In 2017, when Suhaib Majed heard that Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was hiring people in Hammam Al-Alil, northern Iraq, he went directly to the local market to submit his application. Three years of armed conflict had destabilized the region and steady work was hard to come by. During Iraq’s military operations to retake the city of Mosul, various international organizations came in to help and hundreds of people in and around Mosul got an unexpected chance at a new type of job.
Suhaib wasn’t very optimistic at first, since he had no connections to the organization. His resume was practically empty, but he felt he had nothing to lose by trying.
“When I applied to work for MSF, I was just looking for a job like any other unemployed person,” says Suhaib. “I also thought from the name of the organization that they only hired doctors.”