FRANCAISMédecins du Monde - History
1980-1989
-January 1980, France: MSF splits, MDM is created by doctors, especially Pierre Pradier, the former president of the French National Union of Students (UNEF), and Bernard Kouchner, a former far-left activist in May 1968 (he was in charge of maintaining order for the Communist Students’ Union; he took in Algerian independence fighters of the National Liberation Front). Yet MDM is not a “leftist organisation”, contrary to what is often said. After the socialists came into office in May 1981, for instance, the former spokesman of President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Xavier Gouyou-Beauchamps, joins MDM. As to Bernard Kouchner and Pierre Pradier, they will resign from their responsibilities within MDM precisely to enter politics, the former in May 1988 when he is chosen to be the Secretary of State in charge of social integration in the Michel Rocard government, the latter in June 1994 so as to be candidate in the European Parliament elections on the list of Bernard Tapie’s radical party. Far from the cases of corruption and exercising pressure on witnesses which lead to Bernard Tapie’s ineligibility, Pierre Pradier dies of cancer on April 25 2003. Still honorary President of MDM, Bernard Kouchner is named minister for humanitarian action and health in the Pierre Bérégovoy government in April 1992, again within the spheres of the socialist party. Then, on a list led by Michel Rocard in June 1994, he is elected to the European Parliament where he chairs the Development Commission. After joining in January 1996 the Radical Socialist Party, of which he will shortly be the co-President, Bernard Kouchner joins the Socialist Party and is named Secretary of State for Health within the ministry for employment and solidarity of Martine Aubry in Lionel Jospin’s government in June 1997. Special envoy of the United Nations General Secretary between July 1999 and January 2001, he then becomes head of the civil administration of Kosovo within the framework of the MINUK (United Nations Mission in Kosovo). Back in France after having failed to get the post of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, he becomes between February 2001 and April 2002 minister delegated to health under the supervision of Elisabeth Guigou, minister for social affairs.
-1980, Chad: whilst the troops of Hissène Habré and Goukouni Ouddeï fight for the control of the capital, MDM and Hôpital Sans Frontières tend to and nurse the civil population, as well as the injured prisoners of war and fighters back from the front.
-From 1980, Afghanistan: MDM teams pass the Pakistani border illegally and rescue the Mujaheddins fighting against the Red Army. When the Soviets leave in 1989, the rules obviously change. In June 1991, MDM decides to close its mission. As Olivier Weber, a journalist, reports, Philippe Bonhour, one of the doctors working in the country at that time, explains how he “understood who the Mujaheddins really were, not always very nice people, taking advantage of the aid, hijacking it. Until a certain point, we would find it normal; we would turn a blind eye on it. Of course, they would use our cars for their own purpose… I personally remember being irritated by some manners, notably the way the leaders of Wardak tried to rip us off on transports, on wages”. When Kabul falls to the fundamentalist Taliban on the 26th of September 1996, the new regime imposes a strict application of the Koranic law, the sharia, and wants to keep men and women separate in medical structures. On the 6th of September 1997, a minister of Health’s decree compels women to be treated only in one hospital in Kabul, Rabia Balkhi, even though it is not completely functional. Back in the country, MDM has to compromise. After negotiations with the ICRC and NGOs, the Taliban allow women to be admitted into other hospitals, where men and women will be kept apart. But in April 1998, as the authorities are trying to control the recruitment of local staff and to select the recipients of international relief, they want NGOs to move to a neighbourhood more easily controlled in the capital city. As an agreement discriminating against women is signed between the United Nations and the Taliban on the 14th of May, MDM refuses to comply and is therefore expelled from the country on the 20th of July 1998. Because they cannot find sufficiently trained Afghan medics to take over from them, the association’s expatriates negotiate a difficult return. In an issue of Médecins du Monde Actualités dated June 2001, the person in charge in Kabul is worried that the humanitarian workers have made it possible for the Taliban “to keep making war” “by fulfilling their social and protection duties”. During the American military intervention in October 2001, this time, the local employees take over the field operations as MDM has to evacuate briefly its expatriate staff.
-From 1981, El Salvador: in order to be officially allowed to get to guerrilla controlled areas in June 1981, MDM has to give a part of its relief aid to governmental authorities, who can supply their troops. The association, which the local television soon accuses of helping the rebels in El Merillo, is closely watched over by the army. Then, MDM clandestinely supports Salvadorian refugee camps in Colomoncagua, Honduras. Those camps are infiltrated by the FMLN (National Liberation Farabundo Marti Front) which uses them as supply bases, intimidating people out of going back to El Salvador.
-From 1981, Nicaragua, Honduras: in Managua MDM sets up a blood bank with the Sandinista government, which is fighting the Mosquito Indians on the Coast, and the guerrillas of Eden Pastora "Zero" in the North. MDM is sympathetic to the social improvements of the Sandinista revolution and so decides not to intervene in those rebel areas. It is true that an exploratory mission at the Mosquitos’ had been used by the Indians to bring in weapons at the bottom of the pirogues carrying the medicine. Moreover, the association doesn’t want to put at risk its team working in the Somotillo hospital, in Sandinista controlled territory.
-From January 1982, Poland: MDM starts to support the Solidarnós´c’s trade union against the military dictatorship of General Wojciech Jaruzelski. That year, nearly one quarter of MDM budget is dedicated to Poland where Roneos, ink and typewriters are smuggled in along with medicine supplies. In his autobiography, the Doctor Jacques Lebas admits that such an aid was more political than humanitarian. The links with Poland remain after the period of martial law and a sister organisation of MDM, Lekarze Swiata, is set up under the direction of a person previously responsible for health matters within Solidarnós´c. The partnership with doctors in the field though is not always easy. Jacques Lebas says to regret not having dared mention openly the question of abortion, which is banned by the Council of the Polish Medical Association following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
-1982-1987, Vietnam: after having chartered a boat, the Akouna, to take in the boat people, MDM takes part in a joint operation with two ships from the French Navy, the cargo boat Le Goelo and the corvette Le Balny, in order to bring 1500 refugees to the Philippines. In 1985, MDM rescues 500 more boat people with an oceanographic ship, the Jean Marcot, and a corvette, the Victor Schoelcher. The next year, MDM takes in almost 900 boat people on the Cap Anamur, which has been chartered with the German NGO Cap Anamur. Finally, in 1987, MDM works in co-operation with a helicopter carrier from the French Navy, the Jeanne d’Arc, so as to answer the needs of the boat people who are taken on the Rose Schiaffano, and then on the Mary, a cargo boat bought specifically for this rescue operation.
-1983-1988, Thailand: in March 1983, MDM starts helping Karen refugees near River Moei and Burma. In september 1985, the organisation crosses the border illegally and signs an agreement with the leader of the rebels, Bo Mya, to run a field hospital in Htoo Wa Lu, where it takes care of civilians as well as fighters from the KNLA (Karen National Liberation Army). Alain Deloche, who opens this programme, is ready to propagate the Karen struggle abroad and to organise diplomatic meetings for them with the European Parliament. Yet MDM has to stop its activities when the government in Bangkok wants to close the border in 1988. Already overwhelmed by the Khmer refugees at the Cambodian border, the Thai authorities wish to deal with the Karen issue by themselves and to get rid of NGOs in a region where the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) will intervene only later.
-1983-1994, Chile: MDM opens a mission which, according to its co-ordinator, Jacky Mamou, is not justified by the material needs but by the “moral” necessity to support the opposition to the dictatorship of general Augusto Pinochet, in particular through the Church and the National College of medical practitioners. This position earns the Santiago MDM office to be searched by the regime secret police in October 1986.
-1984, Ethiopia: MDM is not allowed to intervene during the famine because of its alleged implication in Operation Moses which leads the Falasha, Ethiopian Jews, to Israel through Sudan.
-From 1985, South Africa: MDM intervenes in the “independent” homeland of Bophuthatswana where volunteers are whipped and briefly jailed for taking the defence of demonstrators repressed by the police in Winterveld.
-1985-1987, Brazil: MDM is not allowed to enter the Yanomami territory, closed by the authorities and devastated by the garimperos, gold hunters. Later on, MDM supports the landless movement by ensuring a sustained health control to those poor farmers who occupy uncultivated estate, the “locations” (assentamentos).
-From 1986, France: Alain Deloche, who took over from Bernard Kouchner at the head of MDM in 1984, opens a health care centre for the destitute in Paris. Quite soon, the association invests more and more in France, taking part amongst other things in the Universal Health Protection Act of 1999 (Couverture Maladie Universelle). In 1987, MDM opens an anonymous aids screening centre and sets up programmes targeting drug addicts. For orphans, the organisation in 1988 creates an adoption service, different from the “Chain of Hope”, an association created in 1985, administered by MDM until 1994 and which fosters children at distance (between July 1992 and July 1993, for instance, it helps to evacuate 86 wounded children from Sarajevo so that they can be cared for in France). In his book, Olivier Demoinet, explains that he left MDM in November 1998 to personally look after a young girl from Kosovo, getting her all the necessary visas to have a surgical operation in France.
-January 1987, France: MDM organizes in Paris the “first international conference on humanitarian law and ethics”. Amongst the participants are President François Mitterrand, his Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, and Bernard Kouchner’s political friends, i.e. Lech Walesa, the leader of Poland’s Solidarnós´c’s trade union, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, the secretary general of the Kurds Democratic Party of Iran, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the great opponent of apartheid in South Africa. MDM argues in favour of a humanitarian principle of interference, and Professor Mario Bettati gives legal grounds to this principle in the United Nations. Later on, the UN General Assembly votes resolution n°43/131, dated 8th December 1988 on “humanitarian aid to victims of natural disaster and emergency situations of the same kind”, and resolution n°45/100, dated 14th December 1990 on the establishment of “humanitarian corridors”. Such jurisprudence makes it possible to intervene in Iraqi Kurdistan during the Gulf war in 1991, in Somalia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, in Liberia and in Croatia in 1993, in Rwanda in 1994.
-1987, United States of America: MDM opens a health care centre in Bronx, New York.
-December 1988, Armenia: for the first time, the USSR allows MDM to go and help the victims of an earthquake which killed 20.000 people.
-November 1989-November 1991, France: Doctor Jacques Lebas is elected president of MDM after Patrick Aeberhard; the organisation is recognized as a charity by the government. Doctor Gilles Brucker then takes over from Jacques Lebas as MDM’s president in September 1991.
