PETITPREZ Thibaut Professor E.VOUTIRA
University of Macedonia

Forced Migration in East and S.E. Europe

MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES/MEDECINS DU MONDE :

Operating, aim and differences

Summary

1 - Médecins Sans frontières
2 - The "Break-up"/Creation of Médecins du Monde
3 - Differences
4 - Bibliography

Médecins Sans frontières

Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without borders), is a French non-governmental organization. Reminder of the definition of a NGO : A nongovernmental organization is an organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any form of government and of course a non-profit organization.

Even if MSF was created in 1971, we can say that the real foundation of it happened with the Nigerian-Biafra War. This was started in July 1967 and ended up in January 1970, it was a political conflict caused by the attempted secession of the southeastern provinces of Nigeria as the self-proclaimed Republic of Biafra. With the development of photojournalism this war was turned into a media event in the international political scene and permit the Western to realize what the third-world was living at this time.

“We were young and we were 20” : A group of young French doctors, with political believes, pledged in the army, decided to join “La Croix-Rouge Française” which was looking for volunteers. But before going in Nigeria, they had to signed a contract which said that when they'll came back in France they had no right to testify.

Back in Paris, Bernard Kouchner one of the French doctor, decided to broke the contract, and explained everything in a French Magazine “le Nouvel Observateur” in January 1970 with the motto “Back from Biafra, a doctor accuse” : “With almost nothing, we were able to help malnourished children... and they returned a few weeks later, hungry again. Most of them died. Thousands. The young doctors we are were screaming with anger.”

After this rough period, Kouchner and his friends around 20 of them, decided to create a special group about war medicine. But besides a little mission in Jordan, the Biafra group misses founds. A journalist who was following them really close, founded the named “Medecins sans frontières” which was immediately adopted. MSF got really popular really fast using advertisement to sensitize people with humanitarian. Their main believes were that all people have the right to medical care regardless of race, religion or political affiliation even outside the national borders.

In 2011, there are around 30,000 MSF staff (Doctors, nurses, surgeons, psychiatrists, psychologists...) from all over the world which can provide assistance to people in crisis in about 60 countries.

There are 19 national offices coordinated by 5 operational centers (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Athens, Brussels, Paris) coordinates by the International Council in Geneva Switzerland. Only the operational centers are in charge of the humanitarian project in the field. It's worth noticing that in 1999 MSF received the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2011, MSF had a 886 millions of Euros budget and 89% of it was provided by private income !

As this map traduces, 66% of this budget is directly concentrated in Africa which represent 407 millions of Euros. Asia and the middle East represent 18% (108 millions €). 85% of this budget is focusing in humanitarian actions, 6% in research and development, 6% for its operating and 3% concentrate in Investment.

Example of missions of MSF in 2011 :
> In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where violence and insecurity persisted.
> In Somalia, drought was aggravated by decades of conflict, and MSF assisted Somalis across the country as well as refugees in Ethiopia and Kenya.
> In the Ivory Coast, teams brought aid to people as post-election violence turned into full-scale war.
> During the Arab Spring, MSF strove to gain access to people in need of medical attention, and cared for people who had fled violence.
> In Haiti, where the cholera epidemic continued.
> More recently in New York with Sandy Hurricane.

The “break-up”/Creation of Medecins du monde As MSF, the creation of Medecin du monde took place in a really tense situation. In 1975 Following the Vietnam War , the country is broke, cities have been totally destroyed, roads are damaged, this war left behind millions of victims, wisdoms and orphans. In 1976, the communist party of Vietnam started to privatize all the companies, to reschedule all the country. But it was a failure and the economic crisis didn't get any better. At the same time Vietnamese citizens couldn't stand the communist way of life, but were forced to follow. The “rich” Vietnamese citizens had already escape by plane the country before the arrival of communist. The other ones tried to escape with boats : “the Boat-People”. Bernard Kouchner who has always been the most mediatic person belonging to MSF had an idea. (He is still really known in France where he was many times Minister of health, or foreign cases, no matter which government was at the head of France Democratic/republican) He wanted to gather Doctors and Journalists in a boat which could help those people and also catch media's attention on this topic. Even if this seemed to be at first sight a good one, MSF leadership decided to cancel it thinking it was no enough efficient compare to how much it would have cost. Kouchner didn't let it go. He decided to contact all the intellectuals of this time, and persuaded them to join him in this project. And it worked, the boat named “L'île de Lumière” (The island of light”) went through ports to help the victims. But in November 78, Xavier Emmanuelli, one most popular fondator of MSF, criticized his friend in a magazine “Le quotidien du médecin” saying that it was more “A boat for Saint-Germain-des-Prés” (which is one of the richest part of Paris, where the high society is living). Quoting : “I thought that we were emergency medicine technicians and that Media fuss doesn't serve anyone if we can't treat them”. (Issue of ego) [Awareness Campaign : "A l'aide"] At the end, even if the mission was later considered to be successful, Bernard Kouchner didn't like the way he was treat and decided to quit MSF definitely, saying that : “Creating in 1971 by Max Récamier and myself, MSF is dead to me, killed on its summum of glory”.

Bernard Kouchner decided to created another NGO, in March 1980 with 15 colleagues who had followed him from MSF : Medecin du monde (Doctors of the World). It is now an International Network of organizations based in 14 countries : Argentina, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, the UK, and the USA. Their international network head office, based in Paris, coordinates activities and communications between member organizations. MDM’s primary aim is to : «provide medical care, to ensure long-lasting effectiveness». 
Doctors of the World’s work depends on the efforts of more than 3,000 medical and other professionals who volunteer their time. Thanks to their dedication and expertise, we are able to run high-quality emergency and development programs abroad, while minimizing costs.


Example of Mission of MDM in 2011 :
Focusing on Greece :
> MDM has been providing an array of free medical services through our "Open Polyclinics" across Greece, including in Athens, Thessaloniki, Chania, and Perama. MDM’s clinics, staffed by volunteer doctors, nurses, psychologists and social workers, provide healthcare and psychological support to 30,000 people, both Greeks and migrants, each year. Tough austerity measures and a struggling economy have given birth to the 'new poor’, a term used to describe those suffering the impact of social exclusion and many Greeks are now facing the threat of extreme poverty for the first time in their lives. Doctors of the World is witnessing an alarming increase in the number of patients seeking care, and not just from groups most likely to be excluded from care, such as migrants and Roman.In early 2010 only 6 to 7 percent of the beneficiaries were of Greek origin, but in 2011 the amount reached 30 percent. Most of these beneficiaries are elderly citizens who are retired and whose pensions have substantially diminished due to financial austerity measures.

MAIN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MSF/MDM :

One of the difference is how the 2 NGO deal with politics. If MSF has a neutral approach MDM maintains that humanitarian aid cannot be separated from politics, lest the aid become misused by politicians. Kouchner said that he felt that MSF was giving up its founding principle of witnessing, which refers to aid workers making the atrocities they observe known to the public. To put it in a nutshell, MSF is a big NGO really efficient (one of the biggest in the world) in case of economic crisis with a lots of income to help people in need whenever they require. MDM, has different goals, moreover than helping people, they try to aware public about different topics, issues, and make them feel concern about it, they adopted in 1998 a new motto : "We fight against all diseases. Injustice is one of them. ". We can add that their action is base on long-term action, not only an answer to different crisis. Even if those two NGO are seen as rival due to their history, they are also complementary.

Bibliography

→Médecin Sans Frontière. [Online]. Wikipedia, 2009,[Seen December 2th 2012]. Available on : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9decins_sans_fronti%C3%A8res
→ Médecin du Monde. [Online]. Wikipedia, 2009,[Seen December 2th 2012]. Available on : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9decins_du_Monde
→L’expérience de Médecins du Monde en Ex-Yougoslavie. [Online]. Base, 2006, [Seen December 2th 2012]. Available on : http://base.d-p-h.info/fr/fiches/premierdph/fiche-premierdph-1907.html
→ La revanche de Kouchner.[Online]. Le point, 2004, [Seen December 4th 2012]. Available on : http://www.lepoint.fr/actualites-politique/2007-01-23/la-revanche-de-kouchner/917/0/72774
→Boat People. [Online]. Découverte du Vietnam, 2008, [Seen December 4th 2012]. Available on :http://www.decouverteduvietnam.com/boat-people.html