1. About this Privacy Notice

At MSF we make sure we protect the information you give us. References to “MSF”/“we”/“us”/”our” are to Médecins Sans Frontières International, Route de Ferney 140, Case Postale 1016, 1211 Geneva 21, Switzerland.

This privacy notice is written in accordance with relevant data protection legislation including the Swiss regulation on data protection and the General Data Protection Regulation.
This privacy notice sets out how MSF International collects, uses and stores personal data via our international website (“Website”) www.msf.org. This Policy does not cover MSF’s presence on social media platforms such as, including but not limited to: Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Linkedin, X, Tumblr, Pinterest, and on publishing platforms such as, including but not limited to: Issuu, Scribd, Medium on which we have established our own presence.

If you’ve any questions please contact: [email protected]

2. When do we collect information about you?

We collect information:

• when you give it to us directly
• when you use our website, through cookies

Directly

• Contacting MSF: If you choose to contact us through contact information provided on our contact pages on the Website for any reason, we will collect the information you voluntarily provide to us.

• Applying for an International Office job: International Office job, we will collect the information you provide to us via our online form. More information on how your information is collected for recruitment purposes can be found on our Privacy Notice for Candidates.  

Making a donation

No information is collected by MSF International when you are making a donation. All donations are handled through the MSF office in your country of residence. For more information on how your data is collected, you should refer to the privacy notice of the website of the MSF office of your country of residence. When there is no MSF office in your country of residence donations are handled  through an international donation platform maintained by Médecins Sans Frontières Hong Kong. For more information on how your data is collected in such event, please refer to the MSF Hong Kong Privacy Policy.  

About cookies

Like most websites, our Website places “cookies” – a small text file – in the browser of your computer. Cookies help us to make the site work as you expect it to and collect information about how you use our website and analyse the website’s traffic. For more information, visit our cookies notice.

3. What information do we collect?

When you contact us we’ll usually collect your name, email, content of your request. 

When you apply for a job position, please refer to the Candidate Privacy Notice for more information. 
We may automatically collect the following information with regard to each of your visits to the Website:

• Technical information, including the operating system and platform, browser type and version; 
• Details of your visits to the Website, including but not limited to: every ‘HTTP Query’ your browser client sent to our server(s); the full Uniform

Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from the Website (including date and time); page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), methods used to browse away from the page, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data. This information does not identify you.
 

4. How do we use your information

As a general rule, your personal data will not be used for any other purpose than those for which they were voluntarily provided to us. Your personal data are shared or transferred to third parties if such sharing or transfer is authorised by you or required to achieve the purposes for which you have provided them to us. It means that we may share your personal data with service providers, who help assist us in fulfilling our purposes. Personal data may also be shared with third parties when required by law or by a court order.
Your Personal Information may be used in the following ways:

• If you have contacted us via the contact details provided on our Website, we will use the information you have provided, including your email address, to respond to your inquiry.
• Any personal information you submit when applying for career opportunities for the International Office of MSF will be used solely for recruitment purposes (including for identifying job applicants, evaluating applications, making hiring and employment decisions, and contacting you by phone or in writing).
• Your information may also be used for technical and statistical purposes, including:
  • To ensure that content from the Website is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;
  • To understand how we can improve our services and information.

How we use your data depends on why you're providing it

We use surveys to understand who visits our websites and how they use it, helping us to create better content for you and make our websites easier to use. We may ask for your email address if you’re happy to be involved in future surveys or testing. We’ll only use this to ask you to help us with these types of requests.

5. Who has access to your data

Trained staff

Your information is only accessible by trained staff. We regularly review who has access to your information. As a general rule, your personal data will only be accessible insofar as it is necessary to fulfil the purpose for which it was collected. For instance , the data you provide for sending your application form to a job position will be accessible to our recruitment department, to our recruitment panels and to service providers, if any, for the purpose of processing your job application. We do comprehensive checks on any contractors before we work with them. We always put a contract in place that sets out how they manage the personal data they collect or have access to.

Disclosure of information

We will never share your personal information with any other company or third party without your consent, except in the following circumstances (each as permitted by applicable law, in particular, with regard to a transfer out of the EEA, as applicable):

• as set out in this Privacy Notice ;
• when we are required to do so by law, for example, in response to a subpoena, in response to a court order or other legal obligation, or in response to a valid request from a law enforcement agency;
• to protect the security or confidentiality of our records and systems;
• in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with our rights, or
• in the event that we sell or transfer all, or any portion of, our business or assets (including in the event of any reorganisation, dissolution, spin-off, or liquidation) we reserve the right to transfer your Personal Information to the relevant acquirer, successor, purchaser or beneficiary, or any appropriate combination of them.

We operate globally and may have a need to transfer certain Personal Information to countries outside the EEA which do not provide an adequate level as required under EU data protection law. We use Standard Contractual Clauses to ensure that your Personal Information is adequately protected and your privacy respected in the case of such a transfer.

Data Processors

We use other companies to help us manage and store personal data and to carry out certain activities on our behalf.  Our main data processors are listed below, but we may enlist the services of others from time to time: 

 

• Recruitee for recruitment purposes (https://recruitee.com/security-gdpr)
• Google, Inc for analytical purposes (see Cookie Notice)
• SirData for managing your cookies preferences;
• HIDORA for web hosting purposes.

We operate globally and may have a need to transfer certain data to countries outside the EEA. In the event the country where the data is transferred does not provide an adequate level of protection, we make sure to implement technical and organizational measures to protect your data. 
 

6. How do we keep your information safe?

We use appropriate technical and organizational measures and precautions in order to protect your personal data and to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal data. 

• We use reasonable precautions to protect your Personal Information and to store it securely. Our Website has a secure SSL certificate, a global standard security technology that enables encrypted communication between the web browser and the web server.
• Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. We will do our best to protect your Personal Information, but cannot guarantee the security of your information transmitted to our Website; any transmission is at your own risk.

7. How long do we keep your information?

We keep your information for as long as it’s necessary in connection with the purposes defined above in “How do we use your information?”.
If you request to receive no further contact from us, we'll keep only the basic information about you on our suppression list in order to avoid sending you unwanted materials in the future, for the duration allowed by the application legislation.

8. Our legal basis for processing personal data

Organisations need a lawful basis to collect and use personal data under data protection law. The law allows for six ways to process personal data (and additional ways for sensitive personal data). Three of these are relevant to the types of processing that MSF carries out:

• A person’s consent (eg to manage cookies  );
• Necessary for the performance of a contract or prior to entering into contract (eg to process your application form to a job position); and
• Our legitimate interests (please see below for more information).

Our legitimate interests may include:

 

• Charity Governance; including delivery of our charitable purposes, statutory and financial reporting and other regulatory compliance purposes; 
• Administration and operational management; including responding to solicited enquires, providing information and services, research, events management, the administration of volunteers and employment and recruitment requirements.

If you'd like to change our use of your personal data in this manner, please get in touch with us using the details above.

9. How can you change your information and what are your rights?

Contact us at [email protected] if you'd like to change or update your personal information.

You have a number of rights under data protection legislation:

• You can request any information we hold on you. Email us at [email protected] and ask for it in writing. You may be asked for proof of identity.
• You have the right to ask us to stop using or to restrict the processing of your personal data.
• You can withdraw your consent to us processing your data at any time (where such processing is based on consent eg Cookies.
• If you believe our records are inaccurate you have the right to ask for those records concerning you to be updated. To update your records please get in touch with us using the details above.
• In accordance with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation, you have a right to erasure (“to be forgotten” i.e. to have your personal data deleted from our database), or transferred to another organisation (“data portability”).
• If you have any concerns about the way your data is being used or if you’d like to make a complaint, please contact us using the details above.
• You are entitled to file a complaint about how MSF treats your data. To do so, you may directly contact: Préposé Fédéral à la Protection des Données et à la Transparence (PFPDT), Feldeggweg 1, CH-3003 Berne (tel.: +41 (0)58 462 43 95).

10. When do we update this notice?

We change this Privacy Notice when we need to. If we make any significant changes in the way we treat your personal information we’ll make this clear on our websites or by contacting you directly.

Last updated on 9 February 2024.
Any all rights on this document belong to MSF. Any reproduction, without written consent, is strictly forbidden.

11. Editor

MSF
Médecins Sans Frontières International
Route de Ferney 140,  
Case Postale 1016, 1211
Geneva 21. Switzerland.
Contact : https://www.msf.org/contact-us

12. Web hosting

HIDORA
8 rue des Charmilles, 1203 Genève, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 552 14 14