Ebola, Bombs, and Migrants: Humanitarian Crises in a Security-Obsessed World

A searing account of three interconnected global crises that defined the 2010s, and a powerful invitation to respond with compassionate solidarity.

In Ebola, Bombs, and Migrants, Dr. Joanne Liu, former International President of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, draws on frontline experience to examine three major humanitarian crises of the 2010s, revealing the global obsession with national security and its capacity to overshadow our responsibility to protect vulnerable populations.

Since the early 2000s, a world shaped by 9/11 has retreated into fear, strengthening borders and eroding the mechanisms of international cooperation. From West Africa to the Mediterranean and into Afghanistan, Dr. Liu shows how, despite the best efforts of frontline responders, the international community has repeatedly chosen containment over compassion, and politics over principle.

This urgent, authoritative work urges readers to connect past tragedies to current circumstances, reckoning with the cost of disengagement to ultimately reclaim a vision of shared humanity in the face of global crisis.

JOANNE LIU has spent most of the last thirty years working for Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, where she also held term as international president. In 2015, Liu was made an Officer of the Ordre national du Québec and was recognized by Time Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People of that year. She is a recipient of several recognitions, the Légion d'honneur of the French Republic, and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Award for Health Services Management and Leadership (2021), and the Meritorious Service Cross of Canada.

ANDRE PRATTE was a journalist for more than 35 years, including 14 years as La Presse's Chief Editorial Writer. He was a Senator from to 2016 to 2019, and is the author of several books on politics, the media and history. He currently works as a strategic advisor with Catalyze4.

MARISA COULTON is a bilingual journalist. She holds a Master of Journalism and Master of International Affairs from Columbia University. She was previously business reporter at the Toronto Star, Quebec Correspondent at the Financial Post and Columnist-Researcher at CBC Montreal. She has lectured in the journalism department at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), and her work has appeared in The Logic, Maclean's, The Economist, and Foreign Policy.