World-wide movement

The catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza has tested to their limits 300 local volunteers with Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF or Doctors Without Borders), the independent private global non-governmental association founded in Paris in 1971 by French doctors and journalists.

In a phone interview with Gulf Today, Jerusalem-based MSF head of mission in Palestine Ann Taylor said 2.3 million Gazans living on a “postage stamp” of territory “want a permanent ceasefire agreed by all parties.”

The aim of MSF’s founders was to establish an organisation to provide medical care for victims of conflicts, natural disasters, epidemics, and exclusion from health care. From a start-up with 300 volunteers, MSF has grown into a world-wide movement in 160 countries of 68,000 people who include international and local doctors, nurses, water and sanitation engineers, logistics managers, and administrators.

MSF’s operations are underpinned by funds supplied by millions of individuals who make small donations and private firms and institutions. Last year they provided 97 per cent of the $2.4 bbillion raised, with contributions from “seven million individuals ensuring MSF’s operational inde-pendence and flexibility,” the organisation’s website states. MSF does not accept funds from the European Union and Norway due to their negative policies on migrants; pharmaceutical and biotech companies; oil, natural gas, or mining companies; and tobacco and armaments firms.

MSF’s French founders were moved to act during the famine which accompanied the civil war in Biafra in Nigeria. The movement’s most well-known co-founder is doctor and politician Bernard Kouchner who was motivated by his experiences as a Red Cross physician during that conflict.

Between 1967-1970, the Nigerian federal government prevented food and medical supplies from entering the breakaway Biafran enclave. By the end of the war, three million Biafran’s had died, the majority being children who died from starvation.

During the Lebanese civil war Kouchner volunteered in the Shia district of Ras al-Naba’a, which straddles the Green Line that divided east and west Beirut, when it was under siege by a Maronite Christian militia. “Naba’a” was constantly identified as a “hot” location during this period. While there he worked closely with Shia rights activist Imam Musa Sadr who created the Amal movement before his mysterious disappearance in Libya in 1978. Kouchner defected from MSF in 1980 to establish Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) and later served as France’s minister of health and foreign affairs.

Since its establishment, MSF has constantly responded to war and turbulence in this region And elsewhere. MSF has worked in 13 countries and the Palestinian territories in the Middle East and North Africa. The movement has active programmes in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, Egypt Libya, Palestine, Syria, and Sudan.

Following the collapse of the Lebanese economy in 2019, MSF stepped up its activities by providing more than 600 staff to run and support health care facilities aiding Lebanese citizens and Syrian refugees in six of the country’s nine districts, including Beirut and Tripoli. While Lebanon remains in the grip of a politico-economic crisis, 90 per cent of the population has fallen below the poverty line and the health care system has largely disintegrated.

MSF began working in Iraq in 1991, after the country’s free and universal health system began to decline due to war and punitive sanctions. This downward slide accelerated after the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the 2014-2017 rise of Daesh and the campaign against to crush Daesh. Since health care faciliites lack supplies and specialists, MSF has more than 1,800 staff working in a wide range of fields and focusing on areas of the country most devastated by warfare. Psychological support is needed in Mosul and Baghdad and across the country.

As Jordan is home to more the 700,000 refugees from Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, the country’s health care system is under serious strain. MSF has established a reconstructive surgery hospital to treat war-wounded from these these countries, dealing with burns, gun shot wounds, and other injuries. Physiotherapy and psychological support are provided for patients. MSF teams also offer consultations and medicine for non communicable diseases in northern Jordan.

MSF has 3,000 staff in war-torn Yemen where health care is limited and people suffer from long-term effects of violence such as preventable diseases, trauma, and malnutrition. Children in particular are affected by severe malnutrition since avaliable food is unaffordable, health care centres are closing, and the underfunded World Food Programme has been forced to reduce food baskets to needy families.

 Since the Ukraine war began in February 2022, UN and international relief agencies have complained that US and European funding has diminished dramatically and forced them to reduce or cut services and rations — even in desperately food insecure Yemen.

Libya faces multiple challenges. The country remains divided by ten years of warfare and lawlessness which have collapsed the health care sector. On top of national instability, Libya has also become a main transit centre for migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. Thousands who have boarded boats and set sail from Libya have been intercepted and returned to Libya. There they are held in detention camps where conditions are inhumane and brutal. MSF provides medical care, food, and hygiene materials to detainees in the northwest as well as migrants living in desperate and dangerous conditions in Tripoli and Bani Walid. MSF also supports Ministry of Health programmes in the west.

In Egypt, MSF also offers health care for “migrants, asylum seekers and refugees who have been subjected to violence” during perilous journeys from Africa and the region. In recent years Cairo has received increasing numbers of arrivals, many of whom suffer from psychological and physical problems. In response MSF has established in the Maadi quarter a centre which provides multiple services: gynaecology, physiotherapy, and mental health support along with help for finding housing, work, and access to social services.

In its 52 years of existence MAF has created a remarkable record of medical and social intervention in crisis zones and inspired others to follow the movement’s example as the need for action has grown exponentially due to warfare, natural disasters, and climate change. In 1999, MSF was awarded the Novel Peace Prize “in recognition of the organisation’s pioneering humanitarian work on several continents.”

Photo: Reuters