Understanding Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

From traumatic stress to job stress

Over the past thirty years, as the humanitarian sector has become increasingly professional, and society has recognised the importance of psychological well-being, Médecins Sans Frontières’ managers have accepted that an employer is responsible for the mental health of its employees. Following on from the mental-health theme of our last issue, the authors describe how employers have adapted their approach to managing the stress faced by humanitarian workers.

The acceptance of humanitarian intervention

This podcast examines the acceptance of the humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the areas where it operates. It focuses in particular on the individual memberships of direct aid beneficiaries and the more general recognition of the organization by the local social fabric.

Interest, disinterestedness and indifference

In this podcast, we discuss the notion of disinterestedness within Doctors Without Borders (MSF). This podcast reveals three gradations of interest: first, interestedness, the gradation where individual material and symbolic rewards are recognised by the individuals, then, disinterestedness, second gradation where the rewards are a priori collective but also, in an indirect way and in different forms, individual, and finally indifference, third gradation where individuals have no judgement.

A mobility capital?

In this podcast, we discuss the fact that, at MSF, mobility experiences are accumulable, mobilizable, convertible, depreciable and transmissible. Based on that, we suggest that, while these experiences are not always mobilized by those who have them to climb the formal internal hierarchy, they do, in any case, enable them to gain decision-making power over their future career path within the organization. 

Are humanitarian workers precarious?

By defining precariousness as a period of undergone uncertainty, this article aims to grasp how the tension between militant ideal and managerial imperative of the organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), present since its foundation, has been translated into the form of a managerial policy sometimes perceived as an opportunity, sometimes as a constraint by humanitarian workers.

Who is legitimate to speak out within MSF?

In this podcast, we discuss the notion of politicization from an anthropological perspective, considering the organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) as a society of individuals in its own right, with its institutions, rules, norms and modes of operation, and seeking to understand who within it is legitimate to express themselves, who is listened to, and who actually participates in shaping its strategic orientations.

Changes brought about by the southernization

Over the past thirty years or so, players in the international aid sector have sought to involve the populations they work with more closely in a movement of “southernization”. At MSF, this movement has resulted in a diversification of the origin of “expatriates”. This diversification would in fact lead to a partial depoliticization of the organization, shift its strategic balance and ultimately give rise to a new social stratification.

Off-work and intimacy during missions

What meaning does the notion of off-work have when employees, such as those at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), remain constrained by their uninterrupted world of work for months on end?

How to sanction without causing pain?

In the humanitarian sector, dedicated to alleviating people’s suffering, how to qualify a misconduct and impose a potentially painful sanction? How can one judge, i.e. consider that everyone is responsible for their act, in a working area based on the fact that human inequalities are partly due to social determinisms? To what extent tolerating deviance is exacerbated and sentences are attenuated if not lifted? Where do the limits of the acceptable stop?

Are doctors without borders doctors without a homeland?

This podcast discusses the fact that humanitarian mission conditions limit local integration and the analytical article on which this podcast is based suggests three forms of attachment: home (“break expatriates”), elsewhere (“multi‑homeland expatriates”) or nowhere (“duty‑free expatriates”). For the latter, MSF plays, until their departure from the organization, the role of substitute homeland.