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In the eyes of Rony Brauman of Médecins sans Frontières, wars are always triggered in the name of morality. Today's " humanitarian" interventions are little more than new moral crusades-and their justifications are based on lies. There are plenty of examples of hawkish propaganda in recent years: Saddam Hussein's mythical weapons of mass destruction; a dubious genocide in Kosovo; doctored figures of famine in Somalia; and a fake massacre of protesters in Libya. Without being militantly non-interventionist, Brauman is extremely suspicious of the thirst for war displayed by many of today's world leaders, the consequences of which are devastating. He is critical of international peacekeeping bodies and tribunals: the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court represent, for him, the interests of the powerful before all else. Basing his argument on the criteria for a " just war," Brauman criticizes the Western obsession with imposing democratic values by force. In this sober and convincing book, he thoroughly dismantles the notion of the justness of " humanitarian wars."
Since Somalia, the international community has found itself changing its view of humanitarian intervention. Operations designed to alleviate suffering and achieve peace sometimes produce damaging results. The United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, military and civilian agencies alike find themselves in the midst of confusion and weakness where what they seek are clarity and stability. Competing needs, rights, and values can obscure even the best international efforts to quell violence and assuage crises of poverty. More attention must be paid to the complexity of issues and moral dilemmas involved. This volume of original essays by international policy leaders, practitioners, and sch...
A fresh look at two centuries of humanitarian history through a moral economy approach focusing on appeals, allocation, and accounting.
From international NGOs to UN agencies, from donors to observers of humanitarianism, opinion is unanimous: in a context of the alleged "clash of civilizations", our "humanitarian space" is shrinking. Put another way, the freedom of action and of speech of humanitarians is being eroded due to the radicalisation of conflicts and the reaffirmation of state sovereignty over aid actors and policies. The purpose of this book is to challenge this assumption through an analysis of the events that have marked MSF's history since 2003 (when MSF published its first general work on humanitarian action and its relationships with governments). It addresses the evolution of humanitarian goals, the resistan...
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...
Since Somalia, the international community has found itself changing its view of humanitarian intervention. Operations designed to alleviate suffering and achieve peace sometimes produce damaging results. The United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, military and civilian agencies alike find themselves in the midst of confusion and weakness where what they seek are clarity and stability. Competing needs, rights, and values can obscure even the best international efforts to quell violence and assuage crises of poverty. More attention must be paid to the complexity of issues and moral dilemmas involved. This volume of original essays by international policy leaders, practitioners, and sch...
"Support structures is a manual for what bears, sustains, props and holds up. It is the culminations of many endeavours. The first is the collaborative project "Support Structures" by Céline Condorelli and Gavin Wade from 2003-2009. The second is a critical enquiry by Condorelli that exposes an almost complete absence of literature or theory of what constitutes "support". This book is itself articulated as a supporting structure, a manual for engagement in and with its subject, which attempts both functionally and structurally to operate much like it." -- Foreword.
This book ranges from refugee camps in Palestine to halting sites of the Irish Travellers and elsewhere in search of a new politics practiced through performance. Written through the intersection of performance and philosophy, the book refutes neoliberalism's depoliticizing and strategic uses of humanitarianism, human rights, and development.
Groundbreaking exploration of the philosophy underpinning Western humanitarian intervention The notion of a humanitarian “lesser evil” has become instrumental in justifying the West’s military adventures. It informs obscene calculations determining how much collateral damage is permissible in conflict. It determines the minimum requirements of survival imposed upon an occupied territory. As Eyal Weizman shows in this brilliant exploration of forensic architecture, this can be seen in particular in the regime imposed upon Gaza by the state of Israel. Examining the damage following the 2010 bombardment, he pieces together the systematic process of destruction, revealing the political atrocity within the debris. The way he gathers together the evidence forces us to rethink our understanding of justice and human rights in the modern world.
Groundbreaking exploration of the philosophy underpinning Western humanitarian intervention The principle of the “lesser evil”—the acceptability of pursuing one exceptional course of action in order to prevent a greater injustice—has long been a cornerstone of Western ethical philosophy. From its roots in classical ethics and Christian theology, to Hannah Arendt’s exploration of the work of the Jewish Councils during the Nazi regime, Weizman explores its development in three key transformations of the problem: the defining intervention of Médecins Sans Frontières in mid-1980s Ethiopia; the separation wall in Israel-Palestine; and international and human rights law in Bosnia, Gaza and Iraq. Drawing on a wealth of new research, Weizman charts the latest manifestation of this age-old idea. In doing so he shows how military and political intervention acquired a new “humanitarian” acceptability and legality in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.