Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed: The MSF Experience

if we consider that humanitarian aid is not an exact science but an art, then the essence of this art is to create and maintain the conditions of its existence—to generate interest, make itself useful, identify conjunctures that could be propitious for change—and to be capable at all times of modifying the balance of power, creating a hiatus, perma

“blurred distinctions between the roles of military and humanitarian organisations; political manipulation of humanitarian assistance [and the] perceived lack of independence of humanitarian actors from donors or from host governments”.

There is, however, a space for negotiation, power games and interest-seeking between aid actors and authorities. MSF’s freedom of action is not rooted in a legal and moral “space of sovereignty” that simply needs to be proclaimed in order to be automatically acknowledged and respected. It is the product of repeated transactions with local and inter

If, by its actions in a given context, MSF cannot hope “to reduce the number of deaths, the suffering and the frequency of incapacitating handicaps within groups of people who are usually poorly served by public health systems”,13 then the compromises it agrees to are neither justifiable nor acceptable.

Negotiation frameworks do not include universal markers indicating the line that must not be crossed; and MSF must therefore pay attention to the developing dynamic of each situation and to its own ability to revoke compromises that were only acceptable because they were temporary.

Eight years after the publication of In the Shadow of Just Wars,6 it examines the precept that the political exploitation of aid is not a misuse of its vocation, but its principal condition of existence.

Between 1988 and 2008, the humanitarian aid budget increased ten-fold to reach 11.2 billion US dollars.

But by treating people without challenging the political and social origins of their exclusion, is MSF not confining itself to the role expected of it by the authorities?

“that blurry, but very real, line beyond which assistance for victims imperceptibly turns into support for their tormenters”.