Author Archives: Xavier Crombé

About Xavier Crombé

Xavier Crombé is a fieldworker and researcher at Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders. He was Director of Studies at MSF-Crash from 2005 to 2008 and at the Research Unit on Humanitarian Stakes and Practices (UREPH) of MSF in Switzerland from 2014 to 2018, taking part in the MSF's Medical Care Under Fire initiative. He is currently writing a book on the history of medical neutrality as a contested international norm in legal fora and in conflicts from the late 19th century to the present.

Introduction: History Writing and Attacks on Healthcare

Abstract Since Médecins sans Frontières’ denunciations of the 2015 bombings of hospitals by the United States and Russia in Afghanistan and Syria, respectively, subsequent polemics have taken scholarly and policy debates about Attacks on Healthcare (AoH) in new directions and called on history to better understand their origins and wider long-term impacts. Despite increased calls for more rigorous data collection and research on the social, behavioral, psychological and economic impacts of AoH, recent international meetings organized in the wake of the fifth anniversary of the Continue reading → Continue reading →