Posted on 5 April, 2012

Watch your step

Delivery of humanitarian aid around the world has become a moral, political and military minefield.

How do you broker deals with belligerents to reach vulnerable populations without selling your soul? When is a compromise to gain access to populations a betrayal of them? When to speak up, and when to say silent, on atrocities? When is doing nothing morally better than answering urgent human imperative to “do something”?

The suicide attack last week was “a really terrible event, and to understand it we have to first differentiate between aid and humanitarian aid - and I am not putting one above the other, morally speaking,” says Fabrice Weissman, a Frenchman who for years has been negotiating moral landmines as a veteran MSF logistician and head of mission.

His experiences in conflicts from Sudan to Sierra Leone, Ethiopia to Liberia, are drawn on in the book he has helped write and edit, Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed: The MSF Experience (Columbia University Press), but which is perhaps known more evocatively by its French title, Agir a tout Prix? (Acting At Any Price?).

–Jo Chandler
April 5, 2012
For Australia’s The AgeRead more.

MSF Condemns Armed Robbery, Aid Worker Intimidation at MSF Compound in Eastern DRC

The attack was one of a several incidents including a kidnapping (and subsequent release) that have threatened the safety of the organization’s staff and patients in the last week.

On April 4, armed and uniformed men broke through the fence surrounding the MSF compound in Baraka in the province of South Kivu, where MSF supports a hospital and several health centers. No staff were injured in the attack. Medical services continue with a reduced number of international staff.

“MSF is providing urgently needed health care to people living in eastern DRC,” said MSF’s Operations Manager Katrien Coppens. “But in order for us to continue providing essential medical services, there has to be a minimum of respect for the safety and security of those carrying out humanitarian aid work.”

Photo: DRC 2010 © MSF