Episode: "Into The Crisis Zone"

SUDAN  

In this episode, Dr. Kate Doan treats several soldiers who have been injured while fighting for or against the Sudanese government. When does MSF find it acceptable to treat soldiers?

All of MSF’s projects are focused on medical aid for civilians. When MSF volunteers are approached by a soldier in need of medical attention, they require that uniforms and firearms be checked at the clinic’s front door. They will then treat a soldier just as they would any other patient, regardless of his status as a combatant or on which side they are fighting. This principle is enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, and is a responsibility of warring parties, just as much as it is an ethic to be pursued by non-governmental organizations such as MSF.

Nevertheless, when MSF works in conflict areas, safeguards are put in place to protect MSF aid workers and to ensure their independence. In almost every case, when MSF is seeking to work in a conflict zone, MSF requires representatives of the armed parties to sign agreements recognizing the safety and the autonomy of MSF’s volunteers in triaging and treating patients on their own terms.

In this episode, Leslie Lefkow, a human rights specialist, is collecting interviews from civilians in south Sudan for a report. What is the connection between MSF’s direct medical care and advocacy?

The answer to this question goes back to MSF’s inception, when the organization was founded by a group of French Red Cross doctors who became frustrated with restrictions on public statements. MSF’s founders returned from a medical aid mission to Biafra feeling that in some cases, public statements would have been more valuable than medical aid in helping the populations that they had served. They saw advocacy as a potential extension of medical care.
This was one of the principles on which MSF was founded – that advocacy complements medical aid, enabling humanitarian workers to address the causes, as well as the effects of violence, disease, and suffering among their patients.

The case of western Upper Nile is a perfect example. After many years of fighting to provide medical aid in the region, MSF decided that it had reached the limitations of what medical aid could offer without a significant change in the way the civil war was being fought. By drawing public attention to the plight of the civilian population, MSF hoped to provoke a shift in the conditions that were leading to human rights abuses, disease, and lack of access to health care and humanitarian aid.

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