tagged w/ Medecins Sans Frontiers
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Hey everybody, sorry I have been absent for a few weeks, I was shooting a story in Colombia about some new developments in Narcotrafficking. It was a wild adventure. We are still in the middle of production on the story but look for it in next seasons Vanguard.
I wanted to write today about some of my friends at Doctors Without Borders. Quite frankly Doctors without Borders (known more commonly as MSF) is an invaluable organization for us to collaborate with here at Vanguard. The reason is two-fold. One, MSF acts as the front line eyes and ears for the journalism community. In difficult situations where sometimes the ground truth is obscured by distance, uncooperative governments, nefarious actors, and apathy, MSF is often a great source of unadulterated truth in a land of agendas. I sympathize with them because their agenda is really to provide aide not get sucked into local politics. I've seen this time and time again in places like Yemen and Colombia. The second factor is that often we (Vanguard) couldn’t go to the places we go, without the assistance of MSF. Its often too remote and too dangerous. So naturally when you are sleeping in a small MSF house in a place like Yemen and sharing meals of dubious nutritional value, a lot of bonding occurs. I still maintain contact with some of the doctors I have worked with overseas, and I can tell you they are the most committed and noble group of individuals I have ever encountered in the face of abject difficulty and despair. However, even the most stoic of these doctors can’t help but be impacted by the circumstances they find themselves in.
If you are interested in the life of a humanitarian volunteer, I highly recommend you check out this film called Living in Emergency, a critically acclaimed independent documentary that interweaves the stories of four MSF doctors in war-torn Congo and post-conflict Liberia.
Untitled from LivinginEmergency on Vimeo.
I think the film gives an amazing portrayal of the difficulties facing these kind of humanitarian volunteers as they battle disease, destitution, violence, and poverty.
Watch Kaj Larsen's reporting from Yemen in Vanguard: Beach of Death. Also, check out Kaj's most recent show: Vanguard: Remote Control War.
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Yesterday my colleague Darren wrote about how the world is becoming increasingly dangerous for journalists. While the recent high profile events that Darren mentioned (Roxana Saberi, Laura Ling) have put a spotlight on the perils of journalism, there is an interesting corollary trend that has largely escaped mainstream attention. Slowly but steadily the world is becoming a more dangerous place for humanitarian organizations.
Non-profits, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), aid agencies all used to be afforded a larger degree of protection in the countries and conflicts in which they operated. It’s difficult to define when the trend started occurring, but there has been a rapid escalation in the last two decades of violence against aid organizations. Perhaps the most notable example is the withdrawal of Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF, or known commonly as Doctors Without Borders in the US) from Afghanistan in 2004. Doctors Without Borders had been providing medical services in Afghanistan since 1980. They fearlessly worked throughout the bloody confrontation with the Soviets, the brutal civil war that followed, and the repressive regime of the Taliban in the 1990s. But, after 24 years of operating in one of the most difficult places on earth, coupled with an incident in which five of their staff members were killed, MSF decided that it was too dangerous to operate in the country. This left a major void and a population without access to basic medical treatment at a time it was desperately needed.
Similarly, last year in Somalia, MSF was forced to halt all operations and withdraw 87 staff members after three of its people were killed in a roadside bomb. This was on the heels of an incident in which two staff members were kidnapped. I was in Somalia in 2006 and could see the rampant escalation of violence against what used to be perceived as neutral actors. When I was in Mogadishu, the UN had pulled out all international staff, using only local Somalis as proxies to conduct their activities.
These are but a few examples. The general trend line is that more and more aid organizations are being targeted in conflict zones. The humanitarian space is rapidly shrinking. Even in places where NGOs can still operate, they have to devote a larger and larger portion of their resources to security, thereby diminishing the care they are able to give to the local population, which in turn makes them perceived less as allies and more as foreigners, which makes the aid organizations more vulnerable. It’s a vicious cycle.
Its reasonable to ask why the humanitarian space is rapidly disintegrating. There is a combination of factors. One component is that in both Iraq and Afghanistan the insurgency style conflict has blurred the lines between combatant and non-combatant. This has had spill-over effect to the NGO community. The UN peacekeeping branding has lost some of its perception as a strict peacekeeping force as well. Blue Helmets with .50 cals don’t exactly scream peace, and it is likely that the NGO community as a whole has been impacted by the changing perception of the UN. Finally there is a more worrisome reason that has been whispered about in the aid community. It has been suggested that the military itself is blurring the line between military action and humanitarian action. In an effort to win hearts and minds, the military is engaging in many of the same types of missions that have traditionally been the domain of humanitarian organizations. Detractors say that when the missions are the same, it makes it less important for combatants to distinguish between the motivations of different organizations. For example when I was in Afghanistan in 2005, I was embedded with the US military when they went on a mission called a MedCap. The purpose was to provide medical care in rural Afghanistan. Some in the humanitarian world claim this is exactly the kind of thing that pollutes the line between aid and military action, and puts providers at risk.
The military disagrees with this analysis and believes it is critical to their efforts to engender good will among the civilian populace. Its difficult to know the answer, but it is troubling that an organization like MSF which survived the Russians, a Civil War, and the Taliban in Afghanistan, couldn’t survive the American occupation.
What is clear though is that what (and who) were once considered safe in some of the most difficult areas in the world are no longer so. Aid workers joke with the gallows style humor that the famous red cross plus sign, used to act a bullet proof vest. A vehicle emblazoned with it on the side could drive through the middle of a fire fight and the shooting would stop. Now its considered a bulls-eye.
Whatever the reasons, the shrinking humanitarian space is a reality with fairly severe consequences. In many places organizations like MSF are the only people operating there. Without them, the populations, become less healthy, more impoverished, and increasingly isolated from the outside world; exactly the root conditions that make them ripe to become conflict zones in the first place.
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From the Washington Post: Although Haiti’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed many buildings in Port-au-Prince, it mostly spared the upper class homes and businesses up the mountain in the cool, green suburb of Petionville, home to former presidents and senators.From the Washington Post: Although Haiti’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed... more
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The U.S. relief effort after the Haiti earthquake started too slowly and cautiously, according to the retired general who led the military relief effort on the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.The U.S. relief effort after the Haiti earthquake started too slowly and cautiously,... more
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Numerous reports say that angry complaints are mounting over the United States’ running of Haiti's main airport, which has turned away airplanes delivering aid. One leading aid group, Medecins Sans Frontiers, complained of skewed priorities and a supply bottleneck at Haiti's airport, which has been taken over by US Marines.Numerous reports say that angry complaints are mounting over the United States’... more
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