Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971.

Today, MSF provides aid in nearly 60 countries to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters. MSF provides independent, impartial assistance to those most in need. MSF reserves the right to speak out to bring attention to neglected crises, to challenge inadequacies or abuse of the aid system, and to advocate for improved medical treatments and protocols.

In 1999, MSF received the Nobel Peace Prize.

MSF's work is based on the humanitarian principles of medical ethics and impartiality. The organization is committed to bringing quality medical care to people caught in crisis regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation.


In 1985, MSF spoke out against the Ethiopian government's forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of its population; took the unprecedented step of calling for an international military response to the 1994 Rwandan genocide; condemned the Serbian massacre of civilians at Srebrenica in 1995; denounced the Russian bombardment of the Chechen capital, Grozny in 1999; and called for international attention to the crisis in Darfur in 2004 and 2005 at the United Nations Security Council.

In 2007, MSF called for international attention to the increased targeting of civilians in conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, and Somalia; advocated for the widespread adoption of new protocols for the treatment of malnutrition to include the use of ready-to-use foods; challenged pharmaceutical company Novartis's court case opposing the production of generic medicines in India, which produces an estimated 80 percent of the developing world's medicines; and spoke out against the plan of the governments of Thailand and Laos threatened to forcibly return nearly 8,000 Hmong refugees to Laos.

For more information see http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/