Doctors without Borders

Doctors Without Borders represents a 20th-century evolution of the humanitarian tradition started by the Red Cross. The organization's approach to disaster relief places advocacy and action for the vulnerable person at the center of its work. The formative story of Doctors Without Borders is somewhat parallel to that of the Red Cross, yet it has resulted in an organization that has challenged Red Cross principles. During the Biafran Civil War in Nigeria in 1968, a young French doctor named

Bernard Kouchner was working for the Red Cross, which was in Nigeria through its mandate under international law to protect the victims of armed conflict. Despite the sanction given to humanitarian organizations to assist, Kouchner observed their inability to help vulnerable people under the circumstances of the Biafran conflict. The expectation was that the parties in conflict would behave rationally according to principles tested in over 100 years of European wars. However, the Biafran conflict was fought in the media as well as on the battlefield, and in effect, both sides utilized civilians to convince the world of the righteousness of their cause. In Biafra, the template for provision of assistance did not fit with contemporary reality as experienced by Kouchner: under the operating principles of the Red Cross, assistance could only be supplied with the consent of a legitimate government.

However, this was a war where the legitimate government was reluctant to allow external assistance to be given to a rebelling population. Kouchner's frustration was with the bureaucracy, and more importantly, the silence of the Red Cross when it came to speaking out about abuses against civilians. Upon his return to France, Kouchner was one of a group of French doctors and journalists who reacted to the perceived failure of the existing humanitarian approach by forming their own organization: Médecins sans Frontiers, or Doctors Without Borders. The organization values its independence from state-sanctioned humanitarianism above all, and it always struggles to maintain vocal opposition without completely isolating itself from state structures that enable it to reach affected populations.