Brigitte Piquard's Interview

By Fatim Hien, Kseniya Kotlyarova, Violette Moutard & Jeannette Nguyen

Brigitte Piquard is an anthropologist and holds a PhD in International Relations from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. She is currently Co-Director of the Master’s degree in International Humanitarian Aid at Paris-Est Creteil University in France and a senior lecturer in International Humanitarism at Oxford Brookes University in England.

Q: What made you want to work in the humanitarian field?

Brigitte Piquard: Originally, working in humanitarian field meant two things for me. My first idea about humanitarian activities was idealistic. We can put it this way: I wanted to make things change, to make the world full of problems and injustice a little bit better, and working on humanitarian issues presented a good opportunity for me to do it. The second reason why I decided to turn to humanitarian work was more pragmatic: this kind of professional experience gave me some interesting career opportunities, so I decided to grasp them.

Q: What was your first humanitarian work experience?

BP: My first humanitarian work experience was a volunteer experience with a French NGO in Pakistan in 1987. At that time I was a 21-year-old student majoring in sociology and anthropology. My task was to make an assessment of the situation. This first experience was followed by many other humanitarian missions in the following 20 years.

Q: Are there times when you have doubts about your commitment? For example, when you appear to be in a difficult situation, or when you have to work in some hard conditions where humanitarian intervention is extremely difficult to do. Do you feel weary sometimes? Have you ever thought of giving up?

BP: Naturally, it happens to everyone working on humanitarian issues to feel helpless or weary not only in the field but outside the field as well. Humanitarian work is a very challenging kind of work. At times you have a feeling that your personal work input can’t make a difference to the global situation. But, certainly, it is very important not to give up. Every working process has its difficulties and hard moments.

Q: In which regions do you prefer working?

BP: I enjoy working in Asia, namely in Central Asia and South Asia. Besides, the Middle East is a very interesting region for me. I did my second 4-year university degree in Islamic studies, so working in this region is directly related to my university major.

Q: Why have you chosen to teach this master’s degree course?

BP: When I was proposed to administer this course, a similar course existed already in Belgium. Besides, I had a part-time teaching position in England. When I was offered to start an International Humanitarian Aid Master’s course here in Paris, it presented a very interesting and a challenging task for me, I was motivated to develop a new full-time course. It was an opportunity to step outside the routine and to come to France. This is the fifth year I administer this master’s course. And it is always interesting to train people, to be at the beginning of students’ career in humanitarian field. The humanitarian needs to have qualified humanitarian workers.

Q: Has this decision affected the vision that you have of the humanitarian world?

BP: Of course it did. Today we can observe a real shift in the global humanitarian activity, many things are changing. There is a huge need to accumulate already existing humanitarian experience, to capitalize experience, and to make a further research in this field.

Q: What do you think when you look at your students?

BP: It is always a pleasure for me to see the results of our work, when I meet my former students who graduated from this Master’s course a couple of years or a year ago. I keep in touch with many of them and regularly meet some of them at the conferences or meetings on humanitarian issues. It is always interesting to learn how they apply the knowledge they received while studying here, and what questions they ask themselves and what challenges they meet in their work. Sometimes they even suggest some changes or new directions in the programme.

Thank you!