Tough year for aid agency Medicins sans Frontiers by Edmond Roy, ABC News 10:33am 23rd Dec, 2005   Dec 2005    The tsunami was a disaster of catastrophic proportions, but it hasn"t been the only humanitarian crisis to have weighed on aid agencies this year.    Medicins Sans Frontiers is often the first agency on the ground after a disaster, delivering emergency medical care. And the last twelve months have been some of the busiest in the 34-year history of the organisation.    Doctors with MSF have dealt with suffering on a huge scale, from Pakistan to the Sudan. And it"s also been a year in which the agency has been targeted by militant groups.    Rowan Gillies is President of Medicins Sans Frontiers International Council and he"s been speaking to Edmond Roy.    ROWAN GILLIES: Well, Dafur has been… despite it going a little bit out of the media spotlight, it"s still a major concern. We"re still seeing the results of that in our camps, we"re still seeing women being raped and stories of people being killed in the area.    So, there is still not a political solution to this as far as we can see and that"s a major concern for us, especially as it"s gone off the spotlight. It"s a concern.    The security in Northern Uganda is a big concern at the moment for humanitarian workers and the situation there is concerning, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, it continues. There are… has been, what you"d describe perhaps as some advances in some areas, but some deterioration in others.    EDMOND ROY: You mention it"s fallen off the radar, Darfur, most of Africa for that matter has fallen off the radar for large part. Why is that?    ROWAN GILLIES: Yeah, well it"s not surprising that it"s off the radar. I mean, it was very… it was interesting in all the G8 discussion and so on everyone was excited about Africa for a week or two and at the same time we"re undergoing a huge nutrition crisis in Niger and many, many children were dying.    So, it goes on the radar for a little while, but this year we"ve had Iraq is very exciting for everybody, tsunami, Hurricane Katrina… there"s so many things going on that I"m not surprised there"s not so much room for chronic conflicts and crises that are affecting people, in many ways much more than a sudden crisis, but it"s not as interesting for the media in many ways.    EDMOND ROY: Is that being reflected in the donor aspect as well? In other words, are the donations that are supposed to arrive in these parts of the world, not arriving?    ROWAN GILLIES: I can"t speak for other organisations. For us, we"ve actually had an incredibly strong response and the tsunami is an example when we said well, we just can"t do anymore of what we"re good at in the tsunami - the needs have been met.    We asked our donors if we can use the money elsewhere and that"s a significant amount of money, I think it"s 75 million euros, and 99 per cent of our donors said yes, use it in forgotten conflicts and we"ve actually spent about 80 per cent of it already on Niger, on Pakistan, on Darfur, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.    So, it"s… I think actually the… we found, the donor support and in Australia actually it"s been phenomenal, the donor support for this kind of approach, not going just for the media, but going for more forgotten crises.    People understand that that"s the way the world works. Donors are not stupid and supporters of these sort of things think about what they want to do. So we"ve actually found it hasn"t been a fatigue at this stage.    EDMOND ROY: So what are the challenges? I mean, on the one hand you have it falling off the radar, you have not the same impact as a crisis normally has. Let"s for instance look at Africa, and even the earthquake in Pakistan for that matter.    What"s a challenge for an organisation like yours?    ROWAN GILLIES: Well, for us I think the challenge is… there"s a couple of things. There"s getting support in a financial sense. That"s… that"s not such an important issue.    The important issue is actually in a lot of these conflicts in Africa is that there is a political resolution. We provide a bandaid. We try to keep people alive until the political situation gets good enough so they can enjoy the peace, if you know what I mean.    So, that"s… and that"s more the problem with a lack of media attention, is the lack of political will that goes with the lack of media attention, because politicians... to be honest, foreign policy doesn"t have much say in many elections, and in decisions made by governments, foreign policy is not the number one at all.    So unless it"s really in the media spotlight, then you do get foreign policy decisions made, but if it"s not, it just gets ignored.    EDMOND ROY: Let"s look at another challenge for you. In the old days, an aid agency walking into a war zone had a certain cloak of invincibility, if I could put it that way. That has changed now, hasn"t it? I mean, you are under threat.    ROWAN GILLIES: In certain countries, yes. There"s no doubt about that. There"s… we"ve always had security issues. It"s mainly because people have actually said that they"re prepared to attack anyone, including humanitarian workers. That"s the main difficulty.    Number two is that the co-optation of humanitarian action to get political goals, be they good goals or bad goals, they"re still political goals and some people are going to disagree with that.    The idea that everyone that"s good agrees with the Coalition in Afghanistan, everyone that"s bad doesn"t agree, therefore we shouldn"t assist the bad side, is a very naive approach to world affairs.    So it is a concern. From both sides we"re having difficulties. However, the idea of giving up and just assisting people that, for example, in Afghanistan the Coalition thinks we should assist, as opposed to going to all the population, is incredibly dangerous, because in the end the people that need assistance are often the people that are in the unstable places and are not in the umbrella of security provided by different forces.    So, it"s a problem and we"ve got two choices - we either get with everyone else"s program or we stick to trying to assist independently and impartially and we"re going to stick to that one.
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