Bernard Kouchner

Bernard Kouchner

Born: November 1, 1939
in Avignon, Vaucluse, France
Bernard Kouchner (born 1 November 1939) is a French politician and doctor. He is the co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Médecins du Monde. From 2007 until 2010, he was the French Minister of Foreign and European Affairs in the center-right Fillon government under president Nicolas Sarkozy, although he had been in the past a minister in socialist governments. In 2010, The Jerusalem Post considered Kouchner the 15th most influential Jew in the world. Since 2015 Kouchner is workstream leader for the AMU (Agency for the Modernisation of Ukraine), where he contributes his expertise in healthcare.

Kouchner was born in Avignon, to a Jewish father and a Protestant mother. Kouchner's paternal grandparents were Russian-born Jews who escaped the pogroms by immigrating to France, but perished decades later in Auschwitz.

Kouchner began his political career as a member of the French Communist Party (PCF), from which he was expelled in 1966 for attempting to overthrow the leadership. On a visit to Cuba in 1964, Kouchner spent the night fishing and drinking with Fidel Castro. In the protests of May 1968, he ran the medical faculty strike committee at the Sorbonne.

Kouchner worked as a physician for the Red Cross in Biafra in 1968 (during the Nigerian Civil War). His experience as a physician for the Red Cross led him to co-found Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in 1971, and then, due to a conflict of opinion with MSF chairman Claude Malhuret, he established Doctors of the World ('Médecins du Monde') in 1980. Kouchner worked as a humanitarian volunteer during the Siege of Naba'a refugee camp in Lebanon in East Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War taking risks that "other foreign aid workers weren't, even worked closely with the Shia cleric Imam Musa al-Sadr".

From 1988, Kouchner began his government career in Socialist governments, though he was not always a member of the French Socialist Party. He became "Secrétaire d'état", a lower position in the Cabinet, for Humanitarian Action in 1988 in the Michel Rocard cabinet, then Minister of Health under Pierre Bérégovoy in 1992, during Mitterrand's presidency.

Kouchner continued his political career in the European Parliament from 1994 to 1997. During the time, he chaired the Committee on Development and Cooperation and served on the Subcommittee on Human Rights. In addition to his committee assignments, he was a member of the Parliament's delegation for relations with the People's Republic of China.

Together with Judge Andrée Ruffo, Kouchner established the International Bureau for Children's Rights (IBCR), a non-governmental organization based in Montreal, in 1994.

When Lionel Jospin became Prime Minister in 1997, Kouchner became Minister of Health for the second time. He held the office until 1999. ...

Source: Article "Bernard Kouchner" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Movies for Bernard Kouchner...

Louis Schittly, de terre et de guerre
Title: Louis Schittly, de terre et de guerre
Character: Self
Released: May 4, 2023
Type: Movie
Louis Schittly was born in 1938, in a peasant family of a small village of Sundgau, in Bernwiller, in Alsace. He was destined to take over the family farm, but the war stories that rocked his childhood change his dreams. Having become a doctor, he went to see wars up close: Biafra, Vietnam, Afghanistan, South Sudan. In 1969 at the Santana hospital in Biafra, he fought against the famine which was ravaging children. He and his friends will be nicknamed the Frenchs Doctors; they create Médecins Sans Frontières with Bernard Kouchner.
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Stéphane Guillon - Portraits au vitriol (1ère salve)
Title: Stéphane Guillon - Portraits au vitriol (1ère salve)
Character: Self
Released: October 7, 2008
Type: Movie
Les portraits désormais cultes de Stéphane Guillon sur Canal+ . S'adressant aux invités, il ose un ton inédit, parfois irrévérencieux mais toujours hilarant et taquine avec facétie et perspicacité Jean Dujardin, IAM, Christophe Lambert, Judith Godrèche, Rocco Siffredi, David Douillet, Joey Starr, Fabrice Luchini, Nagui, Marianne James, Bernard Kouchner... Et retrouvez en bonus, les invités en colère qui ne voulaient plus jamais entendre parler de leur portrait !...
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Title: Vivement dimanche
Character: Self
Released: September 20, 1998
Type: TV
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The Troubles We've Seen
Title: The Troubles We've Seen
Character: Self
Released: November 23, 1994
Type: Movie
We follow Marcel Ophuls' two journeys to Sarajevo in 1993. He is starting a documentary about war correspondants. But this also becomes a reflexion about truth and life. The form consists in many interviews of mostly French and American journalists and reporters of television or newspapers.
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Title: Zone interdite
Character: Self
Released: March 7, 1993
Type: TV
The zone interdite refers to two distinct territories established in German-occupied France during the Second World War after the signature of the Second Armistice at Compiègne.
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Title: Télématin
Character: Self
Released: January 10, 1985
Type: TV
Télématin is a French breakfast television news show, broadcast on France 2 since January 7, 1985. It is broadcast in Metropolitan France weekdays from 6:30 to 9:00 am CET. TV5 broadcast the show in Canada in its entirety until September 2011: it now shows a 90 minute version between 6:30 and 8:00 am Eastern Time, when the French original version is now 2h30 long. Télématin is hosted by William Leymergie. The show is daily seen by around 40% of the French morning audience, a very high percentage for French TV. In Metropolitan France, the newscasts are presented at 7:00, 7:30 and 8:00, with newsflashes at 6:30 and 8:50, and two press reviews at 7:20 and 8:30. The 6:30, 7:30 and 8:50 newscasts are usually presented by a female reader and the hourly newscasts by a male. The usual readers are Nathanaël de Rinquesen, Sophie Le Saint, Julien Benedetto, Sophie Gastrain, Patrice Romedenne and Frédéric Vion.
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Title: Apostrophes
Character: Self
Released: January 10, 1975
Type: TV
Apostrophes was a live, weekly, literary, prime-time, talk show on French television created and hosted by Bernard Pivot. It ran for fifteen years (724 episodes) from January 10, 1975, to June 22, 1990, and was one of the most watched shows on French television (around 6 million regular viewers). It was broadcast on Friday nights on the channel France 2 (which was called "Antenne 2" from 1975 to 1992). The hourlong show was devoted to books, authors and literature. The format varied between one-on-one interviews with a single author and open discussions between four or five authors.