Medecins Sans Frontieres

This past weekend (Oct. 5th - 7th) there was a large exhibit out side of the Vancouver Public Library.  I originally found out about it while coincidentally trying to take out a movie from the Library and saw them setting up several large white tents inside of a temporary fence.  Reading the signs I realized it was and event for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) a humanitarian organization formed in France.  The event was set up to increase awareness of their organization, what they do, and the tragedy they experience all over the world everyday.  The organization (MSF) sounded familiar but I really knew nothing about what they actually did so I found this display incredibly informative and eye opening.

The display its self was designed to be a mock refugee camp, where someone like my self could enter one end, let by a volunteer for MSF and get an explanatory tour of the various aspects of living in a refugee camp.  Our tour guide was a man named Patrick, a water engineer from Montreal who had just been on a mission in an African region.  One of the first things he explained to us is that while they refer to it as a refugee camp the people MSF deals with are not actually refugees as are classified by the UN.  A refugee is someone displaced out of his/her country by war or other reasons and is in turn recognized and aided by the UN; MSF works with internally displaced peoples, which are people uprooted from their home by war or other reasons who remain in their country of origin.   The UN does not recognize people in this situation.  By current estimates there are currently 42 million people displaced within their own country, all lacking basic needs such as food, medicine and education.  MSF seeks to provide for these people when their local government is unable, and the UN does not have the resources or ability due to bureaucratic barriers.

As we are just starting to learn from our mistakes and ignorance of the recent path (eg Rwanda, Cambodia etc) there are new tragedies occurring everyday, violations of human rights on a massive scale.  In several places like Sudan, Darfur, and Columbia, governments do not have the political will or resources to look after their own people so MSF takes this responsibility.   It is incredible the difference in living styles from our homes to theirs, I think one way in which this is really demonstrated is Patrick told of how each family in the camp was allocated 10-20 liters of water per day.  Then he asked us how much water we thought we each consumed in a day, the general answer in our group was 30 to 50 liters.  So it came as quite a shock when he told us the average person in the western world can use from 250 to 300 liters per day.  Water how ever is one of several problems the people organizing and living in these camps face everyday; other struggles include all the health risks, food, fire wood, tensions between inside and out the camps, medicine and the various diseases which can spread so easily in a crowed unclean environment to name a few.  Among all of this however I think one of my biggest shocks came from finding out how the organization is funded, almost entirely from private donation.

One of the reasons MSF can be so quick to respond and aid peoples is that they receive limited funding from government bodies.  For instance in 2005 MSF worldwide received just 13.9% of its income from Government and institutions.  This enables them to move with greater freedom not hindered by inter-government friction between donor and receiving bodies.  Speaking with people at the event and reading their fiscal summary it is clear that there current ration of private funding to government funding is of deep importance to them and something they will continue to strive for.

All in all, this event was very effective at educating and raising awareness.  This is the kind of organization needed more often in order to engage the general public; it is becoming increasingly difficult to pry people from their everyday lives and see what is going on in the world around them.  Hands on experience and intense visuals like the kind seen at “A Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City” are powerful tools against apathy, though I hope if you were not able to make it to this event you can still realize the close interconnectedness we share with all human beings, and that some of those people are not fairing nearly as well as we in the west are. 

Check out their web site at www.doctorswithoutborders.org

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