He joined the French Communist Party in his youth. In Year 1964, at the age of 25, he visited Cuba and met Fidel Castro. He was expelled from the party in Year 1966 for attempting to remove the secretary of the French Communist Party. In 1968, he became a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross and went to Biafra on behalf of the Red Cross during the Nigerian Civil War.
In 1971, after gaining experience with the International Red Cross, he founded the organization Doctors Without Borders, which helped the wounded and sick in areas besieged by governments during the civil war. Later, he left Doctors Without Borders due to differences of opinion with the organization's president.
In 1980, he founded another organization for the same purpose, which is the organization Doctors of the World ( Médecins du Monde). In 1980, during the Lebanese Civil War, when the refugee camp in East Beirut was under siege, he worked closely with the Shiites and Imam Musa al-Sadr. In 1983, he arrived at the Alanah area between the borders of East and South Kurdistan with a group, and treated the wounded and sick in a hospital belonging to the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan. In 1986, when fighting broke out in South Kurdistan, Biafra, Ethiopia, and Sudan, Dr. Bernard Kouchner went to help those affected in those areas. In Somalia, he was delivering and handing out bags of rice to the hungry to save them from death; these actions made him a beloved figure all over the world.
He joined the French Socialist Party in 1988 during the presidency of François Mitterrand. In 1992-1993, he was Minister of Health in the French Socialist government, and in 1994 he was elected as a member of the European Parliament. In 1997, he was elected as a member of the European Parliament representing France. In the same year, after his period of responsibility in the European Parliament, he was reappointed as Minister of Health, a position he held until 1999.
From 1999 to 2001, he was the Special Representative of the President of the United Nations in Kosovo. From 2001 to 2002, he served as Minister of Health in France again.
In the 2007 French elections, Bernard Kouchner supported Ségolène Royal against Nicolas Sarkozy. Royal lost the election to Sarkozy, and after the formation of the government, Bernard was appointed as French Minister of Foreign Affairs, remaining in his position until 2010.
Dr. Bernard Kouchner is considered a close friend of stateless nations and the Kurdish nation, and he had a stance on issues related to Kurds and Kurdistan at various historical stages. For example, before the assassination of Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, Bernard Kouchner realized that the Islamic Republic was planning to assassinate him, so he told him to be careful and to be accompanied by a guard while moving around. After the start of the Anfal stages, the organization Doctors Without Borders was able to reach the liberated areas and provide medical assistance to the Peshmerga Forces, as the president of the organization, Bernard Kouchner, was a close friend of the Kurds, along with Frédéric Tissot, as they became a support and backing for Kurdistan.
In 1991, after the great million-person migration of the people of South Kurdistan, Bernard Kouchner and Dr. Frédéric Tissot played an influential role in drafting United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 to establish a no-fly zone in South Kurdistan.
After the process of liberating Iraq, diplomatic relations between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the French government moved to a stronger stage. Bernard Kouchner, when he was French Foreign Minister, on June 1, 2008, officially opened the French representative office in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region, which was welcomed by President Masoud Barzani and the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government Nechirvan Barzani.
In May 2010, at the invitation of Bernard Kouchner, the film "The Iranian Cats" was shown at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs cinema in Paris in the presence of 500 French cultural and political officials, media, and advisors. Dr. Bernard Kouchner is a famous French and international diplomat and politician who is sympathetic to the Kurdish cause. He received the Barzani Medal on March 15, 2013, from President Masoud Barzani for his services and efforts for the freedom and independence of Kurdistan.
Source:- Archive of the Encyclopedia Authority of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.