Bernard Kouchner

Bernard Kouchner is the founder Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), or, Doctors Without Borders. He worked as MSF president and organizer from 1971 to 1979.

After "leaving the day to day running of MSF, he headed four ministries as a member of France's recent socialist governments and won an equal number of international prizes for his humanitarian work."

"Over the last decade he has made countless trips to the former Yugoslavia, where MSF was heavily involved, and argued strongly for more western involvement - a stance which reporteldy led Washington to oppose his appointment to the Kosovo job."

According to The Fanonite, an independent blog by journalist Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, "Israel’s man at the Quai d’Orsay and renowned warmonger, Bernard Kouchner, is settling comfortably into his new role as the guardian of Israeli interests in the French government. He has just threatened war. In his zeal to please his Israel lobby handlers, however, Kouchner appears to have gotten ahead of himself. Even the generally staid IAEA has been impelled to rebuke his crude warmongering (recall that in the past Kouchner has been wise enough to cloak his martial ambitions in humanitarian garb), along with the generally restrained Austrians."

Affiliations

 * International Advisor, Veolia Institute
 * International Council of Advisors, International Campaign for Tibet
 * Director, International Women's Health Coalition
 * Member of Jury for Taiwan Foundation for Democracy

Related Sourcewatch

 * A Member of a group that Edward S. Herman refers to as The New Humanitarians

External References

 * Adri Nieuwhof, International experts urged to withdraw from Veolia Institute, Electronic Intifada, 8 December 2006.
 * John Lichfield, Sarkozy chooses Socialist as Foreign Minister, The Independent, 15 May 2007.
 * Christopher Caldwell, "Communiste et Rastignac", London Review of Books, July 9, 2009.