« Poetry is here to correct God’s errors. » Nicolas Bouvier citing a Greek poet whose name he had forgotten. Ten years of civil war, a glaring error in the kingdom of the gods, finally ended in Nepal in 2006. Among the world’s ten poorest nations, the West remains blinded by this land’s limitless recreational potential while refusing to acknowledge Nepal’s suffering. Since April 2006, Nepal has yet to enter into the peacemaking process whose risks and contradictions threaten its very future and integrity. I believe that this transition’s story must be honestly rendered. Since the beginning of the war with the shift toward the Republic and the return of refugees, these daily epiphanies...

Belgium, a young Kingdom almost 180 years old, co-founder of the European Union, has been going through a political and identity crisis since the legislative elections of 10 June 2007, threatening its very existence. The question is many-sided : is the State of Belgium still relevant ? As a common ground gathering more than 10 million individuals speaking three different official languages, does it still raise interest ? From a TV hoax to an open public debate, did the hypothesis “End of Belgium” turn into a “pre-established” fact, a political program that will be imposed to the people ? As only its divided aspect is visible today, one can also wonder about the real borders of this...

“The truth of this life is not that we die, it’s that we die stolen.” Louis Guilloux, 1935 These pictures are the only way I found to ease my pain. I have been the witness of my wife’s collapse, when she decided to begin the mourning of her sister who died in a paraglider accident 15 years ago. They don’t tell the truth. They only try to tell what I believe to have seen: my love sinking body and soul in an irresistible slowing down; the pregnancy and the birth of our child setting maybe the resurgence of this mourning. They tell about the lonely and sterile energy to deal with that, but more often the determination to go with this implosion, with an almost maniac self denial, to the...

In Nepal, when civil war began in 1996, the Rolpa area (middle-west; middle-mountain) was one of the first places to be completely under the Maoist rebels’ control. It is hard to get to this region, where every family has been touched and often dismantled by the conflict. Some joined rebels, others were suspected to be part of them by security forces. Life was just a permanent restlessness, maintained by all kinds of violence from the Maoists and the regular army: kidnappings, murders, disappearance, hard labour in particular on the “Martyrs’ road” (15 days a year for each family, unpaid, and no food), popular courts, taxations, etc… Hundreds of people ran away from their homeland to more...

My grandmother’s apartment in Brussels. A place that once I restless knew and then dried out slowly after my grandfather’s death in 1990, with grandchildren and great-grandchildren growing. With my primary travelling occupation and especially since my emigration to France in 2001, a place which I got far away, where I return today less than once per year. Soon, however, a need made me sign, and with a sense of urgency: the need to remember that this distance gradually abolished ... In late 2005, I sought and obtained from my grandmother, gone to see a son far from Brussels, her permission to spend two days alone at home, then a morning with when she got back. Three days to measure the...

On April 10th 2008, 17 millions of Nepalese men and women (on a total of 28 millions inhabitants) where invited to vote for the 601 members of the constituent assembly. On the agenda of their first session will feature the transition into a Republic. The result of a two years peace process, that followed ten years of civil war opposing the maoist rebels to the army and royal police, these elections confirmed the victory of the nepalese maoist party, that now holds 207 seats in the assembly. In the continuity of his questioning of this ten years of transition, particularly on the position of the Nepalese woman in this "New Nepal", Frédéric Lecloux has, during this historical week, met some...

We think that we’re going to read "The Way of the World", but it soon becomes evident that it’s "The Way of the World" that has got hold of us. This is how it starts: to begin with you can’t read anything else, that you can accept, but soon you can’t read anything at all. Bouvier has a way of squeezing out each moment of happiness till the very last drop and preserving the product of this distillation in the phials of his memory in order to draw on it for his survival each time that happiness can’t be found… And for you, where does that leave you? You understand intensely what an enormous turmoil it must have meant for Nicolas Bouvier to fix this journey forever in the scarcity of his...

The mission of Doctor without Borders in Yugoslavia was a psycho-social mission helping displaced people, most of them Serbs coming from Kosovo. This series was produced for the MSF office in Belgrad in January 2005. The office closed at the end of 2006. Its activities and most of its staff were taken over by a local association : Nexus.

"It is the victory of China : erasing from the Tibetans' minds the view of foreigners as potential witnesses of their drama (eventhough this potential only leads to a few testimonies), and replacing it by a view of them as scatterbrained wallets. In other words, the victory of China was to make Tibetans aware that, not being the way to freedom, the West is the way the money comes from. The victory was also to be able to disappear from the tourist activities, withdraw into its neighborhoods, its offices and barracks, so the old town doesn't look too much like a settlement or a fortified camp, and then encouraging the Tibetans to build themselves a picturesque appearance in front of their...