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4 Claims to legitimate authority and discursive attacks We don’t believe in the authorities anymore. When you say … ‘there, that’s the new administrator, everyone may clap but with a certain mockery …’ Him also, what is he going to do? (Peasant Union Member (no. 151) 2010) We could wonder about the role of that whispered language within the political system of unanimity. It is, to my mind, a way of softening the overwhelming and restrictive official language in order to make it more bearable; it is an antidote. Irony and humour are the weapons of the powerless
authorities with the disease was exacerbated by the failure of the WHO to provide effective leadership, MSF’s apparent technical superiority, capacity for rapid action and vocal public positioning meant the organisation was still regarded by many as the de facto leader of the response ( Check Hayden, 2015 ). After criticising the leadership of the WHO as ‘slow, derisory and irresponsible’ ( MSF, 2014 ), MSF convened international discussions and trained
to coordinate their actions as much as possible. From Damascus to the Rebel-Held North-West In June 2011, as the Syrian government violently suppressed demonstrations by its opponents, MSF France attempted to negotiate permission to work out of Damascus. But meeting with the authorities proved impossible. The Syrian intelligence services had closed the offices of MSF’s Spanish section a few weeks previously, accusing it of supporting the
financial responsibilities are not only the result of displacement, the pressures of life in exile and the more prolonged absence of husbands: they also coincide with a phase in our interviewees’ lifecycle in which they traditionally acquire greater authority as elders, especially as mothers-in-law. Due to their distinct positioning in their families, older female refugees experience displacement differently from younger women. Most of our Syrian interlocutors are in their
. At a first glance, the extraordinary response in Germany was puzzling. First, this was not the first time that the ship of an NGO had been prevented from disembarking the migrants it had rescued in the Mediterranean. There had been similar incidents involving the governments of Italy and Malta in 2018 and earlier in 2019 that had affected a larger number of migrants but which had not generated as much publicity as the case of the Sea-Watch 3 . It was not the first time either that Italian or Maltese authorities had laid charges against the captain or crew of a
Saez narrates negotiations between community-based organisations and the NGO in charge of opening a new Ebola Treatment Unit at the SKD 3 Stadium in Monrovia. In the final case, from Sierra Leone, Luisa Enria discusses the role of chiefs through the confrontation between the police and young Sierra Leoneans in Bamoi Luma when authorities violently imposed the closure of a market in order to avoid a resurgence of the epidemic. Despite their heterogeneity, the cases
where MSF has its added value, and after seeing the health system was on the verge of collapse, MSF directly collaborated with local authorities responding to COVID-19. Initial efforts focused on proposing and executing solutions for the decongestion of hospital emergency services, the supply of oxygen and the maintenance of referral systems in the two regions with the highest morbidity and mortality, Madrid and Barcelona. Once the intervention had started, it soon became
countries with a high degree of contemporary power and authority and public health systems that were among the best available in their time. However, plague no longer significantly affects such areas, and it was therefore necessary to draw the third case study from one of the relatively poor and marginal countries where plague remains endemic. In terms of the first category, it was decided that the case study had to have taken place since 1700 to ensure that public health
Introduction One morning in Goma, I attended a meeting of the Cercle de la Sécurité : a group of Congolese humanitarians who work in security management for different international NGOs (non-governmental organisations) in the province. Although they hold a variety of different job titles, the members perform a common function within their respective organisations: they analyse local security conditions by collecting information about protracted violence and acts of criminality. They form and maintain a network among different local authorities and armed
: The Ndhiwa project was being devised at a key moment in HIV research. In 2008, the Swiss health authorities claimed – in what would come to be known as the Swiss Statement – that patients who were taking their medications correctly were no longer contagious. That claim, which was especially crucial to serodiscordant couples, 6 was the subject of debates at that year’s IAS [International AIDS Society] conference in Mexico: Has this really been proven? and Can we