In more than 70 countries, Médecins Sans Frontières provides medical humanitarian assistance to save lives and ease the suffering of people in crisis situations.
We set up the MSF Access Campaign in 1999 to push for access to, and the development of, life-saving and life-prolonging medicines, diagnostic tests and vaccines for people in our programmes and beyond.
Based in Paris, CRASH conducts and directs studies and analysis of MSF actions. They participate in internal training sessions and assessment missions in the field.
Based in Geneva, UREPH (or Research Unit) aims to improve the way MSF projects are implemented in the field and to participate in critical thinking on humanitarian and medical action.
Based in Brussels, MSF Analysis intends to stimulate reflection and debate on humanitarian topics organised around the themes of migration, refugees, aid access, health policy and the environment in which aid operates.
This logistical and supply centre in Brussels provides storage of and delivers medical equipment, logistics and drugs for international purchases for MSF missions.
This supply and logistics centre in Bordeaux, France, provides warehousing and delivery of medical equipment, logistics and drugs for international purchases for MSF missions.
This logistical centre in Amsterdam purchases, tests, and stores equipment including vehicles, communications material, power supplies, water-processing facilities and nutritional supplements.
BRAMU specialises in neglected tropical diseases, such as dengue and Chagas, and other infectious diseases. This medical unit is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Our medical guidelines are based on scientific data collected from MSF’s experiences, the World Health Organization (WHO), other renowned international medical institutions, and medical and scientific journals.
Providing epidemiological expertise to underpin our operations, conducting research and training to support our goal of providing medical aid in areas where people are affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or excluded from health care.
Evaluation Units have been established in Vienna, Stockholm, and Paris, assessing the potential and limitations of medical humanitarian action, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of our medical humanitarian work.
MSF works with LGBTQI+ populations in many settings over the last 25-30 years. LGBTQI+ people face healthcare disparities with limited access to care and higher disease rates than the general population.
The Luxembourg Operational Research (LuxOR) unit coordinates field research projects and operational research training, and provides support for documentation activities and routine data collection.
The MSF Paediatric Days is an event for paediatric field staff, policy makers and academia to exchange ideas, align efforts, inspire and share frontline research to advance urgent paediatric issues of direct concern for the humanitarian field.
The MSF Foundation aims to create a fertile arena for logistics and medical knowledge-sharing to meet the needs of MSF and the humanitarian sector as a whole.
A collaborative, patients’ needs-driven, non-profit drug research and development organisation that is developing new treatments for neglected diseases, founded in 2003 by seven organisations from around the world.
Noma is a preventable and treatable neglected disease, but 90 per cent of people will die within the first two weeks of infection if they do not receive treatment.
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The case study ‘MSF and Srebrenica 1993-2003’ explores the constraints, questions and dilemmas raised when MSF spoke out about the events that occurred in Srebrenica’s Muslim enclave. The enclave was besieged in 1993 and then seized by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995. 8,000 men and young men over the age of 16 were massacred, despite the presence of the United Nations Peacekeeping forces supposedly providing protection in what had been declared a "security zone". With teams present in the enclave throughout, MSF testified to what happened and called on the various countries involved to hold inquiries and establish where military and political responsibility lay for the fall of the enclave and abandon of the people of Srebrenica.
Questions and dilemmas:
By agreeing to provide a minimally acceptable level of relief to a besieged population, wasn’t MSF contributing to the strategy of the besieging troops while concurrently softening their image?
Could MSF call for the evacuation of civilians who wished to leave thereby risking abetting the ethnic cleansing policy of the besieging army?
Having trusted the UN Protection Force’s commitment to protect the enclave and its population, must MSF accept partial culpability for or complicity in the UN’s abandonment of the enclave and the ensuing massacre of the population?
Didn’t MSF give the population the false impression that it would be safe as long as the team was present?
Is it the role of a humanitarian medical organisation to issue an appeal for an investigative parliamentary commission then, once it is established, to actively monitor it with a critical eye?
Contrarily, how could MSF not try to understand the circumstances and responsibilities, which, at the global level, led to the abandonment and massacre of a population to which its teams had provided relief?
Could MSF be content with calling for a parliamentary investigation without ensuring that it asks the types of questions likely to elicit answers that shed light on the events?
Should Srebrenica be viewed as an accident of history or as a clear-cut example of the impossibility of protecting populations under international mandates established by the UN?
"Speaking Out Srebrenica" podcast is adapted from the "MSF in Srebrenica, 1993-2003" case study. The 5-episode podcast series examines the constraints, questions and dilemmas surrounding speaking out that the MSF teams faced during the siege and subsequent massacre which took place in Srebrenica during the Bosnian War of the 1990s.
