Everyday Emergency – Details, episodes & analysis

In crisis zones across the world, hospitals have been attacked, supply trucks blockaded and funding cut. So, what is the state of humanitarian aid today? In this episode of Everyday Emergency, we’re speaking to Chris Lockyear – the Secretary General of Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF). He’s one of the leading voices in MSF, and an expert on humanitarian aid and the crises we currently face. We sat down with Chris after a recent visit to Sudan, where MSF teams are operating in what has been dubbed a ‘humanitarian void’ despite more than 11 million people being forced from their homes by the civil war. We also spoke about the situation in Gaza following the desperately needed ceasefire, and about the dangerous and far-reaching consequences of the aid cuts recently announced by governments including the UK and USA. If you would like to support our life-saving medical work around the world, please visit msf.org.uk to donate. Thank you. Presented by Nick Owen Edited by Sandy McKee Photo: MSF

At a groundbreaking hospital in the Jordanian capital Amman, a dedicated team from Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) work to treat and rehabilitate war-wounded people from conflict zones across the Middle East and North Africa. Rula Marafeh, an experienced physiotherapist, shares her story from a unique project that has been saving and transforming lives since 2006. In places such as Gaza, Sudan, Yemen and Syria, as violence pushes healthcare systems to breaking point, MSF works to evacuate patients in need of the most specialist care. Once in Amman, a spectrum of expert teams work to surgically reconstruct limbs, treat aggressive infections, teach patients to use their new bodies, and crucially, heal the unseen trauma each new arrival carries with them. If you would like to support our life-saving medical work around the world, please visit msf.org.uk to donate. Thank you. Presented by Amber Dowell Edited by Sandy McKee Photo: MSF/Peter Bräunig

In August 2002, the threat to MSF becomes a reality and another Coordinator, a Dutch national, is kidnapped in Dagestan. The organisation is once again faced with the dilemma whether it should speak out in the media about the kidnapping or not. MSF opts to keep quiet at first, but as the weeks turn into months and the MSF Coordinator is still not released, MSF starts questioning whether it should take active steps to secure the hostage’s release by publicly pointing out a government’s responsibilities, negligence, or even complicity when a kidnapping occurs on its soil, or should it not enter into these conversations to avoid the potential for a government to dig in its heels? Tensions are running high, especially between MSF, the Dutch authorities and the family of the hostage, and some feel the structures within the organisation are not helping the situation.

Warning: This episode contains testimony related to child deaths that some listeners may find distressing. A new report by MSF lays bare the cruelty of the long-term detainment of more than 50,000 people, the majority of whom are children, in Al-Hol, northeast Syria. The camp was once designed to provide safe, temporary accommodation and humanitarian services to civilians displaced by the conflict in Syria and Iraq. But the nature and purpose of the camp has long deviated and grown increasingly into an unsafe and unsanitary open-air prison after people were moved there from Islamic State group controlled territories in December 2018. Visit https://msf.org.uk/alhol to learn more.

In 1996, MSF attempts to alert the international community about the resurgence of conflict in eastern Zaire, as witnessed by teams on the ground. The perpetrators of the Rwandan Tutsi genocide, living in refugee camps, threaten and attack the Zairean civilian population. The same perpetrators are holding Rwandan refugees that fled the 1994 genocide, hostage within the camps. The new Rwandan regime and its Zairian ally, the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL), launches counter attacks on the refugee camps.

As the instability of the region increases, MSF and other humanitarian organisations are eventually forced out of eastern Zaire entirely. MSF suspects that thousands of refugees are suffering and at risk of dying. The organisation decides to launch an appeal for an armed international intervention and communicates about the plight of the population, predicting a health catastrophe, if access for aid agencies is not provided.

In November 1996, the offensive led by the ADFL and Rwandan forces empties the camps in eastern Zaire of their population. Some refugees were repatriated to Rwanda and others fled into the neighboring forest. MSF denounces the repatriation conditions and is reproached by the press for "catastrophic" forecasts made a few weeks earlier.

Finally allowed into South Kivu, a province in eastern Zaire, the MSF teams discover that refugees are being massacred by the ADFL and its allies, particularly in the Massisi and the Shabunda regions. MSF realises that MSF teams are used as bait by the ADFL to lure the refugees out of the forests and kill them.

The ADFL takes control of all of the Kivu province and refugees continue to flee their rapid advance eastwards through the forest. MSF struggles to maintain access to the refugees amidst the violence, restrictions, and threats to team safety, while receiving continued reports about refugee massacres.

MSF's exploratory mission teams complete their reports on their Masisi and Shabunda visits. Details of mass graves, massacres, and the fact that the ADFL used humanitarian teams as bait to lure refugees out of the forests, sent shock waves through MSF offices. A debate about the use of the information collected ensued: should it be made public or not?