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doctorswithoutborders:

In the Eyes of Others: How People in Crises Perceive Humanitarian Action

LIVE Online Webcast

Monday, April 30, 2012 - 8:00 PM

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We’re hosting a webcast in celebration of MSF’s new book: In the Eyes of Others: How People in Crises Perceive Humanitarian Aid published by MSF, NYU’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC), and Humanitarian Outcomes. The book is the result of attempts to better understand how humanitarian aid and its principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence are perceived by the people receiving assistance.

We invite you to join us for an online panel discussion to mark the English-language release of the book. Panelists will include contributors to the book as well as MSF aid workers, who will share stories from their field assignments reflecting issues of perception and exploring the many facets of humanitarian action today.

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Moderator:

Phil Zabriskie, Managing Editor at MSF-USA Panelists:

Caroline Abu-Sada, Coordinator of MSF’s research unit for humanitarian action in Geneva and editor of In the Eyes of Others: How People in Crises Perceive Humanitarian Aid

Abby Stoddard, Co-Director of Humanitarian Outcomes and contributing writer to In the Eyes of Others: How People in Crises Perceive Humanitarian Aid

Dr. Darin Portnoy, Vice President, Médecins Sans Frontières International, former President of MSF-USA, and MSF aid worker

PLEASE REGISTER to receive information on how to login on April 30.

doctorswithoutborders:

DRC: Civilians and Aid Workers Victims of Renewed Fighting in the Kivus

Civilians and aid workers are increasingly the targets of violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where armed conflicts and large troop movements have recently intensified, and where security risks have made it increasingly difficult to continue to provide medical care, said the international medical humanitarian organization MSF on Wednesday.

National and international stabilization forces in DRC have never been more important, but MSF questions their effectiveness given the worsening situation.

“The situation is not stabilizing in Kivu,” said MSF program manager Dr. Marcela Allheimen. “It is deteriorating again, and has been deteriorating over the last several months. We are noticing renewed violence, but what is most alarming is the commonplace nature of violence on civilian populations and aid actors.”

Read the whole MSF press release.

Photo: DRC 2011 © Ben Milpas
Children at the Mweso hospital, where MSF is continuing to work despite the threat of continuing violence

doctorswithoutborders:

Two MSF Staff Members Kidnapped Then Released in DRC

On the morning of Wednesday, April 4, two MSF staff members—Cedric, a nurse, and Marius, a logistician—were kidnapped near Nyanzale in the North Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo while traveling by car.

Hours later, they were released unharmed.

Given the seriousness of this incident, MSF evacuated its teams working in the Nyanzale hospital and in two health centers in the area.

MSF is therefore suspending some of its activities in North Kivu pending a full review of MSF’s work and practices in light of the deteriorating security situation in the province, which is having a profound impact on the population and on the ability of relief organizations to deliver humanitarian assistance.  

Photo:DRC © MSF
Rutshuru general hospital in North Kivu

doctorswithoutborders:

People are waiting for us!

“We are on our way in the direction of Musonjo, a long line of porters moving slowly through a palette of different greens in an almost snakelike motion. Every small but determined step reduces the distance to our goal for the day; a thought that always makes me smile… Time to get moving again. Rain… What is rain other than falling drops of water, touching our bodies and soaking our clothes? A human body consists of a minimum of 70% water, so what are a couple of drops more? Just keep on moving. People are waiting for us!”

Check out Ferry Schippers’ blog from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Photo: © MSF Ferry Schippers

doctorswithoutborders:

DRC: “At Night, the Stories … Come Back to Haunt Me”

Baraka, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—“I [MSF nurse Alice Echumbe] am the supervisor of the Jamaa Letu center, which in Swahili means “Our family.” MSF opened this center in May 2011 to offer additional community services, especially to pregnant women who need to be close to the hospital just before birth to avoid a long travel from their villages.

The center also welcomes patients who want a more private and confidential setting for their consultations in family planning, voluntary HIV/AIDS testing (especially for pregnant women), treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and treatment for survivors of sexual violence. These survivors are not only women but [also] men and even children, some of them less than five years old.

I am a nurse by training and have worked for MSF since 2009, previously at MSF’s Baraka Hospital. I have done outreach work with mobile health teams, traveling to remote villages to raise awareness about health issues such as cholera, malnutrition, and TB.

What our teams notice in the villages is that people often go to traditional healers when they are sick—for example if a child has malaria, one of the most common illnesses. But traditional medicine can sometimes lead to serious complications and can put patients at risk of dying, especially if they cannot get to a hospital in time. So we explain to the community and to traditional healers to recognize when it is necessary to seek help and send their patients to a health center.

We also try to convince pregnant women to go to the rural health center or a hospital to give birth because those places have a skilled birth attendant, equipment, and drugs.

Photo: DRC 2011 © Claudia Blume/MSF

doctorswithoutborders:

New Doctors Without Borders Book Reveals Perils of Negotiating Access to Crisis Zones

Following a two-year analysis of MSF’s past interventions, MSF will release Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed: The MSF Experience. The authors of the collected essays and case studies—MSF veterans with many decades of collective field experience—explore the practical realities of humanitarian crises through MSF’s experience in 11 complex situations.

Providing behind-the-scenes accounts of MSF’s decision-making processes, they pose the question: Do we—can we—always live up to our principles? Are the struggles and compromises we make to reach people in need in places like Somalia and Myanmar so different from those we faced in Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) following the Rwandan genocide, or in Ethiopia during the 1984 famine? And, as Marie-Pierre Allié, President of MSF France, writes, “How can we judge whether a compromise is acceptable?”

Check out this interview on WNYC with one of the authors.

Puchase book from Amazon & Columbia University Press

doctorswithoutborders:

Six months after the birth of South Sudan—the world’s newest independent country—a series of emergencies are unfolding that require urgent humanitarian responses. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has scaled up into full emergency mode in Upper Nile State to respond to the sudden influx of thousands of refugees fleeing conflict in neighboring Sudan; while around the town of Agok in Northern Bahr al Ghazal State, where displaced and resident populations are facing the specter of a food shortage, MSF has launched a preventive supplementary feeding program for children at risk of becoming malnourished in the months ahead.

The 22-year war that ended in 2005 left South Sudan’s healthcare provision in a perilous state that could be described as an emergency in its own right. Now, in the contested area of Abyei between the two Sudans, fresh conflict has pushed the local population to escape southwards, resulting in an estimated 100,000 displaced people. Other conflicts across the border in Sudan—particularly in Blue Nile and South Kordofan states—have forced tens of thousands of refugees to flee across the border over the past month, and they are still coming. The burden of these multiple situations is heavy, and aid organizations need to move onto an emergency-response footing. Read more

Photo: South Sudan 2011 © Avril Benoit/MSF