Au printemps 1944, les bombardements aériens alliés sur la France atteignent leur intensité maximale depuis le début de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Près de deux années après les grands tournants de l’année 1942, la situation militaire est à présent largement en faveur des Alliés. La défaite finale du Troisième Reich semble désormais inéluctable. La préparation d’Overlord, le retour en force à grande échelle sur le continent européen, se heurte à des difficultés stratégiques et techniques inédites. Un scientifique peu connu, Solly Zuckerman, brillant zoologiste mais aussi civil inconnu des cercles militaires, réussit à persuader le haut-commandement allié de l’intérêt de son plan aérien. Son Transportation Plan se propose de frapper décisivement le système ferroviaire français, de manière à bouleverser le flux de renforts ennemis vers la tête de pont alliée lors de l’exécution du débarquement. Audacieux par son innovation stratégique, risqué par la menace évidente pesant sur les civils français, le plan de Zuckerman se heurte immédiatement à la susceptibilité des grands chefs du bombardement stratégique, engagés dans une campagne aérienne presque « privée » sur l’Allemagne. La question des pertes civiles secoue brutalement les milieux politiques avec notamment Winston Churchill, et remonte in fine jusqu’à Franklin Roosevelt. Méconnu de l’historiographie, le Transportation Plan représente pourtant une histoire fascinante de la préparation du débarquement de Normandie. / In spring 1944, Allied bombing of France was to reach its maximum intensity since the beginning of World War II. Nearly two years after the great turning points in 1942, the military situation was now largely in favour of the Allies. The final defeat of the Third Reich now appeared inevitable. The preparation of OVERLORD, the renewed application of large-scale power on the European continent, faced strategic challenges and required novel techniques. A little-known scientist, Solly Zuckerman, a brilliant zoologist but also a civilian unknown in military circles, persuaded the Allied high command of the validity of his air plan. This “Transportation Plan” proposed to strike decisively at the French railway system in order to disrupt the flow of enemy reinforcements to the Allied beachhead during the landings. Daring by strategic innovation, risky by the obvious threat to French civilians, Zuckerman's plan ran immediately into the hostile scrutiny of the great chiefs of strategic bombing, who were engaged in their almost "private" air campaign against Germany. The issue of civilian casualties brutally shook politicians including Winston Churchill, and ultimately went back to Franklin Roosevelt. Unknown in historiography, the “Transportation Plan” represents a fascinating history of the preparation of the Normandy landings.

La Guerre Civile libanaise (1975-1990) fut notamment marquée par l’enlèvement de militaires mais aussi de civils. Depuis la loi d’Amnistie de 1991, nous examinerons précisément les répercussions sur la santé psychique de familles d’enlevés, grâce à des entretiens non directifs et la collecte de récits poétiques comme épistolaires, selon la lecture du TAT. La justice transitionnelle est une prospective de reconstruction du Liban. Elle permettrait de lever le voile d’ignorance sur le sort des disparus, pour faciliter le processus de deuil. Mais pour l’heure, les familles souffrent du silence de l’Etat qui enterre l’histoire du Liban, ceci tant que le sort des disparus demeurera inidentifiable. En dépit de ce silence qui annihile toute entreprise de séparation psychique entre les familles et les disparus, condamnant ainsi les mères libanaises à la répétition infinie du trauma, à l’instar de Pénélope tissant et détissant sans cesse les liens du linceul de Télémaque, celles-ci peuvent réaccoucher d’elles-mêmes ; et se tourner, en pleine conscience, vers un avenir, une destinée propre, via le processus du « deuil paradoxal ». Ce concept, loin d’abonder dans le sens de l’évitement ou du déni des disparus, consiste en une réapparition du moi des mères, dans l’opération psychosomatique de procéder au deuil, non de leurs proches, mais du traumatisme qui les avait de prime abord anéanties, jusqu’au vide dépressif. C’est, paradoxalement, grâce à leur fonctionnement limite que les mères des disparus libanais vont pouvoir opérer ce « retour » à leur moi qu’elles imaginaient perdu. / The Lebanese Civil War (1975 - 1990) has been mainly remarkable as far as the kidnapping of soldiers as much as of civilians is concerned. Up to the 1991 Amnesty Law, we will precisely examine the consequential effects on psychic health on rapted families thanks to non guiding interwiews, and the gathering poetical or written accounts, according to the reading of TAT.The transitional justice is a prospective for the rebuild of Lebanon. It could help to clear the mist about the missing's fate, to help people to go out of mourning. But at the present time, the families are enduring the silence of the State, that is burying and forgetting the history of Lebanon, that the missing's fate will remain unestablished for ever. In spite of this silence that destroys any attempt of psychic breaking up between the families and the missings, blocking up that way the Lebanese mothers in the perpetual repetition of the trauma, like Penelope doing and undoing her work that consisted in weawing the shroud of Telemaque's father- in - law, they can deliver of herselves; and decide to look at a future, an own destiny, through the process of "paradoxal nourning".This concept,far from avoiding or denying the missings, consists in a new coming out of the mother's ego, in the psychosomatic way to initiate mourning not of the next of kin, but the traumatism that had prostrated them first up to the depressive emptyness. Paradoxically, bringing the mothers of Lebanese missings to their extreme limits will next allow them to get back to their ego that they imagined as lost for ever at first.

À la Libération, vu les pénuries et les restrictions, le troc, entre civils et militaires américains, s’organise tout naturellement. Mais, les produits de l’U.S. Army font rapidement l’objet de trafics, essentiellement basés sur un échange monétaire. En Seine-et-Oise, au cours des premiers mois de liberté, ce phénomène économique enregistre un développement au processus rapide, favorisé par l’installation de troupes et d’infrastructures américaines ainsi que par le désenchantement de la Libération. En 1945, vu le contexte militaire, économique et social, l’expansion des trafics est fulgurante. D’ailleurs, la gangstérisation des relations, entre certains civils et militaires, et l’inertie des polices franco-américaines et de la justice française ont largement contribué à cette expansion. Les trafiquants professionnels et occasionnels volent, recèlent ou trafiquent, dans la plupart des cas, des vêtements, des chaussures, des textiles, des denrées alimentaires, de l’essence ou des pneumatiques. Mais, du redéploiement des troupes américaines au retour d’un marché libre, ces trafics de proximité perdent brusquement de leur importance. L’année 1946 marque les derniers temps forts de ce marché clandestin. De 1947 à 1949, les trafiquants assistent à la disparition des trafics et à la fin d’une époque dorée. Car, malgré les mésententes locales et l’antipathie réciproque, ces trafics ont enregistré un succès phénoménal. Les civils et les militaires américains étaient conscients de la brièveté de cette manne. Cependant, en 1950, même si le contexte économique diffère totalement, les trafics de produits américains vont réapparaître aux abords des bases militaires américaines de l’OTAN. / At the Liberation, in circumstances of scarcity and restrictions, barter between civilians and American servicemen developed quite naturally. But the U.S. Army goods quickly became the object of illicit sales, mainly for cash. In Seine-et-Oise, during the first months of freedom, this economic phenomenon developed rapidly, facilitated by the installation of American troops and infrastructures as well as by the disillusionment that followed Liberation. In 1945, given the military, economic and social context, the expansion of black market traffic was sensational. Moreover, the gangsterization of relations between some civilians and servicemen and the inertia of Franco-American policing and French justice contributed significantly to this expansion. The professional and occasional traffickers stole, received stolen goods and dealt mainly in clothing, shoes, textiles, foodstuffs, gasoline or tires. With the redeployment of the American troops and the return of the free market, these convenience transactions lost their importance abruptly. The year 1946 marked the last surge of this illicit market. From 1947 to 1949, the traffickers saw the decline of black market traffic and the end of a golden era. Despite local misunderstandings and mutual antipathy, this traffic was phenomenally successful. The civilians and the American servicemen were aware that this opportunity would be brief. However, in 1950, in a very different economic context, the traffic in U.S. Army goods would reappear around the American military bases established as part of NATO.

[pt] Esta dissertação analisa como a Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) tenta estabilizar e justificar um significado ambivalente de proteção e seus papéis sociopolíticos na agenda de Proteção de Civis (PoC). Atravessada por diferentes noções de tradução, esta pesquisa toma os Assistentes de Ligação Comunitária (CLAs) como um prisma analítico para complexificar os esforços para construir representações de proteção. Os CLAs, criados juntamente com a Missão das Nações Unidas para a Estabilização da República Democrática do Congo (MONUSCO), são funcionários locais encarregados de melhorar o engajamento da missão com a população local nas atividades de PoC, dadas as suas supostas habilidades linguístico-culturais. Assim, os CLAs também são parte do movimento das missões de estabilização na doutrina da ONU. Essa virada sinaliza a utilização de táticas de contra insurgência, cujo entendimento sobre linguagem e a cultura como armas objetiva obter inteligência e o apoio da população local. Seguindo uma abordagem pós-estruturalista e pós-colonial particularmente inspirada nas obras de Jacques Derrida e Homi K. Bhabha, esta dissertação se propõe a desconstruir as representações aplicadas aos CLAs por meio da análise dos discursos presentes nos relatórios e documentos doutrinários da ONU. Para tal, investiga-se como se espera que os CLAs traduzam linguisticamente e/ou culturalmente a visão de proteção da ONU para a população local. Nesse sentido, esta pesquisa promove diálogos com os Estudos de Tradução e Interpretação ao explorar o caráter político da tradução para as Relações Internacionais ao mesmo tempo que se aprofunda em um ator geralmente negligenciado na doutrina da ONU e nos Estudos de Operações de Paz. / [en] This thesis analyzes how the United Nations (UN) attempts to stabilize and justify an ambivalent meaning of protection and its sociopolitical roles in the Protection of Civilians (PoC) agenda. Traversed by different notions of translation, this research takes the Community Liaison Assistants (CLAs) as an analytical prism to complexify the efforts to construct representations of protection. The CLAs, created alongside the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), are local staff tasked with improving the mission s engagement with the local population in PoC activities, given their supposed linguistic-cultural skills. Thus, the CLAs are also part of the stabilization missions movement in UN doctrine. This turn signals the use of counterinsurgency tactics, whose understanding of language and culture as weapons seeks to obtain intelligence and support of the local population. Following a poststructuralist and postcolonial approach inspired mainly by the works of Jacques Derrida and Homi K. Bhabha, this thesis proposes deconstructing the representations applied to the CLAs through the analysis of the discourses presented in the UN reports and doctrinal documents. To this end, it is investigated how the CLAs are expected to translate linguistically and/or culturally the UN vision of protection to the local population. In this sense, this research promotes dialogues with Translation and Interpretation Studies by exploring the political character of translation for International Relations while delving into a generally denied actor in UN doctrine and Peace Operations Studies.

Existe-t-il un lien entre le degré de publicité du soutien fourni par des États à des groupes rebelles et les relations entre les insurgés soutenus et les civils durant les guerres internes ? Les études sur les conflits examinent de plus en plus la manière dont un soutien étatique externe à des insurgés locaux façonne le comportement de ces derniers. Cependant, la littérature néglige l’influence de la décision des États-soutiens de nier ou reconnaître leur aide sur la conduite des rebelles. Divisée en trois parties, ma thèse de doctorat utilise une méthodologie mixte alliant analyses quantitatives et études de cas qualitatives pour combler cette lacune dans la littérature. L’Article 1 présente de nouvelles données sur le degré de publicité du soutien étatique aux rebelles durant les guerres civiles entre 1989 et 2018. Il montre ensuite que cette variable est négativement corrélée à la propension des insurgés à user de la violence envers les non-combattants. L’Article 2 commence par présenter une théorie expliquant comment, pourquoi et dans quelles circonstances les États-soutiens tentent-ils de superviser les interactions avec les non-combattants des insurgés qu’ils appuient lors des guerres civiles. Il applique ensuite ce cadre théorique au soutien des États-Unis aux Unités de protection du peuple (YPG) et aux Forces démocratiques syriennes (FDS) dans le nord-est de la Syrie entre 2014 et 2020. L’Article 3 montre qu’en plus d’être corrélé négativement à la violence rebelle envers les civils, le degré de publicité du soutien étatique aux insurgés est corrélé positivement à la propension de ces derniers à fournir des services à la population. Il nuance ensuite les résultats statistiques en montrant que l’existence d’institutions formelles de fourniture de services n’équivaut pas nécessairement à une participation effective des civils à l’exercice du pouvoir en zones rebelles. Ainsi, la thèse met en évidence le lien critique entre le degré de publicité du soutien étatique aux rebelles et les interactions entre insurgés soutenus et civils. Les résultats de recherche montrent dès lors que les expériences des non-combattants au cours de conflits qualifiés d’internes à un espace sont corrélés à des facteurs et intérêts liés à des acteurs externes à ce même territoire. / What is the relationship between the overtness of state support to rebels and the nature of insurgent-civilian interactions during civil wars? Conflict studies increasingly examine how external support to local insurgents influences rebel behavior. However, the literature neglects the link between the state sponsors’ decisions to acknowledge or deny their support and insurgent behavior. My three-part doctoral dissertation uses a mixed-methods research design combining quantitative analyses and qualitative case studies to address this gap in the literature. Article 1 introduces new data on the overtness of external support to rebels during civil wars between 1989 and 2018. The paper then shows that this variable negatively correlates with the propensity of the insurgents to target civilians. Article 2 begins by outlining a theory of how, why, and when the state sponsors monitor the interactions with civilians of the insurgents they support. The paper then applies this theoretical framework to the United States’ (US) support for the People’s Defense Units (YPG) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Northeast Syria between 2014 and 2020. Article 3 shows that in addition to negatively correlating with civilian targeting, the overtness of external support to rebels positively correlates with the propensity of the insurgents to provide social services during civil wars. The paper then qualifies the statistical results by showing that the creation of formal social service institutions by the rebels does not necessarily lead to effective civilian participation in decision-making in insurgent areas. The dissertation thus highlights the critical link between the overtness of state support to rebels and the insurgent-civilian interactions. In this way, I show that civilian experiences during conflicts we characterize as internal to a territory correlate with factors and interests linked to external actors.

[pt] Esta dissertação procura analisar as diferentes abordagens à proteção de civis (PoC, da sigla em inglês) mobilizadas por agentes policiais/militares e humanitários em situações de conflito armado e emergências humanitárias onde há presença de operações de paz das Nações Unidas. Inspirada pelas estratégias de análise de discurso pós-estrutural, a dissertação se concentra nos PoC sites no Sudão do Sul, espaços que abrigam civis deslocados pela violência e perseguição desde a conflagração do conflito armado em curso, em dezembro de 2013. Tais espaços de proteção têm integrado as estratégias e práticas de proteção avançadas tanto por humanitários quando pela Missão das Nações Unidas no Sudão do Sul (UNMISS) e são tomados como um microcosmo privilegiado para a análise do(s) discurso(s) de proteção, dada a coexistência de diferentes racionalidades de proteção que os caracteriza. Orientada por um arcabouço teórico-conceitual foucaultiano, a dissertação mobiliza os conceitos de poder soberano, governamentalidade e biopolítica desenvolvidos por Michel Foucault e trabalhados por literaturas críticas às operações de paz e ao humanitarismo. Defende-se que as racionalidades de proteção avançadas pelos setores humanitário e de segurança seguem a racionalidade do poder policial, entendido como um conjunto de tecnologias e técnicas quem mantêm a ordem e protegem a vida no nível da população, mas também decidem sobre a suspensão da lei. Apontando para a relação entre proteção, policiamento e excepcionalidade desenvolvida nos PoC sites, tais espaços serão analisados a partir do conceito de campo de Giorgio Agamben: espaços de normalização da excepcionalidade em que a vida nua é governada. / [en] This thesis analyses different approaches to the protection of civilians (PoC) as mobilized by police/military and humanitarian actors in contexts of armed conflict and humanitarian emergencies where a United Nations peacekeeping operation is deployed. Inspired by the strategies of post-structural discourse analysis, the thesis focuses on the PoC sites in South Sudan, which have sheltered civilians fleeing from violence and persecution since armed conflict broke out in that country, in December 2013. These protected sites have been an integral part of protection strategies and practices advanced by both humanitarian actors present in the country and the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and are taken here as a privileged analytical microcosm for assessing protection discourse(s) due to the colocation of different protection rationales that characterizes those spaces. Grounded on a Foucauldian theoretical-conceptual framework, this work mobilizes the concepts of sovereign power, governmentality and biopolitics developed by Michel Foucault and employed by critical literature on peacekeeping operations and humanitarian action. It is argued in the thesis that the rationales of protection advanced by both the humanitarian and security sectors work according to the rationality of police power, understood as an ensemble of technologies and techniques that maintains order and protects life among populations but also decides on the suspension of law. Pointing to the particular relationship between protection, policing and exceptionality unraveled in the context of PoC sites, these spaces will be treated as Giorgio Agamben s camps: as spaces of normalized exceptionality where bare life is managed.

This thesis is an ethnographic account of social change, triggered by the civil war in Nepal (1996-2006). Based on an ethnographic fieldwork in the village of Thabang, the war-time capital of the Maoist base area, this thesis explores the transformative impact of the conflict on people’s everyday lives and on the constitution of key hierarchies structuring Nepali society. Rather than focusing on violence and fear – the commonly researched themes in warzones – the thesis examines people’s everyday social and embodied practices during the war and its aftermath, arguing that these remain central to our understanding of war-time social processes and the ways in which they shape the contours of post-conflict society. By focusing on mundane practices – such as meat-eating and alcohol-drinking, raising livestock and worshipping gods – the thesis demonstrates how change at the micro-level is illustrative of a profound transformation in the social structures constituting Nepali society. Theoretically, the thesis seeks to understand how the situation of war re-orders society: in this case, how people in the Maoist base area interiorized formerly transgressive norms and practices, and how these practices were normalized in the post-conflict environment. The research revealed that much of the change triggered by the conflict came as a result of the ‘exceptional’ times of war and the necessity to follow ‘rules that apply in times of crisis’. Thus, in adopting transgressive practices during the conflict, people were responding to the expediency of war-time rather than following Maoist war-time policies or ‘propaganda’. Furthermore, while adopting hitherto unimaginable practices and making them into habitual action, people transformed the rigid social structures, without necessarily intending to do so. The thesis puts particular stress on the centrality of unintended consequences in social change, the power of embodied practice in making change real, and the ways in which agency and structure are mutually constitutive.

La notion de participation directe aux hostilités n’a jamais été définie de manière précise au regard du droit international humanitaire. Cette ambiguïté a conduit à des interprétations divergentes du concept d’hostilités et des critères juridiques utilisés pour définir une participation directe par opposition à une participation indirecte (effort de guerre).D’ailleurs, les conflits contemporains posent de nouveaux défis quant à la définition et la mise en oeuvre de la notion de la participation directe aux hostilités. Les moyens de guerre de haute technicité (l’attaque de réseaux informatiques) et l’externalisation des forces armées (sociétés militaire privées), illustrent l’imbrication croissante des activités civiles et militaires et la difficulté à identifier précisément qui participe directement aux hostilités et quelles sont les mesures à prendre pour protéger ceux qui n’y participent pas directement. / The notion of direct participation in hostilities has never been precisely defined in international humanitarian law. This ambiguity has led to differing interpretations of the concept of hostilities and legal criteria imply a distinction from direct participation in hostilities as opposed indirect participation (war effort).Indeed, contemporary conflicts have given rise to further challenges in terms of defining and implementing the notion of direct participation in hostilities. The use of high-tech warfare (computer network attack), privatization of the armed forces (private military company), among others, illustrate the increased intermingling of civilian and military activities which make it difficult to determine who is taking a direct part in hostilities and what measures should be taken to protect those who are not directly participating.

The aim of this thesis is to discuss the concepts of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect (R2P), and; to investigate how best to apply the concepts in the face of humanitarian crises, in order to address concerns about their implementation. The failure of the Security Council to react to grave human rights abuses committed in the humanitarian crises of the 1990s, including Iraq (1991), Somalia (1992), Rwanda (1994), Bosnia (1993-1995) Haiti (1994-1997), and Kosovo (1999),triggered international debatesabout: how the international community should react when the fundamental human rights of populations are grossly and systematically violated within the boundaries of sovereign states, and; the need for a reappraisal of armed humanitarian intervention. Central to the debate was whether the international community should continue to adhere unconditionally to the principle of non-intervention enshrined in Article 2(7) of the UN Charter, or take a different course in the interest of human rights. The debate culminated in the establishment of the Canadian International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2000, with the mandate to find a balance between respect for sovereignty and intervention, for purposes of protecting human rights. Much of the scholarly literature on military intervention for human protection purposes deals with the legality and legitimacy of the military dimension of the concepts. The significance of the thesis is that: it focusesthe investigation on the potential abuse of the use of force for human protection purposes, when moral arguments are used to justify an intervention that is primarily motivated by the interests of the intervener, and; the propensity to use disproportionate force in the attainment of the stated objective of human protection, by powerful intervening states. The central argument of the thesis is that there are double standards, selectivity, abuses, andindiscriminate and disproportionate use of force in the implementation of R2P by powerful countries, and; that, whether a military intervention is unilateral, or sanctioned by the UN Security Council, there is the potential for abuse, and in addition, disproportionate force may be used.The thesis makes recommendations to address these concerns, in order to ensure the survival of the concept. / Public, Constitutional and International Law / LL.D.

Armed conflict and violence against civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has persisted for years starting in the 1990s. The Eastern, Western and North-Eastern parts of the country have seen the presence of a multiplicity of armed groups that have caused an escalation of the humanitarian crisis. The United Nations, in the interest of civilian protection, peacekeeping and security sector reform in the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared a mission under The United Nations Organisational Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC). In spite of this mission, civilians continued in the Congo to suffer attacks and to endure human rights abuses by the armed militants that are fighting government and the government forces in shape of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC). This study examines the problematique of the mandate of MONUC in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in light of the challenges that have made its success debatable. The success of MONUC has become debatable in light of the fact that in spite of its presence and implementation in the DRC, between 2007 and 2010, conflict and the violence against civilians escalated to unprecedented levels. This study examines the causalities of the failure and observes its effect while making propositions towards amelioration of the challenges and the failure of the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. / Political Sciences / M.A. (International Politics)