MSF at 40

The Swiss-based humanitarian organization Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF - Doctors Without Borders) may be celebrating its first 40 years, but its sights are set firmly on the work it does today.

This month, MSF posted a video on its website, highlighting the current situation in Ivory Coast. In early 2011, after disputed elections late last year, the Second Ivorian Civil War broke out, forcing many thousands to flee their homes. Opposition leader Alassane Ouattara had won the ballot, but the incumbent Laurent Gbagbo refused to go.

Now, the Ivory Coast government has recommended that 30,000 people who were internally displaced by the civil war should return home.

But MSF says its work in Ivory Coast is far from done. MSF has just decided to reopen a hospital on Ivory Coast's border with Liberia to treat many people suffering from psychological and neurological illnesses.

"We have people suffering from depression and anxiety disorders," said Jean-Pierre Kouadis, a psychologist with MSF. "Sometimes, chronic anxiety."

"Some patients lived through the first crisis of 2002 and they're still dealing with it - and now the unrest from 2010 and 2011 has brought it all up again," said Kouadis.

Mixed aid

MSF is involved in a range of different fields.

In a dramatic rescue mission last April, MSF helped 99 people escape from the Libyan city of Misrata during the civil war that led to the fall of Moammar al-Gadhafi.

The organization's daily work includes treatment and care for people living with HIV/AIDS in Malawi.

"I was so sick in the year 2000," said Fred, who was one of the first people to benefit from MSF's AIDS program when it started in August 2001. "I could no longer work."

But having received medicine through MSF, Fred is active again.

"My life is back on track," said the 53-year-old.

Times have changed

But when MSF was founded in 1971, programs like the one in Malawi were nowhere near the radar - HIV/AIDS had yet to be discovered.

Instead, the organization was established to help during a famine in Biafra - an African state that existed briefly in the late 1960s.

Back then, the idea of "humanitarian aid" was still relatively new.

Rony Brauman joined MSF as a young doctor in the mid-1970s. He was its president from 1982 to 1994 and is credited with having influenced the organization greatly.

"In 1976, MSF had a small office - about 40 square meters - and the secretary only worked half a day," said Brauman.

At the time, MSF provided doctors and nurses for other aid agencies because it lacked the money to fund its own projects.

Brauman's own first deployment was to a refugee camp in Thailand, where he filled in for a colleague who was on holiday.

"My funds ran out after six months," said Brauman, "and the refugees started to give me food."

The whole world's a waiting room

In 1977, MSF organized its first major advertising campaign. It featured a picture of a child, looking into a camera from behind bars.

The caption read: Doctors Without Borders - there are two billion people in their waiting room. Donations started to pour in and - finally - MSF had the money to fund its own projects.

It meant that MSF was able to deploy to Afghanistan after the Russian invasion in 1979. It was also in Ethiopia when famine broke out in the 1980s - but the organization was thrown out of the country for publicly criticizing the government.

MSF was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

And it is proud of its financial independence. Last year, MSF's budget ran to 813 million euro ($1.06 billion). It has more than five million donors.

Doctors Without Compromise

Rony Brauman says the most important thing for MSF is to retain its independence.

It doesn't matter, says Brauman, whether it's peacekeepers, Western or other armies, organizations fighting for equal rights between the sexes or equal access to health services for women, the fight against corruption, or the development of sanitation. These are all things close to his heart, but Brauman insists it's not MSF's job to change a society.

"We're there to give everyone - who doesn't normally have access - medical treatment," said Brauman, "no matter whether it's a poor farmer, a member of the Taliban, or an American or German soldier."

That said, MSF has published a book to mark its 40th year in which it asks which compromises humanitarian organizations such as itself can agree to in the course of their work.

The humanitarian aid "industry" is now a crowded market. MSF has been joined by many other organizations offering relief after natural catastrophes, during war, or in fighting epidemics.

But MSF's reputation precedes it like no other.

Long after other organizations have left a disaster zone - or have yet to arrive - MSF says it will be there and in full effect.

Author: Suzanne Krause / za
Editor: Sarah Steffen