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This chapter discusses how within the arena of humanitarianism itself, hierarchies of humanity are passively established where the expatriate aid workers are provided with due protection whereas the aid workers from the recipient society are paradoxically excluded from this protection. It discusses the decision of the French chapter of Médecins Sans Frontières' to remain in Baghdad during the onset of Iraq War which finally exposed the politics of life in humanitarian actions. By exposing themselves to danger during the bombings, the French team raised the question of the equality of lives in a concrete and immediate way to show that life is equally vulnerable for the Iraqis and for the humanitarian agents assisting them. Similarly the military forces that intervene in international conflicts in the name either of country or of higher concerns also do not reject the idea and sentiment of humanity in principle, however, their practice of according value to lives calls it into question.

This chapter presents a study on Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde assistance programs in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to analyze the transformation of the status of witnesses in humanitarianism. Humanitarian workers, on the basis of a moral imperative, are increasingly taking on the role of witness for those they assist and thus end up as spokespeople for the oppressed in order to make their suffering public. The process of humanitarian subjectivation has found psychiatry a key tool for giving form to the experience of victims of war, disaster, and famine. The presence of mental health specialists in Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde in their Palestinain missions where the health services are fairly equipped indicates their aim to expose the consequences of a humanitarian crisis. The massive overrepresentation of young men among the Palestinians who fought and died during the Second Intifada and the prevalence of enuresis in them is also discussed.

This chapter considers the degree to which secular organization finds a “sacred purpose” through seeking to preserve human existence. The key example for this study is the humanitarian association Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The MSF is a secular organization—a group operating without mandate, and maintains complete independence from all political, economic, or religious powers—that conducts emergency response operations and provides AIDS medication. Beyond regularly deploying calls to “save lives,” the group offers the nominal advantage of combining an assertive faith in medical care. The organization also reflects a biopolitical expectation that states should attend to the health of their populations. However, their vision exceeds questions of governance—whereas a state might display the capacity to “make live” or “let die,” MSF members can never legitimately reject a suffering person.

In chapter 2, Heather Pagano and Marc Poncin detail, from the perspective of Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), the unique features of the outbreak that made past approaches to filovirus-infection emergencies inadequate, as well as the core reasons the global response preliminarily failed. The chapter describes how the dispersal of small numbers of cases over a wide geographical area multiplied the human resources, logistics, and laboratory capacity required in each individual location to bring the epidemic under control while also presenting communication and coordination difficulties between MSF, healthcare workers, UNICEF, WHO, and the US CDC. It analyzes WHO leadership, including poor logistical presence and politicized decision-making. The chapter highlights the critical gaps in the formal national and international system for responding to serious infectious disease threats and the process by which those gaps may be filled by nongovernmental organizations.

The two World Wars and the Cold War resulted in mass destruction across the globe and subsequent episodes of humanitarian crisis. This chapter explores the growth of the infrastructure to respond to humanitarian crisis following the the Wars and the Cold War. It examines the role of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or “Doctors without Borders,” formed in 1971 in Paris, to provide rapid emergency response in human tragedy by way of mobile medical supplies and hospital care and the technopolitics of emergency. MSF has helped thousands of wounded victims in Bangladesh and Cambodia. They provide excellent healthcare and emergency care all over the world, which constitutes an effort to clean up the grim aftermath of the Cold War.

This chapter examines how the Syrian crisis has exposed the limitations of mixing political and humanitarian activities and its damaging impact on the delivery of much-needed assistance to Syrian civilians. Some actors, such as United Nations and some of its agencies, have faced challenges in their ability to provide aid to people on the ground because their political mandate has largely overruled the humanitarian imperative. Other actors, such as Médecins Sans Frontières (or Doctors without Borders; MSF), are compelled to challenge this political frame, even if they face huge difficulties in delivering humanitarian aid in an impartial and independent manner. The chapter considers how the Middle East challenges conventional actors—in particular MSF and the UN—over the limits of their mandates and/or actions. It presents case studies to demonstrate how these limits have influenced the delivery of humanitarian assistance in Syria.

This introductory chapter presents three prominent nongoverment organizations—Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (Oxfam International), and Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE)—that convened a donor conference to discuss Haiti's reconstruction and development after the nation was hit by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. These three charitable groups had decades of experience in Haiti and all faced the same situations, but throughout the year following the earthquake, each organization focused on distinct aspects of the crisis and used different tactics to make their point. In relation to this case, the book details the organizational life at many of the world's leading international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) in order to understand the causes and consequences of this variation in organizational practices.