FRANCAISMédecins Sans Frontières - Comments
1) The mission
-As it mainly operates in emergency situations, MSF does not have a vocation for development nor that of training doctors in the Third-World. Yet it is willing to invest in the long term and launched in March 2003, with the Pasteur Institute and the World Health Organisation a Foundation against the “neglected diseases”, left behind by pharmaceutical research as they only concern poor people.
-As it expanded, the organisation eventually got nearer to the ICRC. A Director-General of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Paul Grossrieder, thus testifies: “MSF’s political choices, especially during the early years of its existence, prevented it from being impartial (for example in Afghanistan during the Soviet period, when MSF doctors sided with the mujaheddin). The covert nature of certain activities precluded the development of systematic, large-scale operations. Things have changed now. MSF’s methods are much closer to those of the ICRC, and the ICRC has followed in MSF’s footsteps and adopted a more informal style. What remains particularly different is the duty to bear witness, by which MSF staff are bound, whereas ICRC delegates must follow a policy of discretion, chiefly in order to obtain access to places of detention and prisoner-of-war camps”.
