Article
Humanitarian assistance in siege contexts: a contradiction in terms?
Duncan McLean, Maelle L'Homme
04.12.2023This 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
Ethical considerations around the use of humanitarian imagery
Françoise Duroch, Maelle L'Homme
29.11.2022The growth of social media has reduced the world to a “global village” in which images travel fast and far. When they feature vulnerable people, the impact can be disastrous. Starting from a...
Article
Silent wounds
Maelle L'Homme
10.03.2022In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic made visible to the general public some of the many challenges associated with humanitarian work. Suddenly mortality rates, shortages of medical supplies and the...
Article
Should we discriminate in order to act? Profiling: a necessary but debated practice
Françoise Duroch
28.01.2021In October 2020, MSF organised a workshop in Dakar on staff profiling in operations in the Sahel. Profiling involves the selection of staff based on non-professional criteria, including nationality,...
Article
Tough choices: moral challenges experienced by aid workers during the Covid-19 pandemic
Françoise Duroch, Miriam Kasztura
23.07.2020The truly unprecedented nature of the pandemic has mobilised and confused humanitarian NGOs and their staff as much. Forced inaction mixed with setting up programmes within a context of high...
Article
A humanitarian approach to travel medicine?
Marta Balinska
28.06.201928 June 2019: UREPH is pleased to announce the publication of this article by Marta Balinska.
Book
Humanitarian ethics in Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders: Discussing dilemmas and mitigating moral distress
Philippe Calain
30.08.2018As a humanitarian medical organization, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) intervenes in places around the world affected by conflict and crisis. Although we are guided by humanitarian principles, our...
Article
Response to 'On Complicity and Compromise' by Chiara Lepora and Robert Goodin
Philippe Calain
2017Chiara Lepora and Robert Goodin invite us to join their insightful ‘conversation’ on complicity and compromise. Their book makes a dense, utterly precise and rewarding reading, as one proceeds...
Article
Dilemmas in access to medicines: a humanitarian perspective
James Smith
2017We challenge the assertion made by Govind Persad and Ezekiel Emanuel (Aug 27, p 932) that “expanding access to less effective or more toxic [antiretroviral] treatments rather than requiring the...
Article
When free is not fair: the case of vaccine donations
James Smith
2017On Oct 10, 2015, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) rejected Pfizer’s proposed donation of 1 million doses of its branded pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV). The news caused a stir in the...
Article
Palliative care in humanitarian medicine
James Smith
2017Palliative care interventions have historically been neglected in the practice of humanitarian medicine. This may come as a surprise, since it is a sombre reality that medical...
Article
Palliative Care in Humanitarian Crises
James Smith
2016Medical humanitarian organizations don’t generally deal well with death. This may come as a surprise, since it’s a sombre reality of this line of work that frontline staff are often witness to...