force, an action that would lead to loss of human life?

Download or read book MSF and THE ROHINGYA 1992 2014 written by Laurence BINET and published by Médecins Sans Frontières. This book was released on 2020-11-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book M decins Sans Fronti res Evolution of an International Movement Associative History 1971 2011 written by Laurence Binet and published by Médecins Sans Frontières. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was founded in 1971, it was founded with both international and associative dimensions. International because it wouldn’t have made sense for MSF France, on its own, to aid threatened populations around the world and associative because civil law in France, especially the 1901 law governing charitable bodies, was perfectly suited to the MSF organisation’s guiding precepts, which are democratic and selfless in nature. Yet, MSF’s development from a small, purely French organisation to an international associative movement was never carefully planned or particularly smooth. MSF’s development was the result of various compromises between the movement’s leaders, with their individual agendas, and the integration of fait accomplis when necessary. The evolving modifications were debated at length to ensure that concerns raised were legitimate and that there was agreement for decisions made. The nature and the validity of MSF’s leadership were regularly challenged, as was the question of how MSF should grow while remaining true to its humanitarian precepts. This case study elaborates the history of the MSF movement from inception in 1971 through 2011, when MSF legitimised an international governance system and architecture. The study is divided in two episodes. Episode One reviews MSF’s first three decades (1971-2000). Episode Two is about the challenges of the early 21st, century, from 2001 to 2011.

Download or read book Communicating during Humanitarian Medical Crises written by Marouf Hasian and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-03-18 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Promise and Perils of " Silence" or " Temoignage" During Humanitarian Crises provides readers with a nuanced study of what happens when historical and 21st century medical humanitarian communities, armed with their idealistic rhetorics, choose whether to speak out or remain silent during various military or medical crises. The author uses a series of case studies from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century to illustrate the politicized nature of these decisions. Unlike some that focus on the prescriptive need to follow certain universal medical humanitarian principles during crises, this book highlights the precarious nature of what some scholars call “medical advocacy/witnessing” or what the French call “témoignage.” The author argues that regardless of whether we are talking about lack of action during colonial crises or the Holocaust, it is oftentimes the lack of political will that determines how like “neutrality” or “impartiality” are interpreted. The book also acquaints readers with some of the challenges that have been recently posed to the “new” humanitarian Doctors Without Borders personnel, who have witnessed the targeting of medical hospitals and clinics. What researchers call the weaponization of medical care affects many in need living in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, or Syria. The author concludes the book by underscoring the point that it is the presence or absence of political will, and not the inherent epistemic value of medical humanitarian principles, that dictates when this advocacy succeeds or fails.

Download or read book British Foreign Policy in former Yugoslavia 1989 1999 written by John P McCumiskey and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-12-06 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British Foreign Policy in former Yugoslavia 1989-1999: Brotherhood and Unity Lost, gives a broad analysis of Britain’s foreign policy during the wars of Yugoslav secessions from 1992 to 1999. Normative approaches to Britain’s foreign policy during this period ‘have tended to place it’ in to two halves. The notion, there was a new morality in Britain’s foreign policy appeared after New Labour‘s election landslide on 1 May 1997. Robin Cook declared shortly after the victory there would be an ‘ethical dimension’ to Labour‘s foreign policy, and this appeared to chart new territory. As a result, this would be a departure from what former US Assistant Secretary of State, James Rubin, believed was the hyper-realism of the traditional British kind under British Prime Minister, John Major. The book includes interviews with key actors, provides new archive material and re-examines claims by the ‘New Orthodoxy’ which became prevalent after 1999.

Download or read book Advocacy and Change in International Organizations written by Kseniya Oksamytna and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-09 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do international organizations change? Many organizations expand into new areas or abandon programmes of work. Advocacy and Change in International Organizations argues that they do so not only at the collective direction of member states. Advocacy is a crucial but overlooked source of change in international organizations. Different actors can advocate for change: national diplomats, international bureaucrats, external experts, or civil society activists. They can use one of three advocacy strategies: social pressure, persuasion, and 'authority talk'. The success of each strategy depends on the presence of favourable conditions related to characteristics of advocates, targets, issues, and context. Institutionalization of new issues in international organizations as a multi-stage process, often accompanied by contestation. This book demonstrates how the advocacy-focused framework explains the origins of three workstreams of contemporary UN peacekeeping operations: communication, protection, and reconstruction. The issue of strategic communications was promoted by UN officials through the strategy of persuasion. Protection of civilians emerged due to a partially successful social influence campaign by a coalition of elected Security Council members and a subsequent (and successful) persuasion efforts by Canada. Quick impact projects entered peacekeepers' practice as the result of 'authority talk' by an expert panel. The three issues illustrate the diversity of pathways to change in international organizations, representing the top-down, bottom-up, and outside-in pathways. Moreover, they have achieved different degrees of institutionalization in UN's policies, structures, and frameworks: protection of civilians is the most institutionalized, as evidenced by measures to hold peacekeepers accountable for non-implementation, while quick impact projects are the least institutionalized.

Download or read book Political Social and Religious Studies of the Balkans written by General Editor: Raphael Israeli, Jerusalem, Israel and published by Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency. This book was released on 2021-01-08 with total page 850 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the end of the Bosnia War in 1995, a tradition was embraced by the West of vilifying the Serbs as the villains, and the Muslims as their victims. This necessitated the military intervention of the U.S. and NATO on the Muslim side, which caused an untold travesty of justice to the Serbs. For indeed, there was enough blame to go around to condemn all parties in that war, including Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, of committing massacres and huge abuses of the other parties. To single out the Serbs as the bad guys simply distorts the facts. This collective volume, which is the product of a Commission of Inquiry, worked 18 months on this project, redressing the balance based on a meticulous and well-documented report about the process of this inquiry, step by step.

Download or read book The Art of Verbal Warfare written by Rik Smits and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-08-08 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A funny and fascinating exploration of our reliance upon swear words, insults, and the artfully placed expletive, damn it. We use salty or artful language to win arguments, slander, cheat, and bully, as well as to express feelings of joy or frustration by swearing or “blowing off steam.” Rik Smits delves into the magic of oaths and profanity, art and advertising, the lure of fake news and propaganda, as well as invective and off-color jokes the world over. This book shows why conversation dies in crowded elevators and what drives us to curse at our laptops. The Art of Verbal Warfare is, when all is said and done, the story of how we can get through life without coming to physical blows.

Download or read book In Praise of Blood written by Judi Rever and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A FINALIST FOR THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE: A stunning work of investigative reporting by a Canadian journalist who has risked her own life to bring us a deeply disturbing history of the Rwandan genocide that takes the true measure of Rwandan head of state Paul Kagame. Through unparalleled interviews with RPF defectors, former soldiers and atrocity survivors, supported by documents leaked from a UN court, Judi Rever brings us the complete history of the Rwandan genocide. Considered by the international community to be the saviours who ended the Hutu slaughter of innocent Tutsis, Kagame and his rebel forces were also killing, in quiet and in the dark, as ruthlessly as the Hutu genocidaire were killing in daylight. The reason why the larger world community hasn't recognized this truth? Kagame and his top commanders effectively covered their tracks and, post-genocide, rallied world guilt and played the heroes in order to attract funds to rebuild Rwanda and to maintain and extend the Tutsi sphere of influence in the region. Judi Rever, who has followed the story since 1997, has marshalled irrefutable evidence to show that Kagame's own troops shot down the presidential plane on April 6, 1994--the act that put the match to the genocidal flame. And she proves, without a shadow of doubt, that as Kagame and his forces slowly advanced on the capital of Kigali, they were ethnically cleansing the country of Hutu men, women and children in order that returning Tutsi settlers, displaced since the early '60s, would have homes and land. This book is heartbreaking, chilling and necessary.

Download or read book War Hospital written by Sheri Lee Fink and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2004-12-14 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In April 1992, a handful of young physicians, not one of them a surgeon, was trapped along with 50,000 men, women, and children in the embattled enclave of Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. There the doctors faced the most intense professional, ethical, and personal predicaments of their lives. Drawing on extensive interviews, documents, and recorded materials she collected over four and a half years, doctor and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sheri Fink tells the harrowing--and ultimately enlightening--story of these physicians and the three who try to help them: an idealistic internist from Doctors without Borders, who hopes that interposition of international aid workers will help prevent a massacre; an aspiring Bosnian surgeon willing to walk through minefields to reach the civilian wounded; and a Serb doctor on the opposite side of the front line with the army that is intent on destroying his former colleagues. With limited resources and a makeshift hospital overflowing with patients, how can these doctors decide who to save and who to let die? Will their duty to treat patients come into conflict with their own struggle to survive? And are there times when medical and humanitarian aid ironically prolong war and human suffering rather than helping to relieve it?

Download or read book Customary International Humanitarian Law written by Jean-Marie Henckaerts and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-03 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Customary International Humanitarian Law, Volume I: Rules is a comprehensive analysis of the customary rules of international humanitarian law applicable in international and non-international armed conflicts. In the absence of ratifications of important treaties in this area, this is clearly a publication of major importance, carried out at the express request of the international community. In so doing, this study identifies the common core of international humanitarian law binding on all parties to all armed conflicts. Comment Don:RWI.

Download or read book Humanitarian Military Intervention written by Taylor B. Seybolt and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2007 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military intervention in a conflict without a reasonable prospect of success is unjustifiable, especially when it is done in the name of humanity. Couched in the debate on the responsibility to protect civilians from violence and drawing on traditional 'just war' principles, the centralpremise of this book is that humanitarian military intervention can be justified as a policy option only if decision makers can be reasonably sure that intervention will do more good than harm. This book asks, 'Have past humanitarian military interventions been successful?' It defines success as saving lives and sets out a methodology for estimating the number of lives saved by a particular military intervention. Analysis of 17 military operations in six conflict areas that were thedefining cases of the 1990s-northern Iraq after the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor-shows that the majority were successful by this measure. In every conflict studied, however, some military interventions succeeded while others failed, raising the question, 'Why have some past interventions been more successful than others?' This book argues that the central factors determining whether a humanitarian intervention succeeds are theobjectives of the intervention and the military strategy employed by the intervening states. Four types of humanitarian military intervention are offered: helping to deliver emergency aid, protecting aid operations, saving the victims of violence and defeating the perpetrators of violence. Thefocus on strategy within these four types allows an exploration of the political and military dimensions of humanitarian intervention and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each of the four types.Humanitarian military intervention is controversial. Scepticism is always in order about the need to use military force because the consequences can be so dire. Yet it has become equally controversial not to intervene when a government subjects its citizens to massive violation of their basic humanrights. This book recognizes the limits of humanitarian intervention but does not shy away from suggesting how military force can save lives in extreme circumstances.

Download or read book From War to Genocide written by André Guichaoua and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2015-12 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive account and analysis of the evolving genocidal violence in Rwanda in 1994, and of the judicial, political, and diplomatic responses to it.

Download or read book Surviving the Bosnian Genocide written by Selma Leydesdorff and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-03 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “valuable oral history,” women who survived the 1995 Srebrenica massacre speak of their lives before, during, and after the Bosnian war (Publishers Weekly). In July 1995, the Army of the Serbian Republic killed some eight thousand Bosnian men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica—the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II. Surviving the Bosnian Genocide recounts the experiences of sixty female survivors who offer their testimony in interviews conducted by Dutch historian Selma Leydesdorff. The women, many of whom still live in refugee camps, talk about their lives before the Bosnian war, the events of the massacre, and the ways they have tried to cope with their fate. Though fragmented by trauma, the women tell of life and survival under extreme conditions, while recalling a time before the war when Muslims, Croats, and Serbs lived together peaceably. By giving them a voice, this book looks beyond the atrocities of that dark time to show the agency of these women during and after the war and their fight to uncover the truth of what happened at Srebrenica and why.

Download or read book World Report 2019 written by Human Rights Watch and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 957 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best country-by-country assessment of human rights. The human rights records of more than ninety countries and territories are put into perspective in Human Rights Watch's signature yearly report. Reflecting extensive investigative work undertaken by Human Rights Watch staff, in close partnership with domestic human rights activists, the annual World Report is an invaluable resource for journalists, diplomats, and citizens, and is a must-read for anyone interested in the fight to protect human rights in every corner of the globe.

Download or read book Humanitarianism in the Modern World written by Norbert Götz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-23 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh look at two centuries of humanitarian history through a moral economy approach focusing on appeals, allocation, and accounting.