FRANCAISMédecins du Monde - Comments
2) The way it works
-Unlike MSF, again, the board of directors of MDM, elected by a general meeting every three years, is still almost only composed of health professionals, all of the same French nationality. With 2 000 subscribed members in France and 3 000 abroad, half of which are in Spain, in 1996, MDM keeps working as a real association; sometimes, this can slow down decision-making processes. Brought together within an international committee since 1993, with a secretariat in France and a common charter adopted in 1996, the sister organisations are licensed by a contract which gives them freedom to bear the name MDM. In 1996, the movement also had representation offices in Brussels, in Tokyo, in Hong Kong, in Holland, in Great-Britain and in Germany.
-Except for the professionals in the headquarters, MDM works a lot with voluntary and sometimes unpaid staff. Such a system fosters motivation and talent. But it also has drawbacks. About a MDM relief operation which was organised six months too late with the wife of the President in Peru for victims of floods, Dr. Jean Rigal, who later joined MSF in 1983 and is quoted by Anne Vallaeys, deplores programmes without means and objectives. As for Annie Faure, who worked with MDM in Rwanda in 1994, she regrets a poor recruitment policy : "an incompetent voluntary worker who was fired by an NGO will always find a jod in another one which doesn’t know about his past record […] Non-profit voluntary agencies lack accountability in this regard […] Headquarters have difficulties to evaluate by fax or letters the performance of their staff abroad. They often send someone to check and take decisions: repatriation in most cases. Yet they are reluctant to get rid of their black sheeps. They delay repatriation because they lack proofs and are not sure about bad behaviours. Or because they need staff and prefer to close their eyes: having someone is better than nobody”. Thus MDM refused the resignation of François Lefort, a priest who was in charge of the street children programmes and who was accused of sexual abuses in Senegal in 1993 and 1994. The investigation of the French Justice started in December 1995, the committee supporting François Lefort met in MDM headquarters in Paris and the organisation could sent the priest in Libéria in 1996 and Congo-Kinshasa in 1997 because the trial of the suspect began only in October 2002.
