FRANCAISMédecins Sans Frontières - Comments
2) The way it works
-Unlike some Anglophone charities which hire permanent staff, MSF can easily appeal to volunteers as the French medical system allows to take unpaid leaves. Besides, young doctors are more available because of unemployment and free education, since they don’t have to repay their student loans as they do in the United States. Such possibilities might explain the freedom of speech and the inclination to denounce. But voluntary service also has drawbacks regarding professional experience. According to Marc Payet, half the volunteers leave MSF-France after their first mission abroad. In Moyo, Northern Uganda, ethnologist Tim Allen also noticed that a high turnover did not help new expatriates to learn from their predecessors while medical teams retreated into life in their coumpound and tended to feel frustrated, partly owing to ignorance about the social aspects of affliction among local people. As a matter of fact, emergencies do not facilitate analysis and dialogue: “action doesn’t like democracy” was a typical motto for recruits according to journalist Jonathan Benthall. MSF’s strength, as can be seen from quick responses to humanitarian crises, is rather linked to its logistics, training and purchase centre in Lézignan, near Perpignan, where emergency kits are pre-packaged. MSF is the only French NGO to have such a structure, called Eurologistique. It is sometimes used by MDM, ACF and AMI.
-According to journalist Dan Bortolotti, MSF sometimes hired “cowboys”, “expats with colonial attitudes who have abused national staff, misfits who will never be comfortable in their home societies, and those simply looking for a refugee from problems at home”.
