generalspeaking

 Living Tragedy

Of any one single humanitarian group operating in conflict zones and places of the world where people live desperate lives of mass poverty, endemic illness and no hope for the future of their children, surely Doctors Without Borders/Medecines sans Frontieres(MSF) stands out as the most effective, self-sacrificing group whose volunteers are committed to their life-saving tasks like none other.

Their dedicated volunteers in the health-care field see nature, failing health and human relations at their utter direst. They pass no judgement, but enter situations which most people would turn away from with fear and revulsion.

They use their professional medical skills to bring new life to suffering people, to give hope to those without it, to improve health outcomes and life aspirations for as many people as they possibly can. Unlike most humanitarian groups they put forward a humble face of dedication to the duty of healing, expecting nothing in return but the relief of having succeeded where they can.

When they establish themselves in an area of endemic poverty, political oppression, social upheaval and religious strife, they know they must present as personally indifferent to the events around them with their focus solely on who it is that requires their medical assistance, and how they may best solve dangerous, sometimes intractable health conditions to enable peoples' lives to be prolonged.


MSF has suffered, over its long years of selfless service to the needy, the ill and the afflicted, losses of its own. There are places and times when their workers have been attacked, injured, abducted, and sometimes killed while going about their normal life-saving activities, as they too become imperilled by the forces that inflict pain, fear and oppression upon the weak, the fearful, the powerless in societies disrupted by internal conflict.

One such failed nation is that of Somalia. Where the weak government in Mogadishu is truly a central government, incapable of exerting influence and governing control in great swathes of its territory taken over by Muslim jihadists like Al-Shabab, the terrorist group that slaughters innocent people without the slightest provocation other than to exert their impulse to destroy and to wreak havoc wherever they can.

When Somalia was suffering yet another dreadful famine as a result of a prolonged drought a year ago Al-Shabab which controlled the south and central parts of the country, refused to permit aid groups, including the UN Food Agency, to enter those areas to give food relief to desperate Somalians; during that time almost a quarter-million Somalians died of starvation.

But Doctors Without Borders is now prepared to leave Somalia after 22 years where it provided emergency aid.

It is leaving simply because it can no longer in conscience permit its vulnerable workers to be endangered; abducted, attacked, slaughtered. It is not only aid workers whose lives are imperilled in that lawless, brutal area of a country whose government seems powerless to bring order and security to its people. Two dozen local journalist have been killed since 2012.

A truck bomb and gunfire attack on the main UN compound in Mogadishu killed eight UN employees along with five Somali civilians.

MSF is well aware that their leaving the country will leave hundreds of thousands of people to suffer unaided by any outside medical-relief agency. MSF operates the country's only pediatric intensive care unit, and women requiring emergency caesarean sections will be bereft of the medical care they were up until the pullout able to rely upon.

The deciding factor in leaving the country was the government's release from prison of a killer of two MSF staff.

A former Somali employee of MSF took revenge for his contract not being renewed by shooting and killing a Belgian and an Indonesian worker at an MSF compound. The killer was convicted and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment, but authorities chose to release him after his having served a mere three months.

Dozens of violent attacks have resulted in the deaths of sixteen Doctors Without Borders staff in Somalia since 1991.

Dr. Unni Karunakara, MSF's international president said bluntly what cause-and-effect was represented by: "Extreme attacks on its staff in an environment where armed groups and civilian leaders increasingly support, tolerate, or condone the killing, assaulting and abducting of humanitarian aid workers. In choosing to kill, attack and abduct humanitarian aid workers, these armed groups, and the civilian authorities who tolerate their actions, have sealed the fate of countless lives in Somalia". 

The final straw for the humanitarian group, emphasized Mr. Karunakara, was the clear understanding that the country's political and security authorities were obviously supporting or giving tacit approval to attacks against MSF, irrespective of the fact that access to hard-to-reach communities had been negotiated between government and MSF.

Labels: Conflict, Human Rights, MSF, Somalia, Terrorism

posted by Pieface @ Friday, August 16, 2013