Article

Humanitarian assistance in siege contexts: a contradiction in terms?

Duncan McLean, Maelle L'Homme

This contribution attempts to explore the contradiction between a strategy of exhaustion aiming to establish the conditions for the besieged party to surrender, and the legal and moral imperative of ...

Article

International Humanitarian Law, State sovereignty and the erosion of the humanitarian consensus: the end of humanitarianism?

Duncan McLean

This article examines the dilution of the legal framework on which humanitarian action has historically been based, primarily through the prism of international humanitarian law and related...

Article

Out of sight, out of mind: Europe's increasing pushback against migrants

Duncan McLean

Article

The Politics of Infectious Disease - editors' introduction

Duncan McLean

In this issue, both the special section on the politics of infectious disease, and the other contributions, highlight and return to concerns that have long plagued humanitarianism. For example, all...

Article

Les 50 ans de MSF, ou comment l'humanitaire reste une épine dans le pied des dirigeants

Duncan McLean

Dresser le bilan de cinquante années d’action humanitaire de Médecins Sans Frontières tout en faisant l’inventaire des défis à venir est un exercice délicat. Avec des activités dans plus ...

Book

The Business of Conflict: Humanitarian Assistance and the War Economy in Syria

Duncan McLean

The Syrian crisis is one of the most serious humanitarian disasters in recent history. Yet the widely reported numbers–more than 6 million displaced, including 5 million refugees–reflect...

Article

Research and humanitarian aid: navigating the unpredictable, limiting the avoidable

Duncan McLean

In the world of international assistance, unsolicited visits by researchers – whether sent from the headquarters of the organisation or from other structures – have long generated conflicting...

Article

Radical Objects: The Obelisk of Axum and the Complexities of Restitution

Duncan McLean

As aid agencies struggle to access and respond to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Tigray, a comparatively minor note of physical destruction has understandably garnered little attention. In a...

Article

Vaccination: A Matter of Trust, with Caveats

Duncan McLean, Françoise Duroch

The palpable relief being felt by many over the accelerating approvals of apparently safe and efficient Covid-19 vaccines is hardly surprising. But away from triumphalist headlines, partially satiric ...

Article

Der Schutz der humanitären Arbeit beginnt bei uns selber

Duncan McLean

States always find ways and means to exclude unwanted aid organisations. The drastic tightening of anti-terror legislation is only the latest manifestation of these methods.

Article

International aid in the Covid era: the need for transparency

Duncan McLean, Françoise Duroch

The scale and spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, combined with the large number of deaths it has caused, have created a toxic mix of rumour and innuendo – further complicating aid operations that...

Article

Medical care in armed conflict: Perpetrator discourse in historical perspective

Duncan McLean

Although the Geneva Conventions have been successively revised since 1864, norms regarding the protection of medical care have been frequently disregarded. Despite current claims of international...