security of humanitarian personnel

fight against inequalities

NGO

history of humanitarianism

culturalism

antisemitism

Elba Rahmouni & Marc Le Pape

Elba

Rahmouni

Since April 2018, Elba has been in charge of dissemination at CRASH. Elba holds a Master's degree in History of Classical Philosophy and a Master's degree in editorial consulting and digital knowledge management. During her studies, she worked on moral philosophy issues and was particularly interested in the practical necessity and the moral, legal and political prohibition of lying in Kant's philosophy.

By the same author

Marc

Le Pape

Marc Le Pape has been a researcher at the CNRS and then at the EHESS. He is currently a member of the scientific committee of the CRASH. Formerly with the CNRS, Marc Le Pape is currently a researcher at the l'Ehess (Centre d'études africaines). He has carried out research in Algeria, Côte d'Ivoire and Central Africa. His recent studies have focused on the Great Lakes region in Africa. He has co-directed several publications: Côte d'Ivoire, l'année terrible 1999-2000 (2003), Crises extrêmes (2006) et dans le cadre de MSF : Une guerre contre les civils. Réflexions sur les pratiques humanitaires au Congo-Brazzaville, 1998-2000 (2001) and Génocide et crimes de masse. L'expérience rwandaise de MSF 1982-1997 (2016).

By the same author

This Crash dossier gathers a selection of Crash publications published over the last twenty years: all of them, in different manners, tackle the themes of racism and humanitarian action. They also evoke the way discussions about racism have been addressed at Médecins sans Frontières.

Some publications directly relate to MSF and the Humanitarian Aid sector. In “Should we discriminate in order to act? Profiling: a necessary but debated practice”, (2021) Françoise Duroch (UREPH) and Michaël Neuman discuss the reasons and implications behind the growing practice of profiling for MSF personnel. In the interview “From bureaucratic inertia to “policy fragility”” (2020), Jean-Hervé Bradol answers to several questions: how did the organization’s personnel policy evolve over time? What are the current paths for improvement to fight inequalities? In “The response to the Ebola epidemic: negligence, improvisation and authoritarianism”, he questions the weak level of health care and research in Guinea, Sierra Leone and in Liberia during the epidemic. Such poor level of health care would have been considered unacceptable elsewhere than in these three poor sub-Saharan African countries. In the blog “Humanitarian exoticism” (2012), Marc Le Pape offers a critical analysis of anthropological culturalism, a concept to which many NGO members resort to in order to explain the behaviors of the populations they help. More often than not, this approach of reality is disappointing and serves little -if not- emergency relief care operations. In “Missions et missionnaires” (2004, only available in French), Rony Brauman establishes a parallel between evangelical colonial missions and an MSF-led public health campaign in Guatemala. Eventually, in “A propos de la conférence mondiale contre le racisme à Durban’’ (2001, only available in French), he expresses the importance and the difficulty of constituting an inventory of all racism forms, he also questions the link between Zionism and racism.

Other publications fall within the field of historical research. In the blog “Race and health. A fascinating article on the history of medicine” (2018), Rony Brauman evokes three books on the history of medicine in the United States, during slavery: between experimentations and resistance, this history of power balances between races and health show the decisive role of African slaves, especially in gynecology which was conceived to increase slavery capital. At a 2015 Crash Conference, medicine history researcher Guillaume Lachenal introduces his book “Le médicament qui devait sauver l’Afrique” (only available in French) in which he describes the power held by the medical institution within the French colonial empire. In the article "Les limites de l’universel. L’accès des sans-papiers à une couverture maladie en France depuis 1999 " (2014, only available in French), Caroline Izambert answers the question: how has the symbolic order of immigration policies led to the staging of differentiated treatments towards people in irregular situation, often despising bureaucratic and economic rationality revendicated by political leaders in terms of Social State management? Historian Nicolas Blancel was received by the Crash (2005) on the occasion of a debate titled “Le colonialisme, un projet humanitaire ?” (only available in French) asks the following question: is humanitarian (at least, partly) a post-colonial practice, “a new form of Western sovereignty over the rest of the world” ? He answers positively to that question.

To complete this series of articles, we would like to suggest the reading of three other articles “Decolonisation is a comfortable buzzword for the aid sector” (2021) by Themrise Khan. For the author, the debate on decolonization is rarely centered on the “colonized”. Today, the word “decolonization” is not understood in its historical context as a violent separative process with its colonizers. The propositions aiming to “decolonize” aid are wrong and misleading: if taken literally, they might induce the idea that aid is a form of colonization, although nations of the Global South are no longer colonies – despite persisting inequalities. “Le racisme à la lumière de la nouvelle histoire impériale. Pour une histoire plurivoque du racisme et de l’antiracisme’’ (2020, only available in French) by Emmanuelle Sibeud. The notion of colonial racism is, according to the historian, excessively euro-centric, and perpetuates the hierarchy of actors, inherited from the past. The new imperial history invites us to complexify the debate about race to include all places and to think together racism and antiracism. “Cheminots marocains: une lutte syndicale et judiciaire” (2018, only available in French) by Vincent-Arnaud Chappe and Narguesse Keyhani: this article is about the long fight led by Moroccan railway workers in France (SNCF) against institutionalized discriminations forced upon them by the railway company – as those railway workers were recruited directly in Morocco and then transferred in France at the beginning of the 1970s. Stories like this one illustrate stereotypes and statutory assignations in the post-colonial French context. However, in 2018, these railway workers obtained, from the justice system, the recognition of the discrimination they had faced.

Les articles du dossier

Greg Lomas

Article

A propos de la conférence mondiale contre le racisme à Durban

01/09/2001

Rony Brauman

A l'occasion du forum des ONG - tenu en parallèle de la conférence de l'ONU à Durban - Rony Brauman se demande ce que l'on peut attendre d'une conférence mondiale contre le racisme.

Read more about A propos de la conférence mondiale contre le racisme à Durban

P.K. Lee

Article

Missions et missionnaires

01/08/2004

Rony Brauman

Dans cet entretien, Rony Brauman explore les liens entre missions humanitaires et religieuses.

Read more about Missions et missionnaires

Paul Maakad

Débat

Le colonialisme, un projet humanitaire ?

17/05/2005 - 20h30

Nicolas Bancel

Read more about Le colonialisme, un projet humanitaire ?

Lynsey Addario

Post de blog

Humanitarian exoticism

11/04/2012

Marc Le Pape

This article is about humanitarian exoticism and culturalist convictions: those to which members of NGOs currently adhere.

Read more about Humanitarian exoticism

Post de blog

Les limites de l'universel. L'accès des sans-papiers à une couverture maladie en France depuis 1999

01/01/2014

Caroline Izambert

L'article « Les limites de l'universel. L'accès des sans-papiers à une couverture maladie en France depuis 1999 » a été publié en 2014 dans Les Cahiers du Centre Georges Canguilhem (N° 6), pages 199 à 215. Caroline Izambert répond à la question : comment l’ordre symbolique de la politique d’immigration a-t-il conduit à la mise en scène du traitement différencié des personnes en situation irrégulière, parfois au mépris de la rationalité bureaucratique et économique revendiquée par les responsables politiques en matière de gestion de l’État social ?

Read more about Les limites de l'universel. L'accès des sans-papiers à une couverture maladie en France depuis 1999

Débat

"Le médicament qui devait sauver l’Afrique"

07/02/2015 - 13h30

19h30

Read more about "Le médicament qui devait sauver l’Afrique"

Yann Libessart

Post de blog

The response to the Ebola epidemic: negligence, improvisation and authoritarianism

08/02/2016

Jean-Hervé Bradol

If MSF has held a preponderant position in the response to the Ebola crisis, it owes it just as much to its intervention capacities as to its capacity for criticism. The following article by Jean-Hervé Bradol embodies perfectly the latter in pointing to the issues that appeared on the occasion of this epidemic.

Read more about The response to the Ebola epidemic: negligence, improvisation and authoritarianism

Post de blog

Race and health. A fascinating article on the history of medicine

07/05/2018

Rony Brauman

An article entitled "Médecines du corps noir" [Medicine and the black body], published on the La vie des idées website on 27 April, discusses three American history books on the origins of medicine in the United States in the context of slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries. Between experimentation and resistance, the history of relationships between race and health illustrates the decisive role played by African slaves.

Read more about Race and health. A fascinating article on the history of medicine

Article

From bureaucratic inertia to “policy fragility”

08/09/2020

Jean-Hervé Bradol

Interview by Helai Hosseini. A first version was published on the website of the MSF France association on 31 July 2020.

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, voices have risen within MSF denouncing the racist and discriminatory nature of our organization. Equal opportunity, they say, is not offered to all our employees. Founded in France in the early 70s by a handful of doctors and journalists, the organization has grown and become international, now employing over 46,000 people around the world, nearly 39,000 of whom are recruited locally. How has MSF’s policy towards its personnel evolved down the years? What is currently being done to fight inequalities? Here is Jean Hervé Bradol’s take on the major phases that have marked MSF’s transformation and the ways in which discussions are engaged today.

Read more about From bureaucratic inertia to “policy fragility”

MSF

Post de blog

Should we discriminate in order to act? Profiling: a necessary but debated practice

28/01/2021

Françoise Duroch

In this article for the Humanitarian Practice Network, head of the Research Unit on Humanitarian Stakes and Practices (UREPH) for MSF Geneva Françoise Duroch and Crash director of studies Michaël Neuman discuss the implications and reasons behind the growing practice of staff profiling for MSF.

In October 2020, MSF organised a workshop in Dakar on staff profiling in operations in the Sahel. Profiling involves the selection of staff based on non-professional criteria, including nationality, skin colour, gender and religion. As such, it raises a number of ethical and practical concerns. As a result of profiling, US nationals have not been deployed in MSF operations in Colombia because of the risk of kidnapping, and Chadians and Rwandans have been excluded in the Central African Republic and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo respectively, because of regional conflicts. The use of profiling has increased in recent years in West Africa, as the threat of kidnapping of Westerners by radical jihadist groups has intensified.

Read more about Should we discriminate in order to act? Profiling: a necessary but debated practice

Racism and Humanitarian Action

Afghanistan : Should MSF accept the risk of targeted killings?

elba.msf — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 16:35:14 +0000

Date de publication

07/12/2020

elba.msf Fri, 11/27/2020 - 17:35

Fabrice Weissman

Fabrice

Weissman

Graduated from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, Fabrice Weissman joined MSF in 1995. He spent several years as logistician and head of mission in Sub-Saharian Africa (Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, etc.), Kosovo, Sri Lanka and more recently Syria. He has published several articles and books on humanitarian action, including "In the Shadow of Just Wars. Violence, Politics and Humanitarian Action" (ed., London, Hurst & Co., 2004), "Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed. The MSF Experience" (ed., Oxford University Press, 2011) and "Saving Lives and Staying Alive. Humanitarian Security in the Age of Risk Management" (ed., London, Hurst & Co, 2016).

By the same author

A shorter version of this piece first appeared in The New Humanitarian on November 26th 2020.

The May 12th massacre at the MSF-supported maternity hospital in Dasht-e-Barchi (Afghanistan) On May 12, 2020, the MSF maternity hospital in Kabul’s Dasht-e-Barchi district was attacked; the assailants murdered sixteen mothers in their beds, five of them about to give birth. Nine other people were killed, including a midwife employed by MSF and two children. https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2020/06/18/a-kaboul-nous-refusons-qu-un-massacre-dans-une-maternite-soit-un-risque-ordinaire_6043330_3232.html raises, yet again, the question of our limits with regard to risk. What is an acceptable level of danger for humanitarian aid workers? How do we set limits? Why would MSF decide to leave Kabul but remain in Herat, for example, or leave Afghanistan but remain in Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, or Somalia, where the teams also face extreme danger?

MSF-France has a specific policy to guide that reflection – namely the “Policy of Risk Taking and Security Management for MSF OCP staff”, endorsed in 2015 by its board and the partner sectionsMSF partner sections are MSF USA, MSF Japan, and MSF Australia..

Where did that policy come from? What does it say? What are the main issues and controversies regarding its implementation? Should it be changed in light of the recent killings? These are the questions I would like to address, briefly, building on the research done for the book “Saving Lives and Staying Alive. Humanitarian security in the age of risk management”, and more specifically on the chapter entitled “On Danger, Sacrifice and Professionalisation: MSF and the security debate”, written by Michaël Neuman, who has studied the evolution of security debates at the MSF France board from 1971 to 2015.

The roots: we value exposure to danger, but we reject sacrifice and martyrdom (1970-80)

Since its inception in 1971, exposure to danger has been an integral part of MSF’s identity. What defines MSF, the doctors without borders, is its willingness to face danger in order to help people in distress. The inherently dangerous aspect of MSF’s mission is clearly acknowledged in its charter, which devotes one of its four paragraphs to recognizing that danger:

As volunteers, members understand the risks and dangers of the missions they carry out and make no claim for themselves or their assigns for any form of compensation other than that which the association might be able to afford them.

In the 1970s-80s, however, this glorification of danger and the chivalrous spirit was tempered by another principle: the rejection of sacrifice and martyrdom. MSFers are supposed to take risks, but come back alive. They are not on a suicide mission; they are not supposed to die for humanitarian ideals. There is no place for martyrdom at MSF. This was stated clearly by MSF presidents, including Bernard Kouchner, in the 1970s and ‘80s and again in the 1990s and 2000s.

But how does one reconcile the glorification of danger and the rejection of sacrifice? How does one draw the line between a mission that’s risky and one that’s “too risky”?

Up to the early 1990s, it was primarily the field teams that drew the line. Headquarters was still very small and had no way to communicate quickly with the field (in Afghanistan, for example, letters traveled by donkey to Pakistan, where they were posted by air mail; they took at least three weeks to reach their destination). As a result, the decision on what was an acceptable level of risk usually fell to the field team, and more specifically the “coordinator” – a position created in the 1980s as part of MSF’s effort to become more “professional”.

In the 1980s, the most common form of security management was “embedment.” MSF teams in Afghanistan, Tigray, Eritrea, and Angola delegated their security to armed groups, who were responsible for their protection and logistical supplies. There were already numerous incidents: aerial bombings, kidnappings, and shootings (Tigray, Chad, Afghanistan, Uganda, Somalia, etc.)

Yet despite the field’s primary role, the Board of Directors felt that it had a collective responsibility to ensure that risky missions were not “too risky” as to be sacrificial. And on at least two occasions, the board decided to withdraw teams (in Uganda in 1981 and in Iran 1982), despite opposition from the field volunteers willing to stay.

The turn of the 1990s

The 1990s were a turning point in terms of risk exposure, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, MSF experienced the first killings of its international volunteers: in Sudan, in December 1989, when a plane taking off from Aweil was shot down, killing the pilot (from Aviation Sans Frontières) and his three passengers (two MSF and one WFP staff). We still don’t know who fired the shot (the government or the armed opposition, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army). Four months later in Afghanistan, insurgents killed a logistician in cold blood as part of a feud between rival commanders. In both instances, MSF halted its activities.

These killings occurred in a context marked by the end of the Cold War, where humanitarian teams had greater opportunities for working on both sides of the front lines – something that required more autonomy in managing security than did clandestine “embedded” cross-border missions. This coincided with the advent of affordable portable satellite phones, which enabled HQ to be more involved in the day-to-day management of security. The first evacuation ordered by phone from Paris happened in 1992, after discussion with a team at Mogadishu airport in Somalia that, to the managers in Paris, seemed too panicked and disoriented to stay. Lastly, the 1990s were a time of rapid growth for MSF resources, with the number of expatriate and national staff deployed to war zones increasing two-fold in the latter half of the 1990s.

It was under those conditions that MSF leaders felt the need to clarify and formalize a framework for security management in the field. A rough outline was proposed by Rony Brauman, then president of MSF France, in his 1990 President’s Report, which for the first time had a section devoted to security incidents and management. The “Golden Rules” were formalized by Operations Director Brigitte Vasset, in the form of an aide-mémoire (the “Mémo”) that was included in the log-admin guidelines on how to set up and run a mission. Those “Golden Rules” were amended in 1992 and then resuscitated in 2015 by Benoît Leduc, the first MSF France Security Focal Point (SFP), who felt it important, as SFP, to be able to refer to an updated Board-endorsed security policy.

The “Golden rules”

The 2015 Golden Rules are a revised, more detailed version of the original Mémo. What are its core principles?

1. There is no humanitarian immunity

The Mémo’s first statement says that “there is no humanitarian immunity”. The greatest danger is believing that humanitarian workers are protected by their principles, their logo, and the quality of their work. The killings in Afghanistan and Sudan at the turn of the 1990s demonstrated that providing valuable help to the population and being respected and appreciated by local civilian authorities and patients did not stop someone from shooting down an MSF plane, or assassinating a logistician. This rule contradicts the conventional discourse on acceptance, according to which doing good work and providing quality care in an impartial manner automatically ensures protection.

2. Our protection relies primarily on understanding the context and being able to build a network of contacts and relationships
We need to understand who threatens us and who protects us. Our security relies on our ability to find a protector (or protectors) with an interest in ensuring our safety, so as to benefit from our actions – the medical services and material assistance we provide (heath care for wounded combatants, social constituency, etc.), the money we spend (for salaries, rental contracts, local expenses, etc.), our access to mass media and our ability to portray the political authorities in a more or less positive light.

This raises another concern: at what point do aid organizations become more useful to the military forces that protect/harass them than to the population? We have to be sure that primary beneficiaries of our interventions are actually the people we want to help, not the warring parties that protect or threaten us. We have to walk this fine line to avoid being victims or complicit in mechanisms that produce violence.

3. When insecurity is high, limit ourselves to curative activities carried out by smaller teams

The third rule states that the main way to reduce risk is to reduce the number of people exposed (hence the call for “smaller teams” in highly insecure contexts), and that these smaller teams need to be engaged in curative operations with obvious clinical outcomes (don’t take the risk for nothing…). Like the two previous ones, there is some opposition to this rule within the MSF movement. For example, consistent with the apolitical discourse around acceptance, our colleagues in Afghanistan believe that having very large projects is the surest way to improve our security; the greater the risk, the bigger we have to be, in order to be protected by the quality and the size of the services we offer. This illusion was cruelly dispelled by the massacres in KunduzIn 2015, an attack on the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan killed 42 people (including 14 MSF staff) and injured dozens more. and Dasht-e-Barchi.

4. No heroes

The fourth principle reiterated that there is no place for martyrdom. In contrast to some UN agencies or the ICRC, which are mandated by States to work in conflict situations, NGOs like MSF have no mandate. They choose where to work and the level of risk they want to take. And as far as MSF is concerned, its members are not supposed to die for humanitarian ideas. Sacrifice is not part MSF’s mission statement.

5. If targeted, we leave

The fifth rule, established after the strafing of a clearly-marked MSF vehicle in Sri Lanka in 1991, asserted that “if we, MSF, are directly targeted, we leave”. In other words, MSFers are prepared to face the danger of being hit accidentally in war zones, but not of being deliberately targeted.

How do we know if we are being targeted directly? The definition used thus far is pretty straightforward: if an armed group or government states and/or demonstrates its willingness to harm us and no one can protect us. The most obvious situation is when we have been deliberately hit, whatever the reason – for being a “bad doctor” deemed responsible for the death of wounded combatants, “spies” or “apostates” accused of supporting the “crusaders”, an “unfair employer” who dismissed a vindictive and powerful staff member, a “supporter of terrorist groups”, a “high value target” bringing media attention, “bounty” for kidnappers, or even “regrettable but necessary collateral damage.” Once a group or individual points a gun at us and pulls the trigger or otherwise demonstrates their intention to kill us – and we cannot be protected – we cross the red line into a “too-risky” mission. That line is defined as such by the current MSF France security policy: “MSF refuses to intervene in high security risk areas where there is an absence of authorities with which to negotiate our safety and/or when it is impossible to protect ourselves from groups demonstrating radical hostility against us.”

Of course there are other types of “too-risky missions”: ones where the risk of being accidentally killed by random shelling, a stray bullet, friendly fire, etc. is so high that we decide to evacuate a mission as well. That was the case in northern Nigeria in January 2018, for instance, after the army bombed its own position in Rann, killing three MSF contractors.

6. When deciding whether to pull out, HQ can override the field’s decision. The top managers have the final word, and if necessary it goes up to the Board.

Rule #6 reaffirms MSF’s collective responsibility for managing security – more specifically, the coordination team’s authority over the field and the HQ’s authority over the coordination team when it comes to deciding to withdraw. This is a bit tricky, since it implies that the top managers have the duty and power to call a halt, to stop teams that are in a “sacrificial mood,” but not to manage their exposure to danger on a day-to-day basis.

Controversies

These Golden Rules provide a framework for discussion, not an algorithm for decision-making. Their interpretation and implementation have always set off debate, starting with the red line that if we are targeted, we leave.

In the mid-1990s, the situation in Burundi triggered heated discussion on the acceptable level of risk. In a context of mass violence against civilians, more than twenty foreign workers (from the ICRC and MdM, among others) were killed between 1995 and 1997. Given that radical groups had demonstrated their willingness and ability to kill international aid workers, the question was whether or not MSF should stay.

Part of the Board of Directors and Operations Department was in favor of staying. They had three arguments: the fact that the killers had not yet targeted MSF, the magnitude of needs, and the field volunteers’ desire to stay, despite the risks.

Another part of the MSF leadership disagreed. They argued that international aid workers doing the same work as we were doing in a nearby area had been targeted, and that there was good reason to believe that we might be next. They felt that the volunteers willing to stay were being driven by a “spirit of self-sacrifice” that was inconsistent with our rejection of martyrdom.

The Board ultimately refereed the discussion and voted in favor of staying (11 for, 4 against), as long as there were volunteers willing to do so. During the debate, no one denied the fact that radical groups had demonstrated the will and ability to kill humanitarian workers – and that we were therefore targeted. The discussion was over agreeing, or not, to work under the threat of targeted killings. The decision to stay was de facto considered an exceptional override of the rule we had set for ourselves. As a matter of fact, the Human Resources department was refusing to brief volunteers leaving for Burundi (the Director of Operation had to do it). And the Board remained apprised of the situation, reexamining its decision on a regular basis – almost monthly – until a regime change in Burundi improved the security situation to some extent.

The terms of those debates differed in some ways from how MSF’s presence in Afghanistan is currently being discussed. Proponents of a continuous presence in Afghanistan argue that – despite the deliberate killing of MSF patients and staff, and despite the Islamic state (IS)’s earlier suicide attack on the Save the Children compound in 2018 and their statement declaring aid workers a legitimate target – “we are not being targeted,” and no group has “demonstrated a radical hostility toward us.” Some top managers go so far as to propose that we “take the opportunity” offered by the massacre of women and children in our facility to try negotiate a kind of MoU with the IS that would exempt us from its policy of mass murder…

They also argue that even if targeted, we have to stay. That we have to consider the risk of targeted killings by radical groups the “new normal” we have to adapt to, which means revising our “Golden Rules” and abandoning the threat of targeted killing and lack of a reliable protector as a red line for excessive risk.

Thus the debate has gradually shifted from “have we reached the red line” (are we being targeted?) to “should we cross the red line” (should we exceptionally stay despite the risk of targeted killings?) to “should we move the red line” (should we consider the threat of targeted killings a new normal and the loss of our colleagues the price we have to pay?).

This shift signals MSF’s drift toward an acceptance of sacrifice and martyrdom, consistent with what’s happening within the broader aid sector. As we have shown elsewhere, one of the primary consequences (functions?) of the portraying aid workers as heroes and of the adoption of a “risk management culture” is to make the growing number of dead, wounded, and kidnapped acceptable.

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Fabrice Weissman, Afghanistan : Should MSF accept the risk of targeted killings?, 7 December 2020, URL : https://msf-crash.org/index.php/en/blog/afghanistan-should-msf-accept-risk-targeted-killings

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Afghanistan : Should MSF accept the risk of targeted killings?

Should we discriminate in order to act? Profiling: a necessary but debated practice

elba.msf — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 16:05:25 +0000

Date de publication

28/01/2021

elba.msf Mon, 02/01/2021 - 17:05

Françoise Duroch & Michaël Neuman

Françoise

Duroch

Head of Research Unit of UREPH (Research Unit on Humanitarian Stakes and Practices) of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Geneva, Switzerland)

By the same author

Michaël

Neuman

Director of studies at Crash / Médecins sans Frontières, Michaël Neuman graduated in Contemporary History and International Relations (University Paris-I). He joined Médecins sans Frontières in 1999 and has worked both on the ground (Balkans, Sudan, Caucasus, West Africa) and in headquarters (New York, Paris as deputy director responsible for programmes). He has also carried out research on issues of immigration and geopolitics. He is co-editor of "Humanitarian negotiations Revealed, the MSF experience" (London: Hurst and Co, 2011). He is also the co-editor of "Saving lives and staying alive. Humanitarian Security in the Age of Risk Management" (London: Hurst and Co, 2016).

By the same author

The rationale for profiling

The reduction in the number of Western staff of humanitarian agencies in certain parts of the world is in response to a genuine risk of kidnapping, as one workshop participant put it: ‘Everyone agrees that there are some nationalities that can’t go to these areas, so how can we adapt and continue to do operations for these populations in need?’. Over the last few years, measures aimed at promoting staff from Africa do seem to have enabled operations to go ahead that would otherwise have been difficult or impossible to develop, particularly in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and northern Nigeria.

The selection of employees based on non-professional criteria is not always explicitly defined and practices vary from one project to another: nationality, skin colour and religion are sometimes simultaneously or successively used. The measure is often implemented after a risk analysis carried out by field and HQ teams, but it can sometimes be imposed by military-political interlocutors: ‘Do not send white people into our territories, they will be kidnapped’.

For years a marginal practice within MSF, profiling is now much more common, to the point where one of the organisation’s managers feels that ‘We have made the exception normal’. In the Sahel countries MSF works in, profiling has been used in the majority of recent projects, and international staff deployed are mainly black Africans. MSF considers that the risk of Westerners being kidnapped is particularly high in these regions, and therefore applies profiling to reduce this specific risk.

The normalisation of this personnel policy has raised a series of questions among staff affected by profiling: ‘You have profiled [the project], you have removed white people, what will happen next, won’t we be the next targets?’.

Efficiency: what works

Does profiling effectively reduce risks? Or is it simply transferring risks from Westerners to Africans?

In reality, while ‘profiling’ reduces the risk of kidnapping of Westerners, it does not diminish other dangers, such as arrest, attacks on convoys, bombings or suicide attacks. The kidnapping of non-Westerners is also on the rise. Projects are, in other words, still highly dangerous. The range of risks presents a dilemma: is it better to face a kidnapping of a Westerner, or to deploy someone whose ransom price might be lower, but who might be at greater risk of trauma or torture?

These questions become all the more critical when the risk of kidnapping of expatriate African or national staff rises: colleagues point out that, in the event of a kidnapping, their government will find it much more difficult to negotiate effectively, particularly for staff from poorer countries, or countries where the government is simply less willing to pay a ransom.

It has also emerged in discussion – and this has been corroborated by data collected by MSF – that locally recruited staff are most exposed to risk as they are more mobile, involved in negotiations with a wide range of military-political actors, such as soldiers or militia stationed at checkpoints, and are often on the front line.

Profiling as seen by profiled staff: sharing experiences

Many MSF staff challenge the very notion of profiling. They believe that staff should be selected primarily on their skills and knowledge of the cultural and social codes of the countries they work in. Participants at the Dakar workshop rejected the paternalistic assumption that the precariousness of their situation forces them to accept any kind of work, including high-risk positions. They also highlighted that the implementation of profiling practices has opened up professional opportunities for them.

However, several participants mentioned the frustration of being seen as somehow less professional or qualified: ‘There is also a feeling of being “second-class” staff, sent to the front while their Western colleagues stay in HQ or at coordination level, and a feeling of injustice at always being sent to high-risk contexts’.

Human resources managers at the Dakar workshop agreed: ‘Profiled staff aren’t offered the same job opportunities. Not because their credentials or skills are not as good, but because we know that the person will probably best fit our needs’. Because experienced ‘profiled’ staff willing to work in high-risk contexts like northern Mali are difficult to find and retain, HR managers do not want to ‘lose’ them to programmes in countries like Malawi, where risk and stress levels are much lower. However, an African colleague deployed to several dangerous missions emphasised the need for people who work in such contexts to alternate high-risk postings with less risky positions to enable them to have more time with families and a better work-life balance in general. Whether they are given the opportunity to do so is another matter if they are not offered less dangerous postings in the first place.

Consent and information

Contrary to MSF’s risk policy, which places responsibility for risk-taking at the field level, the perception is that too often the decision to profile a project is taken at headquarters, without adequate consultation with field teams: ‘What is the place of the national staff’s contribution to these analyses and decision-making?’. Some project teams have challenged whether profiling is necessary, especially when no formal threat supports the decision: ‘We didn’t receive any threats. Under these conditions, it is difficult for the field to accept profiling measures’.

Discussions also revealed the limits of the conditions under which people agree to join profiled projects, something which we will refer to as a lack of ‘informed consent’. Some colleagues explained that they found out only later that these policies were being implemented, and that they were the focus of these policies: ‘Working for MSF, I didn’t expect to encounter a team that was so culturally homogeneous’. Another participant mentioned that he probably wouldn’t have accepted a position as project coordinator had he known that the team was profiled.

Beyond the issue of information on the dangers involved, one participant highlighted the need for MSF to clarify what it would and wouldn’t be able to provide in the event of an incident: ‘I can say yes to a risky mission, but I want to know what compensation my family will receive if something happens to me and if my organisation will support me to negotiate my release in the event of a kidnapping’.

Human resources and project management

These issues of responsibility are intertwined with others related to the recruitment and management of staff. Human resources colleagues stress their discomfort when having to evaluate certain criteria, particularly concerning a person’s religion or other private matters for which they consider themselves not only not competent, but also in conflict with professional ethics.

The proliferation of non-professional criteria also leads to a reduction in the number of possible deployment contexts for particular groups of people, and therefore their chances of development and advancement: ‘This can create a sense of unease for the teams in charge. The more criteria there are, the smaller the field of candidates’. One participant shared their feelings about being sent only to high- risk contexts: ‘The problem for profiled teams is to hear that they are needed today because of the security situation, but that they will be easily dismissed later because, in the end, they are only good for working in the Sahel countries’.

A way forward

While the practice of profiling as a necessary compromise for conducting operations in some contexts has been largely accepted within MSF and has even been praised for creating individual and collective opportunities, concerns remain as to how it should be implemented. Many profiled employees feel like they belong to a poorly considered category of staff, have limited professional opportunities and are kept away from the collective production of risk analyses. The discussion in Dakar outlined a way forward, through proper operational support for teams that otherwise feel isolated, the roll-out of HR policies focusing on placement and career development, the development of collaborative and inclusive practices in terms of security management and the responsibilities of MSF as an employer towards staff required to work in particularly risky contexts. Taking these priorities on is a necessity, as much to maintain activities in these regions as to address inequalities in status among the organisation’s staff.

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Post de blog

Borno, Nigeria : a critical look at our operations

01/07/2019

Isabelle Defourny

Elba Rahmouni

In 2016, the Operations Department commissioned a critical review of the operations carried out between 2015 and 2016 in Borno State by MSF France in the north east of Nigeria. In response, and with the help of Epicentre, Judith Soussan and Fabrice Weissman from CRASH produced a detailed historical account of the analyses made of the situation by the teams, capital and headquarters at the time, as well as the objectives they set themselves, the actions they undertook, the obstacles they encountered and the results they achieved. As part of this project, some of the directors and operations managers who had been involved in these operations took a retrospective look at their own practices: were they late in responding to the catastrophic situation in the IDP camps in rural areas and on the outskirts of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, in 2016 and, if so, why? What conclusions can be drawn a posteriori about the operational choices made and the effectiveness of MSF intervention strategies? And, to take things a step further, what does this experience teach us about how MSF functions and how our teams work? Interview with Isabelle Defourny, Operations Director at MSF-OCP. By Elba Rahmouni.

Read more about Borno, Nigeria : a critical look at our operations

Samuel Hanryon

Post de blog

Is medical care really under fire? A debate on humanitarian security

21/11/2014

Is there anything fundamentally new in the security challenges faced by humanitarian organisations? When looking at the history of humanitarian assistance, as far back as the late 1800s, 'medical care' was operating under fire.

Read more about Is medical care really under fire? A debate on humanitarian security

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To cite this content :
Françoise Duroch , Michaël Neuman, Should we discriminate in order to act? Profiling: a necessary but debated practice, 28 January 2021, URL : https://msf-crash.org/index.php/en/blog/humanitarian-actors-and-practices/should-we-discriminate-order-act-profiling-necessary-debated

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Should we discriminate in order to act? Profiling: a necessary but debated practice

MSF face aux dilemmes des enlèvements

elba.msf — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 10:42:19 +0000

Date de publication

18/09/2020

elba.msf Mon, 09/28/2020 - 17:29

Fabrice Weissman

Fabrice

Weissman

By the same author

On the 31st January, a symposium was held at Sciences Po in support of Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal, researchers at Sciences Po's Center for International Research (CERI) who were arrested in Iran on June 5, 2019. Roland Marchal was released on 20th March 2020 in exchange for an Iranian engineer detained in France. On 6th May Fariba Adelkhah was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment for "propaganda against the political system of the Islamic Republic, and collusion to undermine national security". The researcher was offered conditional release on condition that she terminates her research, but she refused. The blog for her Support Committee is available here.

The symposium brought together diplomats, journalists, humanitarians and researchers, with the aim of "nourishing reflection about prisoners and hostages, from a political, legal and ethical point of view". Fabrice Weissman presented the experience of Médecins Sans Frontières in the face of kidnappings.

The cases

Kidnappings are one of the most serious risks incurred by teams working for humanitarian associations. Paradoxically, they are more feared than homicides, due to their long duration. However, the circumstances of kidnappings and their resolution are generally little known by the general public or even by the vast majority of humanitarian workers because of the secrecy maintained by the organizations involved.

Since 1980, MSF has documented approximately 100 cases of either arbitrary detention by state authorities (51 cases) or kidnapping by political or criminal groups (64 cases), half of which involved international personnel.

Until the war in Chechnya in the mid-1990s the vast majority of abductions of MSF personnel, however distressing, did not exceed a few days or weeks. Most were linked to intimidation by governments hostile to MSF’s presence, or to the desire of certain armed movements to make themselves known or to seize bargaining chips during peaks of political or military tension.

For MSF, Chechnya ushered in an era of long-term kidnappings, often associated with mistreatment and with long and difficult negotiations to obtain the safe return of captives. During the two wars in Chechnya, MSF suffered about fifteen kidnappings, four of which were of very long duration.

The kidnapping of Christophe André in Ingushetia in 1997 and his escape after 111 days of captivity is documented in a graphic novel (Guy Delisle, S'Enfuir : Récit d'un otage, Dargaud, 2016)that gives a chilling insight into the hostage's condition and the strategies of psychological resitance he developed until his escape. The 2002 kidnapping of Arjan Erkel, head of mission for MSF Switzerland in Dagestan, a small republic in the Russian Caucasus, was another significant event for MSF. He was detained for 610 days and only released following a public advocacy campaign denouncing the responsibility of Russian parliamentarians and Dutch diplomats for his prolonged detention. This campaign raised many controversies within MSF, as well as tensions with the family of Erkel and with the Dutch government that were opposed to a strategy of using the media.

Following Erkel's release, the Dutch government took MSF to a Swiss commercial court, demanding repayment of the ransom it claimed to have paid on our behalf. Somewhat surprisingly, the court declared itself competent to deal with a case of human trafficking, and ordered MSF to reimburse half of the ransom.
In Chechnya MSF also discovered the "shadow theater of kidnapping": an impossibility to know who is pulling the strings and the close or even symbiotic relationship between security services and organized crime. It is difficult to draw a clear line between "criminal” and “political” kidnappings. The abduction of Arjan Erkel was settled by a commercial transaction, yet it resembles more an act of political repression by the Russian authorities against humanitarian organizations that had highlighted the brutality of the Kremlin's counter-insurgency policy. The FSB, the Russian state security service that succeeded the KGB, was present at all stages of the affair: from the kidnapping - which two agents that had been shadowing Arjan witnessed without reaction (claiming that they were unarmed), through to the liberation - which was negotiated by an association of FSB veterans.

The Erkel case also showed us that consular protection (a state's responsibility to defend and protect its nationals abroad) takes variable form depending on national interests. In this case, the Dutch government was far more concerned with preserving its relations and strategic and commercial interests with Russia than with defending its kidnapped citizen.

Since Chechnya, MSF has suffered other long-term kidnappings, notably in Colombia where an international volunteer was abducted in 2000 by ELN guerrillas for 6 months before being released unconditionally after pressure from FARC and Venezuela.
In 2011, two colleagues of MSF Spain were kidnapped in Northern Kenya then held in Somalia for almost two years in extremely harsh conditions, which were hardened after a failed escape attempt.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2013, four Congolese employees of MSF France were abducted during an attack by the ADF group on the town of Kamongo. One of the victims managed to escape after 413 days of detention during an offensive by the DRC armed forces. There is still no news of the other three. One Congolese member of the MSF crisis cell was sentenced to 10 years in prison for national security offences related to his activities in trying to contact the kidnappers.
In Syria in January 2014, 5 expatriates of MSF Belgium were abducted by the Islamic State. Detained in appalling conditions in the company of other Western hostages, all were eventually released, the last two after 132 days of captivity. Some of their co-detainees were killed by their IS captors, and others by the forces of the international coalition - notably Kayla Mueller, a young American aid worker abducted from an MSF car that was taking her to bus station in northern Syria, and most probably killed during an American air force bombing. These tragic events caused major disputes within the MSF association between advocates of total blackout on the kidnappings and their resolution and those that supported minimal transparency about the violence and extortion attempts carried out against our teams by the Islamic State.

More recently, in 2018, 4 members of MSF were arrested by a militia in Syrian Kurdistan and transferred to state prisons in Damascus, from where they were finally released after 169 days of detention, following secret negotiations.

How does MSF deal with these situations?

Faced with a kidnapping, several institutions or entities have, to varying degrees, the responsibility to assist the hostages: local authorities, governments, families, employers. In our experience, families are generally powerless; they do not have the logistical, human or financial means to make the necessary efforts to obtain the release of their loved ones. The priority of local authorities and foreign governments is rarely to obtain the safe release of the hostages, as other internal, national security or foreign policy issues may come into play (as illustrated by the Erkel case).

In most cases therefore, MSF chooses to take the lead, meaning we must then be accountable to families and States for any actions taken. Occasionally we feel that other institutions are better placed to obtain the release of our colleagues: this may be the hostage’s family (as in Pakistan when a staff member belonging to an influential family was kidnapped), the State, the Church (in Sierra Leone in 1998, a team kidnapped by the RUF rebellion was released following the mediation of a bishop), etc.

The way we organize ourselves to manage these cases is not fundamentally different from the way we manage emergency operations: we set-up a crisis cell at headquarters, with counterparts in the field, bringing together different specialists (people who know the context, people with experience of similar situations, communication officers, human resources officers, etc.). However, this crisis mechanism has a singular mission: to obtain the release of our colleagues unharmed. Unlike other institutions, we place the interest of the hostages above all other considerations, meaning that we do not consider the preservation of our activities in the country as a priority.

The Ransom Payment Dilemma

Rescuing abducted colleagues requires creating relationships with criminals and following some of their instructions. Among the questions that arise for the crisis cell and the directors of NGOs is: should we give in to a ransom demand?

The payment of a ransom poses a number of problems and risks. Firstly, it raises an ethical problem, since it amounts to the diversion of money intended for populations in distress towards criminal groups that are often the source of violence against the very populations we are trying to assist.

The payment of ransoms also poses a legal and perception risk, in the sense that these transfers of funds could be considered as material support to groups declared "terrorist" or "criminal" by certain States, who might then choose to initiate criminal proceedings against us. As of today, this risk is above all theoretical. No government has yet sued an NGO for paying money in exchange for the life of one of its employees. The only lawsuit brought against MSF was seeking reimbursement of the ransom that the Dutch government says it paid in the Erkel case. There is in fact a certain tolerance on the part of governments, as long as the situation remains discreet. In France and Colombia, courts of justice hold that the criminal nature of ransom payments is invalidated by the states of constraint and necessity in which a family, for example, finds itself trying to save the life of one of its members. Nevertheless, fear of prosecution remains very strong among NGOs, particularly those that depend on institutional donors for funding.

The last risk is operational: "popular wisdom" in the aid sector holds that paying a ransom increases the risk of future kidnappings. Hostage-takers will be all the more inclined to repeat their offences the more crime pays. Based on this reasoning, some organizations or governments have a policy of never negotiating or at least never paying, hoping that this will deter political-criminal organizations from attacking their employees or nationals. This assumption is, however, contradicted by the facts. The few studies carried out on kidnappings by jihadist organizations in the Sahel and the Middle East show that nationals of countries whose policy is not to negotiate are no less targeted than others. On the other hand, the chances of survival of these hostages are much lower. As tragically illustrated in Syria and in the Sahel, hostages who cannot be traded are executed in order to serve the terror strategy of the groups holding them.

The ethical, legal and operational drawbacks of ransom payments explain why MSF favors the resolution of kidnappings through political pressure, in contrast to the advice of the private security companies used by many organizations in hostage-taking situations, who favor commercial transactions that they believe are simpler to manage. However, when we find ourselves at the point where a commercial transaction becomes the sole option, this route can be taken if it appears to be the only way to rescue our colleagues. The existence of possible financial (or other) exchanges is not publicized, so as not to provoke States that officially condemn these practices and to preserve, for other groups likely to attack our colleagues, a degree of uncertainty about our ways of acting.

The dilemma of transparency

The norm in humanitarian and security circles is to maintain absolute silence on any kidnapping case. Public communication is presented as a major danger: during ongoing cases, it could raise the stakes and prolong negotiations. Once a case is resolved, publicity could expose the employer (or negotiator) to legal, image and security risks.

This is not the experience of the French section of MSF. In order to settle ongoing cases, communication can sometimes be a key element: raising the stakes also means encouraging the kidnappers to keep hostages alive and putting pressure on States and other authorities likely to promote their release. This is what CERI is doing today for Roland Marchal and Fariba Adelkhah. There is no general rule. In certain circumstances, at certain times, silence about ongoing cases seems to be the best attitude. At other times, in other circumstances, the use of media and politicization may be a critical resource.

Once colleagues are released, a minimum level of transparency is required. We don’t believe that a total blackout on hostage negotiations nor the systematic refusal to negotiate will stop potential kidnappers from targeting our members. The first mitigation measure is to limit or halt the deployment of MSF members in high risk areas, which implies being aware of the frequency of kidnappings in a given territory. This knowledge of past cases is also necessary to enable volunteers going on a mission to make an informed choice about the risks they are willing to take. Without being overly deluded, one can also hope to fight against kidnappings by increasing their social and political cost: MSF members should become a “thorny target”, a source of trouble for potential kidnappers or any authorities tolerating or facilitating their deeds. Finally, humanitarian organizations will fight all the better against this crime if they are able to share experiences about the best ways to prevent and manage kidnapping.

All this requires a minimum level of transparency. However, it is unlikely to happen as fear and anguish continue to plague humanitarian organizations long after their colleagues have been released.

To cite this content :
Fabrice Weissman, MSF and kidnappings - the secrets and the dilemmas, 18 September 2020, URL : https://msf-crash.org/index.php/en/publications/war-and-humanitarianism/msf-and-kidnappings-secrets-and-dilemmas

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Le dernier livre en date du Crash "Secourir sans périr. La sécurité humanitaire à l'ère de la gestion des risques", co-dirigé par Michaël Neuman et Fabrice Weissman, sort le 31 mars chez CNRS Editions.

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Kidnapping : la bourse ou la vie

07/06/2012

Khalil Dale, délégué du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge au Pakistan, a été retrouvé décapité à Quetta, dans la province du Balouchistan, le 30 avril 2012. Il avait été kidnappé près de quatre mois auparavant.

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Ending the Code of Silence on Abductions of Aid Workers

22/11/2019

This article discusses the policy of absolute secrecy on abductions adopted by aid organisations. It argues that the information blackout on past and current cases is to a large extent a function of the growing role of private security companies in the aid sector, which promote a ‘pay, don’t say’ policy as a default option, whatever the situation. The article contends that secrecy is as much an impediment to resolving current cases as it is to preventing and managing future ones. It suggests abandoning the policy of strict confidentiality in all circumstances – a policy that is as dangerous as it is easy to apply – in favour of a more nuanced and challenging approach determining how much to publicise ongoing and past cases for each audience, always keeping in mind the interests of current and potential hostages.

Read more about Ending the Code of Silence on Abductions of Aid Workers

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MSF and kidnappings - the secrets and the dilemmas

Ending the Code of Silence on Abductions of Aid Workers

elba.msf — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 15:18:12 +0000

Date de publication

22/11/2019

elba.msf Fri, 11/22/2019 - 16:18

Fabrice Weissman

Fabrice

Weissman

By the same author

This article was published in The Journal of Humanitarian Affairs - May 2019.

Read the article

To cite this content :
Fabrice Weissman, Ending the Code of Silence on Abductions of Aid Workers, 22 November 2019, URL : https://msf-crash.org/index.php/en/publications/humanitarian-actors-and-practices/ending-code-silence-abductions-aid-workers

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Julien Rey

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Is aid work really more dangerous than ever? Flawed studies won’t tell us

15/04/2016

Since the 1990s and the rise of conflicts in West Africa, Somalia, Chechnya, the former Yugoslavia and Africa's Great Lakes region, humanitarian organisations have been warning of greater insecurity for their staff. These observations are bolstered by surveys aimed at objectively quantifying violence against humanitarian workers.

Read more about Is aid work really more dangerous than ever? Flawed studies won’t tell us

Niklas Bergstrand

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29/03/2016

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Samuel Hanryon

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Is medical care really under fire? A debate on humanitarian security

21/11/2014

Read more about Is medical care really under fire? A debate on humanitarian security

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Ending the Code of Silence on Abductions of Aid Workers

War Breaks Out: Interpreting Violence on Healthcare in the Early Stage of the South Sudanese Civil War

elba.msf — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 16:07:25 +0000

Date de publication

22/11/2019

elba.msf Fri, 11/22/2019 - 17:07

war

Xavier Crombé & Joanna Kuper

Xavier

Crombé

Xavier Crombé was Director of Studies at MSF-Crash from 2005 to 2008. He is currently working at the Research Unit on Humanitarian Stakes and Practices (UREPH) of MSF in Switzerland to publish a collective essay dealing with issues related to violence in healthcare facilities. He is also teaching humanitarian and migration issues at Sciences Po Paris.

By the same author

Joanna

Kuper

MSc candidate in Public Health for Development at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London; former humanitarian affairs officer for MSF-Holland in South Sudan.

By the same author

This article was published in The Journal of Humanitarian Affairs - May 2019.

This article seeks to document and analyse violence affecting the provision of healthcare by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and its intended beneficiaries in the early stage of the current civil war in South Sudan. Most NGO accounts and quantitative studies of violent attacks on healthcare tend to limit interpretation of their prime motives to the violation of international norms and deprivation of access to health services. Instead, we provide a detailed narrative, which contextualises violent incidents affecting healthcare, with regard for the dynamics of conflict in South Sudan as well as MSF’s operational decisions, and which combines and contrasts institutional and academic sources with direct testimonies from local MSF personnel and other residents. This approach offers greater insight not only into the circumstances and logics of violence but also into the concrete ways in which healthcare practices adapt in the face of attacks and how these may reveal and put to the test the reciprocal expectations binding international and local health practitioners in crisis situations.

Read the article

To cite this content :
Xavier Crombé, Joanna Kuper, War Breaks Out: Interpreting Violence on Healthcare in the Early Stage of the South Sudanese Civil War, 22 November 2019, URL : https://msf-crash.org/index.php/en/publications/war-and-humanitarianism/war-breaks-out-interpreting-violence-healthcare-early-stage

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War Breaks Out: Interpreting Violence on Healthcare in the Early Stage of the South Sudanese Civil War

Review "Saving Lives and Staying Alive: Humanitarian Security in the Age of Risk Management"

Agnes — Fri, 24 Nov 2017 14:03:35 +0000

Date de publication

24/11/2017

Agnes Fri, 11/24/2017 - 15:03

Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict

Kevin McMahon

Kevin

McMahon

Kevin McMahon is a Ph.D. student in International Conflict Management at Kennesaw State University. His research interests include evaluating how mobile phone technology and big data are transforming traditional conflict management practices.

By the same author

Kevin MacMahon's review of "Saving Lives and Staying Alive: Humanitarian Security in the Age of Risk Management" (Michaël Neuman and Fabrice Weissman, London: C. Hurst & Co, 2016) is published in the Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict (2016, pages 69-70).

This past May 2016, when Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) surprisingly pulled out of the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, some observers agreed with the organization’s premise that there was a real failure taking place in the global humanitarian delivery system. In a new publication by MSF, Saving Lives and Staying Alive – Humanitarian Security in the Age of Risk Management, the authors richly explore one aspect of the operational contact zone that is undergoing severe stress in humanitarian operations: safety.

In the past decade, risk management practices have expanded deeply into the daily operational lives of corporations and governments thus changing the methods with which many services and goods are delivered. Real time communication capabilities between headquarters and remote agents, along with advances in data analysis, have shifted the decision-making power from the field to the professionals in home offices. This phenomenon has now started to get traction in the humanitarian space due to pressure from government sponsors, donors, insurance companies, and some executives in the organizations themselves. However, its applicability in the environments that humanitarian agencies find themselves today is in question. In this volume, MSF responsibly depicts the trends, the areas of success, and the many spaces where the fog of war has to be accepted and decisions must be left up to the field.

MSF is the right organization to describe the walk of this tightrope. They have experienced the death of workers, both domestic and international, as well as successful and unsuccessful resolution of kidnappings (some of whom are still held). They have limited and mitigated the negative outcomes while still delivering aid in the most dangerous parts of the world. Surprisingly, once adjusted for the larger scale of expanded operations, it is not statistically evident that today’s operating theatre is indeed more dangerous than in the past, which alone is a testimony for the investment and skill that MSF and the other major deliverers have made in applying best practices to protect their most valuable assets. It is however impossible to completely eliminate risk. The culture of the volunteers themselves has shifted away from the bravery icon of the fearless doctor of the past, to today’s field workers and staff who are constantly weighing the utility of what can be accomplished now against the uncertainty of the status of whatever local authority has promised them some measure of safety and independence.

As we begin to read this volume in the relative comfort of academia or within our practitioner organizations, we nod approvingly to the new appointments of security-focal point chiefs and the creation of comprehensive incident databases. The calming certainty of ‘green-yellow-red’ codes work expeditiously in both the board rooms as well as in the reader’s minds.

But then the MSF vignettes begin, leading us through the subtleties of individual cases, continent by continent, from hospitals clinging to independence in Syria to kidnapper negotiations in the Caucuses. Questions begin to emerge. Is there something innate, akin to unfettered bravery, in the international aid worker’s world view? Does this uniqueness require abject restraint to be imposed on them by administrators thousands of miles away? Do today’s instant communications give the home office a false sense that they have the right pulse? Are the anti-western themes prevalent enough that international workers should be pulled first or is that an unethical stratification? When does the balance of risking a life to save a life get so skewed as to withdraw, and who makes the call? Is the weight of procedures and documents suffocating the mission’s ideals? In a mere one hundred and forty-three pages, this book in turn prods, demands, challenges, and finally, through the examples depicted, assists the reader in forming their own mosaic from which to answer.

In a particularly illuminative chapter, Neuman interviewed Delphine Chedorge the MSFFrance coordinator for the Central African Republic operations. One of the largest deployments in the MSF family, the CAF organization employs 300 international and over 2,500 national workers. It also had four workers killed since 2007. The vastly different personal contacts that she used to gauge risk levels included missionaries, gang leaders, government ministry staff, the ears of her own workers, local power brokers, other NGO’s, and the French army systems.

These disparate pockets of intelligence often all triangulated or coalesced enough that she was able to maintain a current picture depicting the degree of fragility of the operational environment. To stay behind the bunker was safer from a short term stand point, but being out in the community (both for the coordinator and the staff) yielded superior information albeit at some day to day personal risk. Information alone wasn’t enough; respondent actions were sometimes required. She once embarked on radio, poster, and newspaper ads proclaiming the neutrality of her mission and demanding the safety of her staff. Contingency plans were made and executed, including the successful evacuation of twenty-four staff by road and boat in the matter of three days. In cases where MSF vehicles were borrowed at gunpoint, she was still able to get them returned days later (after they had been used in combat). Curfews were constantly being adjusted to reflect the facts on the ground. When a hospital patient was lynched inside a facility, she proclaimed that the grounds were officially neutral and any other violation would force them to cease all operations, to everyone’s detriment. A picture emerges here that her power levers were in the nuances, and the validity of her hourly decisions was superior to those in the district offices.

As artificial intelligence, cell phone usage, and the monitoring of social media progresses, the tendency to develop and rely on automated systems is going to grow geometrically over the next decade. This is a timely book that prepares the reader to authoritatively enter into these discussions. Initially, I thought the book was written as a push back against both the manuals of human resource departments and board’s acquiescing to the demands of insurance risk adjustors. Now I understand that it was written for all of us with an interest in the field. The decision to yield to bunkerization and out-source the safety framework to the data-security professionals or alternatively rely on the skills, contacts, and experience of the staff on the ground is going to continue to weigh on global humanitarian organizations.

To cite this content :
Kevin McMahon, Review "Saving Lives and Staying Alive: Humanitarian Security in the Age of Risk Management", 24 November 2017, URL : https://msf-crash.org/index.php/en/publications/war-and-humanitarianism/review-saving-lives-and-staying-alive-humanitarian-security

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Review "Saving Lives and Staying Alive: Humanitarian Security in the Age of Risk Management"

Dying for humanitarian ideas: Using images and statistics to manufacture humanitarian martyrdom

Agnes — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 01:00:00 +0000

Date de publication

15/02/2017

Agnes Wed, 02/15/2017 - 02:00

communication

Michaël Neuman

Michaël

Neuman

By the same author

Most reflections on humanitarian imagery have focused on the image of the victim, notably its use in media campaigns which, since the beginning of the 20th century, have been designed to generate emotion and hence actionSee Christina Twomey « The incorruptible Kodak: Photography, Human rights and the Congo Campaign », Liam Kennedy and Caitlin Patrick (dir.), The violence of the Image. Photography and International Conflict, I.B. Tauris, London, 2014. or the recurrent depiction of the dominant-dominated / saviour-victim relationship. Indeed, there has been much criticism of aid agencies’ marketing campaigns that, as Emily Baughan noted,Emily Baughan, A short history of helping far off peoples, 12 November 2015, http://africasacountry.com/2015/11/a-short-history-of-helping-far-off-peoples/ confine assisted populations to the status of victim. In protest against this paternalist tradition of humanitarian imagery (we had to wait until the end of the 2000s to see anything other than a photo of a young black victim being cared for a white care-provider on the cover of MSF’s international reports), humanitarian communication is now being parodied, as noted by historian and Eleanor DaveyEleanor Davey, Fact, Advocacy, Parody, 7 July 2015. https://aidhistory.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/fact-advocacy-parody/
in recent articles. More recently still, the historian Benjamin Thomas WhiteBenjamin Thomas White, Images of Refugees (parts 1 to 3), see https://singularthings.wordpress.com has focused on the imagery of refugees - especially the images produced by journalists and aid workers -, highlighting their ahistorical and homogenising nature. But in this article we are more interested in the image of the aid workers themselves.

This article has been inspired by an analysis conducted by MSF’s Centre for Reflection on Humanitarian Action and Knowledge (MSF-Crash)Sincere thanks to the whole MSF-Crash team that took part in the collective analysis of security management which allowed me to write this article, and to Bertrand Taithe and Eleanor Davey of Manchester University’s Humanitarian and Conflict Research Institute for their input and references. The title of this article – « Dying for humanitarian ideas » – has been borrowed directly from Bertrand Taithe, with his authorisation. See Bertrand Taithe, « Mourir pour des idées humanitaires : sacrifice, témoignage et travail humanitaire, 1870 – 1990 », in Caroline Cazanave et France Marchal-Ninosque (dir.), Mourir pour des idées, Presses universitaire de Franche-Comté, Besançon, 2009. of humanitarian security management and why and in what ways it is evolving.See also the book that came out of it: Michaël Neuman and Fabrice Weissman (dir.), Saving lives and staying alive: Humanitarian security in the age of risk management, London: Hurst and Co., 2016. We endeavour not only to describe humanitarian imagery, but to analyse its consequences - the risks it generates for aid workers operating in perilous situations. We draw on research that retraces the different stances on security adopted by Médecins Sans Frontières over the years, and examine how the production of images and statistics and the normalising of security management, appears to have contributed to towards rehabilitating the idea of acceptable humanitarian sacrifice.

Sacrifice as an integral part of a missionary-cum-humanitarian moral system

To talk about aspiring to death and humanitarian missions in the same breath might seem incongruous in the extreme. Yet, the history of missionaries attests to a strong relationship between humanitarian engagement and risk-taking, danger and death. Not only did the Christian missionaries - come to save souls and spread civilisation - live with the threat of death, not only did they not flee death, at times they appeared to be seeking it. Humanitarian assistance at the end of the 19th century served as a justification (and also a motivation) for missionaries, with martyrdom as an integral part of their moral arsenal. Southern Algeria, Tonkin and China all offered real opportunities to die for religious and humanitarian ideas.See Bertrand Taithe, op. cit. These deaths were testimony to the value of the work undertaken. The martyrs set the example for future missionaries, and a culture developed in which the culmination of their mission was death. In this sense, the ideal of sacrifice could be interpreted as a suicidal attitude.

Martyrdom of Saint Pierre Borie in 1838 in Vietnam
Source: Wikipedia

Yet this attitude cannot be put down to antiquated acts of faith, as the quest for martyrdom was still very much alive in missionary orders right up to the 1950s, and was present –although more discreetly so - in the new rhetoric on risk-taking in the decades that followed.

Thus, a colleague of two missionaries executed in Laos in 1961 wrote: “They were all admirable missionaries, willing to make any sacrifices, living in great poverty and with boundless devotion During that troubled period, we were all to some extent seeking martyrdom, wishing to give our lives for Christ. We were not afraid to risk our lives, we were all committed to helping the poorest, visiting the villages, caring for the sick and preaching the gospel…”http://nominis.cef.fr/contenus/saint/13038/Bienheureux-No%EBl-Tenaud.html

The rejection of martyrdom and the preservation of the hero figure

Like the rest of the modern humanitarian movement in the West, the organisation Médecins Sans Frontières, of which the author of this article is a member, is in part an emanation of this missionary tradition. But it is equally a product of a lay tradition, that of the Red Cross, drawing on the imaginary world of adventure and common law. As Bertrand Taithe writes, “the figure of the heroic explorer standing alone in the face of great danger is prominent among the key humanitarian leaders of the late 19th century”Bertrand Taithe, « Danger, risk, security and protection: concepts at the heart of the history of humanitarian aid», Michaël Neuman and Fabrice Weissman, Saving lives and staying alive. Humanitarian security in the age of risk management, CNRS Editions, Paris, 2016.. For MSF, which was founded in 1971 in the wake of a conflict in which propaganda and image played a major roleOn this subject, see also the Journal of Genocide Research, volume 16, Issue 2-3, 2014, devoted to the Biafra conflict, for a very thorough analysis., martyrs gave way to heroes – primarily theatrical heroes.

MSF’s founders, including Bernard Kouchner, saw themselves as adventurers. In a book of interviews with the Abbé Pierre, published in 1991, Kouchner has no trouble assuming this personal quest, with a mixture of snobbery and frivolity. Humanitarian assistance became a byword, the rallying cry of a young generation eager for discovery: “Let’s offer adventure to the world’s youth, and elegance. There is an aesthetic dimension to humanitarian assistance - a certain panache!”Bernard Kouchner, in Abbé Pierre and Bernard Kouchner, Dieu et les hommes, Robert Laffont, Paris, 1993.

This romantic interpretation, tinged with selflessness and even arrogance, is reflected in the organisation’s first charter which stipulates that; “anonymous and volunteers, [its members] seek no individual or collective satisfaction from their activities. They understand the risks and dangers of the missions they carry out”.MSF’s current charter, dating from 1992, maintains this paragraph in slightly modified form. The founders of Médecins Sans Frontières, most of them marked by their experience with the Red Cross in Yemen or Biafra (Nigeria) in the 1960s and conscious of the dangers involved, maintained - for the most part - a certain lyricism. The members of the nascent organisation played up the confrontation with danger, a confrontation that illustrated the “aristocracy of risk” – another of Bernard Kouchner’s expressions, for whom, “it’s much more fun to take a bullet between the eyes while playing Lawrence of Arabia than dying of cirrhosis at Bercy”Bernard Kouchner, in Abbé Pierre et Bernard Kouchner, Dieu et les hommes, op.cit., p. 21.. Thus certain images of the pioneers bore a striking resemblance to photos of Hollywood stars.

Bernard Kouchner
Source: Lutecium

Burt Lancaster in “From Here to Eternity”
Source: Google images

After the departure in 1979 of many of the organisation’s founders, and of Bernard Kouchner in particular, the flamboyance, the "hero-making" aspect of MSF's rhetoric remained. But this playing up of the danger was accompanied by an explicit refusal of sacrifice. In 1982, the then president confirmed: “No-one is asking us for heroics; just to do our jobs the best we can, in the most humane way possible and - above all - to come back in one piece”.Annual report for 1981 presented at MSF’s Annual general meeting in 1982

So MSF’s first years were marked by rhetoric that focused on the engagement of its personnel. Despite the many security incidents, security was not a subject as such. The public image projected by MSF, whose “fame” took off at the end of 1970s, was defined by its own depiction of its activity - the doctor bringing relief to the victim – usually African. The humanitarian doctor is not political.

The mid-80s saw an historic initiative to raise funds for the victims of the famine in Ethiopia. On 13 July 1985, in the midst of the disaster, the singer Bob Geldof, appointed himself as representative of western conscience, bringing together some of the world's best-known performers for a dual venue charity concert held simultaneously in London and Philadelphia. One of these performers was David Bowie who gave a breath-taking version of his song “Heroes”:

We can beat them
Just for one day
We can be Heroes
Just for one day

David Bowie, Live Aid 1985
Source: Digital Spyuk

In the end, the “hero” was as much David Bowie as the humanitarian doctors, or as the millions of television viewers who watched the event broadcast live worldwide and who could, with a cheque or bank transfer, help save a piece of humanity. Indeed, the hero figure is a handy invention. Not only does it create consensus, portraying a western world happy to bring relief to the third worldThe « White savior » narrative, it provides a way of disregarding the political dimensions of a crisis, even a phenomenon as unnatural as the Ethiopian famine in the 1980s (we know how much it owes to the Ethiopian authorities’ forced relocation policySee Laurence Binet, Famine and forced relocation in Ethiopia, 1984 – 1986, “Speaking out case studies” series, MSF, 2013.). After all, heroes are not fallible; they don't make mistakes. They are not involved in politics. They save.

As mentioned earlier, it is thanks to hero figures that the aid agencies of the 1980s gained in notoriety, in social standing. Aid workers became heroes not because they were prepared to face dangers, but because they went places where others – all those sitting at home in front of their television sets - didn’t (to use one of the classics of Médecins Sans Frontières’ communication).

Médecins Sans Frontières communication campaign, 1985
Source : INA

The 1990s were particularly traumatic for aid agencies. The conflicts they felt they understood, corresponding as they did to an East versus West-type logic, were replaced by crises of a new complexion - more complex and more vicious. The succession of extreme crisesSee Marc Le Pape, Joanna Siméant and Claudine Vidal (dir.), Crises extrêmes. Face aux massacres, aux urgences civiles et aux génocides, Paris, La Découverte, 2006 in West Africa, the Russian Caucasus, the African Great Lakes region, Somalia, ex-Yugoslavia, etc., the scaling up of resources for a rapidly expanding “aid industry” and the increasing number of serious security incidents affecting aid personnel triggered new awareness of the need to protect not only civilian populations, but also the security of aid teams.

Martyrdom redeemed?

When the anthropologist, Jean-Pierre Albert evokes heroism in his article for "La Fabrique des Héros [The Hero Factory]”, he does so in the following terms: “Heroism is not linked to the outcome of an undertaking, but to the acceptance of risk and suffering, and even death"Jean-Pierre Albert, « Du martyr à la star. Les métamorphoses des héros nationaux », Pierre Centlivres et al., La fabrique des héros, Paris : Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1998. : it’s John Wayne at the Alamo, or Che Guevara in Bolivia. The hero is thus a person who braves death, and martyrdom is simply the most evidentiary manifestation of heroic virtue. So, when in the second half of the 2000s, hero figures returned to the stage, they were no longer the ones who save. They had become, in an increasingly threatening world, the ones who brave dangers and, of course, bring relief –sometimes at the cost of their own life.

This redefining of the contours of humanitarian assistance took place in the early 2000s in the context of the "war against terrorism” following the September 11th attacks on the United States.

Humanitarian exceptionalism

A tragic event played a particularly important role in this redefinition. In August 2003, 22 people, most of them United Nations employees, perished in an attack on the UN building in Bagdad. As much as the event itself, it was the death of the head of the mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello, a charismatic Brazilian diplomat, that signalled the start of this new era - one in which aid workers appear to have become the victims of choice of armed groups of all kinds.

Samantha Power, current US ambassador to the United Nations, devoted a book to Vieira de Mello in 2008, humbly entitled, « Chasing the Flame: One Man’s Fight to Save the World ». In 2009, the biography was made into a film by the American cable channel, HBO, in which the “hero” had all the attributes expected of the modern humanitarian hero: attractive, something of ladies’ man, brave, self-sacrificing, a conveyor of democratic ideals…

Cover of Chasing The Flame: One Man’s Fight to Save the World, written by Samantha Power
Source: Penguin Random House

Although the death of Vieira de Mello did not trigger all the changes that would affect the imaginary world of humanitarian aid, it was clearly a turning point. In any case, this was the context in which a victimist approach developed, based on images and statistics intended to illustrate how the world was becoming an increasingly dangerous place.

The deadly attack on the United Nations headquarters in August 2003 and that against the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICFC) in October of the same year were seen as emblematic of an unprecedented increase in deliberate attacks against aid workers. Such fears were heightened by the difficulties encountered by relief organisations in the Middle East and the Sahel due to the expansion of radical Jihadist groups and the recurrence of kidnappings for ransoms. Whereas in the 1990s, the increase in attacks against aid workers was put down to the deliberate targeting of civilians in conflicts, as the 2000s got underway, talk was of the deliberate targeting of “aid workers as such”.

Thus was born the concept of « humanitarian exceptionalism » - to use the terminology of the researcher Larissa FastLarissa Fast, Aid in Danger. The perils and promise of humanitarianism, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2014.-, illustrated - among other things - by the launch in 2008 of World Humanitarian Day, or WHD, to pay tribute every 19 August - anniversary of the attack against the United Nations in Baghdad – to « those who face danger and adversity to help others »See http://www.un.org/en/events/humanitarianday/.

The twitter hashtag that accompanied the 2014 WHD campaign, #humanitarianhero, came in a variety of versions, all converging to manufacture the perfect humanitarian hero, whether civilian or military, as United Nations peacekeepers were also credited.

Source: Impact Magazine

Source: Twitter

This 2.0 humanitarian hero who braves terrible danger has in some cases been literally subsumed into the category of superhero. The traditional unequal relationship between saviour and victim is thus replaced by a hero with the victims nowhere in sight. On 17 June 2015, London’s Evening Standard published an article with the evocative title: Dfid’s CHASE team: meet the unsung superheroes of the civil servicehttp://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/dfid-s-chase-team-meet-the-unsung-superheroes-of-the-civil-service-10325729.html. The article paints the portrait of seven members of the British government’s aid agency, the “Chase team”, attributing them – without any obvious trace of humour – with superhuman powers. Parody vies with reality.

Source: Static Standard

Statistics to the rescue of humanitarian exceptionalism

At the start of the 2000s, and increasingly so from 2005-6 onwards, statistics played a major role in the portrayal of aid workers as humanitarian heroes by evidencing how dangerous the world was becoming. Questionable at many levels, especially with regard to the methodology they draw onSee Fabrice Weissman, « Violence against aid workers: the meaning of measuring », Saving lives and staying alive. Humanitarian security in the age of risk management, CNRS Editions, Paris, 2016, statistics offer the advantage of legibility. However, the briefest examination of these statistics undermines the image of an increasingly dangerous world in which aid workers are particularly vulnerable.

Although, in absolute terms, the average annual number of victims has quadrupled over the last fifteen years, in relative terms the number is remarkably stable: the rate of aid workers killed, injured or kidnapped varies between 40 and 60 for 100,000 and between 1,997 and 2,012 per year. In other words, the increase in the number of victims is proportional to the increase in the number of aid workers. So, there is no evidence that humanitarian action is more dangerous now than in the past. The risk of violent death would even seem to be decreasing, if we are to believe the decline in the percentage of deaths among the victims of attacks.

Yet statistics support rhetoric that is as depolitized as it is anhistorical, helping to transform aid workers into victims of the forces of evil. They thus contribute towards a victimist narrative that recounts the violence done to aid workers and turns them into heroes and martyrs of today's wars. This dramatization is strengthened by the introduction of norms and procedures that tend to deprive aid workers of “a sense of engagement in dangerous situations, while their employers put numerous procedures in place to protect themselves from legal and reputational risks in case of accidentMichaël Neuman and Fabrice Weissman, « Introduction », in Saving lives and staying alive. Humanitarian security in the age of risk management op.cit..”

Source: Aid Worker Security

Memory and martyrdom

This contemporary portrayal of humanitarian martyrdom can be seen in the recent erection of monuments dedicated to aid workers and in the campaigns promoting their protection.
In this respect, Canada is a pioneer, as it erected the Monument to Canadian Air Workers back in 2001.

Monument to Canadian Aid Workers
Source: Dominique Marshall

In 2013, Australia followed suit, erecting a monument to the glory of its aid workers fallen on the field of honour, and Great Britain joined them in 2014, by adding aid workers to the categories of “innocent victims” to which a memorial stone of the same name is dedicated outside Westminster Abbey. These monuments are still quite scarce, but the decision to incorporate aid workers into national architecture bearing a strong resemblance to war memorials for dead combatants is not as “innocent” as all that. By analogy with these dead combatants, we could conclude that memorials to dead aid workers are as much intended to honour the memory of the deceased as to prepare new generations for future losses.

Memorial for Humanitarian Aid Workers
Source: Remembering Humanitarians

Whereas the Canadian initiative illustrates a long-standing concern for the security of aid workers and is part of longer history of spotlighting the deaths of aid workers, the British and Australian monuments reflect an acceleration of this phenomenon - much strengthened by the emergence of campaigns for the protection of aid workers, such as the ICRC’s “Health care in danger” campaign, and Action against Hunger’s “Protect aid workers" campaign.

Based on the premise that violence against aid workers is increasing, these initiatives set out to denounce it - without always specifically denouncing those who commit it. They often bear all the hallmarks of contemporary marketing. The two above-mentioned organisations have launched poster campaigns in the Paris metro, where the general public is made to witness to the violence done to “aid workers” or “health workers”. Humanitarian victims become the victims among the victims. They become heroes without ever having to justify the usefulness or the value of the work accomplished, while the guilty parties are relegated to an abstract image. And what is more, the visual identity of the image chosen by the ICRC has strong religious overtones: is this a madonna offering herself up to the gaze of passers-by?

Source: Saddington Baynes

***

Hashtags, opinion campaigns, monuments…, humanitarian imagery is diversifying to offer, alongside the traditional images of victims of epidemics or countries at war, images of saviours-cum-victims. Yet, in truth, this seems to have resulted more in the self-intoxication of the milieu itself than to a change of attitude – more compassion – on the part of the public for the professionals of the aid sector. After all, aren’t aid agencies producing these images essentially for themselves?

Although we would all prefer to die a hero rather than a victim, the heroising of aid workers raises at least two problems. The first is that it produces a being set apart from the rest of the human race – better, more worthy. The second – and the most problematic for the professional sector we are concerned with here – is that treating aid workers like heroes can also lead us to believe that death is an integral part of the system, an occupational hazard. It seems to us that this is where the real danger lies: setting sacrifice up as a virtue within a sector that has made “humanity” one of its cardinal principles.

To cite this content :
Michaël Neuman, Dying for humanitarian ideas: Using images and statistics to manufacture humanitarian martyrdom, 15 February 2017, URL : https://msf-crash.org/index.php/en/publications/humanitarian-actors-and-practices/dying-humanitarian-ideas-using-images-and-statistics

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Dying for humanitarian ideas: Using images and statistics to manufacture humanitarian martyrdom

Bombardements d’hôpitaux : construire la preuve par l’image

Agnes — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 01:00:00 +0000

Date de publication

15/02/2017

Agnes Tue, 06/27/2017 - 15:53

Kunduz

Pierre Mendiharat

Pierre

Mendiharat

Deputy Head of Operations, MSF France

By the same author

Interview with Pierre Mendiharat, Deputy Head of Operations (MSF)
By Agnes Varraine-Leca

Since 2015, nearly 100 MSF or MSF-supported medical facilities have been bombed. The vast majority of these were in Syria, but facilities in Yemen, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Sudan have also been hit. Establishing the facts and identifying those responsible for every one of these airstrikes is vital both for MSF to continue providing medical care, and to demand justice and compensation. But how can the perpetrators be held to account when they deny, refuse or downplay their responsibility, qualifying such attacks as ‘mistakes’?

MSF asked Forensic Architecture, a research agency that investigates state-sponsored violence, to ascertain what happened during the bombing of the Maarat Al Numan hospital in Syria a year ago, killing 25 people including one MSF staff member and injuring 11. The agency collects and analyses images taken on the scene of crimes to help establish the facts and identify those responsible. At the crossroads between cartography, imagery analysis, legal expertise and architecture, Forensic Architecture reconsiders the notions of crime and evidence.

Watch Forensic Architecture’s investigation

There are a number of issues with using images as evidence. They can be tampered with and used in any number of ways to support a particular vision of reality. Their origins too can raise questions: Was the person that provided a given image entirely impartial? Images are contentious; they can only be truly understood in context. They are, furthermore, often contested. What made MSF decide to work with an organisation like Forensic Architecture?

Pierre Mendiharat (PM): When Dr. Mego Terzian, president of MSF’s French section, publicly accused Russia and Syria of the airstrike on Maarat Al Numan, it caused great controversy within the MSF movement. What proof did MSF’s French section have to be able to accuse Russia and Syria? How reliable were the witness accounts on which the organisation was basing its claims? Many criticised the speed with which the French section reacted. The incident forced us to consider a number of questions. What is MSF’s best course of action when the organisation is targeted by an attack but there is not enough physical evidence to incriminate the perpetrators? What levers are available to the organisation?

MSF internal reviews allow us to gather together the available information, to establish our own version of the facts and to form an opinion — or rather, comfort our initial analysis. A next step, rather than taking the case to the courts of the countries involved, could be to call for an independent and impartial investigation, just as we did after the US airstrike on the Kunduz hospital in Afghanistan. Opening such an investigation requires the activation of the International Humanitarian Fact‑Finding Commission (IHFFC), the only permanent body established to conduct independent investigations into violations of international humanitarian law. The Commission, however, can only act with authorisation from the states in question, and this authorisation was refused for Kunduz. Instead, the US military led an internal investigation into the attack which was only partially published. Given the circumstances, this was a far from satisfactory solution.

Accusing the perpetrators publicly is one course of action available to MSF. With Forensic Architecture, we are exploring a new way to support these accusations, reconstructing events by collecting and analysing images — photographs and videos from social media and satellite imagery — taken at the time.

The war in Syria is characterised by systematic airstrikes on medical facilities by Syrian and Russian forces, and by their denial of this fact. When Maarat Al Numan was attacked, both Syria and Russia denied all the accusations and refused to admit any involvement in the strikes, showing absolutely no willingness to take the issue any further. The flight plans, for that matter, have never been released by the different militaries that conducted air operations in the north of Syria on 15 February 2016The Maarat Al Numan hospital was bombed on 15 February 2016.

With restricted access for journalists, particularly in Syria, it is difficult to find concrete evidence or carry out investigations on the ground, which is why we have decided to work with Forensic Architecture.

Through the partnership, MSF hoped to achieve a number of things. Firstly, we wanted to see if we could unearth any evidence that would incriminate one or several governments in the airstrikes on Maarat Al Numan. Secondly, we wanted to document the event as thoroughly as possible to establish a clear picture of what happened. We also want to communicate the findings, putting media pressure on those involved to pursue accountability and stop the memory fading. We are showing that an attack like this will not be forgotten, that it has been documented, and that this documentation may one day be used to complete the picture and bring those responsible to account.

Is MSF looking to use this method systematically, particularly when it has been targeted directly? Are there other projects in the pipeline?

PM: This work should become a systematic response. We must ensure we launch this sort of investigation every time MSF falls victim an attack of this nature. It is one of the tools that can help us achieve our primary objective: to continue providing medical care by lowering the risk of our hospitals and medical facilities being targeted. The only solution we have today is to ensure that attacks against hospitals come at a political cost; that they negatively impact the public image of those committing them. The work of Forensic Architecture contributes to achieving that.

We would like to look back at all past airstrikes on MSF or MSF-supported hospitals. This research will, undoubtedly, reveal trends and repetitions of the same type of event with similar characteristics, like the double tapThe double tap is a shooting technique where two shots are fired in rapid succession at the same target.. Such trends could confirm the intentional nature of an attack, allowing us to understand the military strategies being implemented and denounce them. Forensic Architecture has done some interesting work of this type on US drone strikes.

On 15 February 2016, an airstrike hit the MSF-supported Maarat Al Numan hospital killing 25 people including one MSF staff member and injuring 11. After the airstrike, Dr. Mego Terzian, president of MSF’s French section, publicly accused Russia and Syria. What has the work of Forensic Architecture taught us about the hospital airstrikes and Russia and Syria’s part in them?

PM: The investigation conducted by Forensic Architecture did not uncover any definitive physical evidence to incriminate Russia and Syria. It did, however, highlight new elements that confirmed our initial analysis. For example, it established that the times at which Russian and Syrian planes took off from their respective bases corresponded with the times and locations of the airstrikes. The analysis of the silhouette of a plane caught on film bears a resemblance to the MiG-23, a plane that is used in Syria by the Syrian regime only.

The investigation also clearly pointed to an intentional double — or triple — tap strategy in which airstrikes are repeated in close succession in the same area. Once first responders had arrived on the scene to deal with the first strike, a second one followed. A hospital a short distance away, to which the patients had been transferred, was then targeted in a third strike. This clearly illustrates the intentional nature of the strategy and its brutality towards the civilians and emergency services on the ground. Eyal Weizman, the founder of Forensic Architecture, when interviewed by Russia Today, pointed out how common it is for warring parties to implement this type of military strategy to weaken both opposition forces and the population, severely diminishing their resilience.

While Forensic Architecture’s reconstruction does not provide conclusive evidence, it identifies a number of elements that support our initial conviction: Syrian and Russian forces were responsible for the airstrikes on Maarat Al Numan.

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To cite this content :
Pierre Mendiharat, Hospital airstrikes: gathering evidence through images, 15 February 2017, URL : https://msf-crash.org/index.php/en/blog/war-and-humanitarianism/hospital-airstrikes-gathering-evidence-through-images

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Hospital airstrikes: gathering evidence through images

La diplomatie humanitaire, cache-misère de la violence extrême

babayaga — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Date de publication

27/09/2016

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/27/2016 - 11:31

United Nations