Humanitarian negotiations revealed: the MSF experience.

• Author: Alley, Roderic
• Position: Book review

HUMANITARIAN NEGOTIATIONS REVEALED: The MSF Experience

Edited by: Claire Magone, Michael Neuman and Fabrice Weissman

Published by: MSF and C. Hurst & Co, London, 2011, 287pp, $50.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders is a secular, privately funded non-governmental organisation, well known for its medical assistance activities in war-torn and disaster relief locations. Formed in 1971 by French doctors and journalists in the wake of Nigeria's Biafran conflict, it has consistently propounded the right to medical assistance as a humanitarian value transcending claimed sovereign, territorial or cultural affiliations. For its provision of medical care in acute crises, and raising international awareness of potential humanitarian disasters, it won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

This book, written by MSF members, follows the Population in Danger series initiated by MSF in 1992 and generated by the organisation's vigorous in-house debates about the philosophy and modalities of its operations. It is a valuable study, remarkable for its frank and unflinching self-examination of some highly uncomfortable dilemmas that MSF has had to confront in its operations. Contentious indeed has been the narrow line dividing humanitarian principles of independence, neutrality and impartiality from complicity by silence about gross violations.

When does assistance for victims become support for tormenters? When is it prudent to stay silent over witnessed humanitarian violations and when to speak out--even at the risk of expulsion? These predicaments are fully tested through a dozen case studies followed by some wider thematic treatments about how the MSF philosophy has evolved after four decades of involvement in wars, disasters and medical emergencies.

For the case studies, Fabrice Weissman leads off with Sri Lanka (in April this year he was the lead speaker for the New Zealand launch of this book in Parliament under NZIIA auspices). During that appalling conflict, Weissman describes how MSF was caught between the rock of Tamil Tiger human shield victimisation strategies and the hard place of a government actively subjugating humanitarian aid organisations to its political and military objectives.

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The quandary of reprehensible circumstances forcing unpalatable accommodations persists for the remaining case studies. Terry's chapter on Myanmar confirms that MSF-France's decision to leave the country...