יום ב' ,   14.11.05,   18:00 - 20:00
** באולם כס המשפט **

בשיתוף עם מכון מינרווה לזכויות האדם, אוניברסיטת תל-אביב

Dr. Rony Brauman - Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Paris) and
Médecins Sans Frontières Foundation


"Humanitarian Action in States of Occupation: The Occupied Palestinian Territories in a Global Perspective"

Respondents :
- Dr. Orna Ben-Naftali, School of Law, College of Management Academic Studies
- Ms. Karen Koning AbuZayd, Commissioner-General of UNRWA

Abstract:
It is often claimed that humanitarian action in the Occupied Palestinian Territories [OPT] enhances unwittingly the logic of the Israeli occupation. It does so not only by substituting for the Israeli sovereign in his duties towards the occupied Palestinian population, but also by assisting the former in its double endeavor, to prevent the ultimate catastrophe from occurring and to endlessly postpone the constitution of an independent Palestinian State. If this analysis is correct, how would creative and radical humanitarianism look like in these circumstances? Rony Brauman’s lecture will deal with humanitarian action in the OPT in light of his critical doctrine of humanitarianism and vis-à-vis humanitarian interventions in other political disasters and states of occupation worldwide. While drawing on Médecins Sans Frontières’ experience in the last decades, which encompasses large scale actions in various zones under foreign control from Afghanistan to Somalia and Kosovo, Brauman will examine the role of the state of occupation in the practice and the imaginary of contemporary humanitarianism, and the unique position that humanitarian actors occupy in such states. The lecture will refer to the difficulties to inscribe a prolonged, “low intensity conflict” of the kind that prevails in the OPT in a humanitarian framework that stresses acute biological need, and will address the processes of victimization in which humanitarian actors in the OPT take part and their political reverberations.

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Rony Brauman was the president of the French humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières from 1982 to 1994. During his presidency, and in numerous essays that he has published since, he elaborated a doctrine of humanitarian action that outlines the limits and the contradictions of humanitarianism and unravels its inherent dilemmas.

Rony Brauman was the co-author, together with Eyal Sivan, of the documentary film The Specialist on the Eichmann trial. In recent years, he has become a prominent protagonist of the Palestinian cause and takes an important part in the public debate on Zionism and anti-Semitism in France. Today, Rony Brauman is a researcher at the Médecins Sans Frontières Foundation, and teaches at the Institut d’études politiques in Paris.

His publications include:

Humanitaire: le dilemme (1996, and 2002 for the new edition);

Les médias et l’humanitaire (1996, together with René Backmann) ;

Utopies Sanitaires (2000, editor) ;

Eloge de la désobéissance (together with Eyal Sivan, 2001) ;

L’action humanitaire (2002).

Chair: Prof. José Brunner, Director, The Minerva Center for German History;
Cohn Institute and the Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University