Médecins Sans Frontières is today launching an educational website, speakingout.msf.org, that provides unprecedented insight into its decisions during key humanitarian crises of the past 40 years.

The first case study published on the website analyses MSF's experience in Somalia during the early 1990s. The case study, titled "Somalia 1992-1993: Civil War, Famine Alert and a UN ‘Military-Humanitarian' Intervention », reflects on the organisation's public positioning in response to the complex operational challenges to independent humanitarian action. Challenges included the development of public communications and advocacy as they occurred against the backdrop of intense civil war; inadequate surveillance and response to the crisis; the military-humanitarian interventions of the United Nations, and the U.S. commanded peacekeeping forces, in response to the nutritional crisis gripping Somalia at the time.

The first public release of its kind, this case study comes after MSF's decision in August this year, to withdraw from Somalia after 22 years, due to the ongoing abuse and manipulation of humanitarian action. This withdrawal echoes MSF's decision in 1993 to leave Somalia temporarily, due to the inability of authorities and the United Nations to secure the safety of humanitarian workers.