Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘msf’

This report is truly disturbing: the local head of MSF (Doctors Without Borders) in Darfur, Sudan has been arrested, ostensibly because MSF published a report detailing widespread reports of rape in Darfur without permission:

Sudan arrested the local head of an international aid agency on Monday over a report on hundreds of rapes in Darfur in the first such action against a top relief worker since a rebellion in the area began in 2003.

Paul Foreman, the country head of the Dutch branch of aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), told Reuters he had been arrested but was being freed on bail.

[ . . . ]

Farid said the arrest warrant had been issued after consultation with the governmental Humanitarian Aid Commission. Under Sudanese law, he said MSF should have consulted the Commission before publishing any reports.

In New York, Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, expressed concern about Foreman’s arrest and urged Sudanese authorities to drop the charges immediately.

“It is an incontestable fact that rape and sexual violence are rampant in the ongoing crisis in Darfur,” Egeland said in a statement. He said MSF Holland’s “work in treating victims of rape and sexual violence, and speaking out about the terrible crimes being committed has been exemplary.”

The tragedy of Sudan’s Darfur region is that the whole catastrophe was created by human beings while other human beings stood by and did nothing to stop it. The figures are staggering: more than 2 million driven from their homes, some death figures up in the neighbourhood of 400,000 including those directly murdered by the janjaweed and others dead from starvation or disease. The stories that survivors have told about mass rape are truly horrifying.

But the Sudanese government admits to nothing. Not to arming and funding the janjaweed militias. Not to being responsible for the genocide – and let’s call a spade a spade here – that continues to be carried out as the world fumbles and fumes and for the most part stands idly by. And certainly not to what everyone knows is fact.

Compared to the horror stories already widely circulated in the press, MSF’s report was nothing new. But now, the head of MSF has been charged with “spreading false information” simply for speaking the horrible truth. Sadly, I have a feeling that the world will ignore this injustice as well.

Terrorists blow up a mosque in Afghanistan to prevent people from registering to vote, and Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) blames the United States:

Arguing that aid groups were now being specifically targeted, MSF issued a stinging rebuke to U.S. forces in Afghanistan, saying they used aid to help win a “hearts and minds” campaign and garner support from Afghans skeptical of their intentions.

“MSF denounces this attempt to co-opt humanitarian aid, to use humanitarian aid to win hearts and minds,” MSF secretary general Marine Buissonniere told a briefing, adding that in doing so it had endangered the lives of humanitarian workers.

In other words, MSF is mad at U.S. forces for treading on what they see as their turf.

Their argument – that the blurring of the line between traditionally-objective humanitarian work and non-objective military work has led to the targeting of humanitarian aid workers – is not without foundation. But the prevailing culture of some of these aid organizations is neutrality without a moral compass; in other words, they’re so conditioned to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses wherever they work, that they’ve bought into the US-is-evil rhetoric of most of those countries.

Do you think MSF has noticed that, in striving to be as apolitical as possible, it has actually become a darling of left-wing politicos and America-bashers everywhere?