Paper details

Paper authors	Michaël Neuman
In panel on	Humanitarian advocacy
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

As an organization, MSF has long defended the idea of speaking out, formalizing on multiple instances the necessity – quoting what is known as the La Mancha agreement of 2006“to speak out publicly, based on [its] eyewitness accounts, medical data and experience”, “in the case of massive and neglected acts of violence against individuals and groups”. However, this relatively clear claim has been at the center of many internal controversies.

More recently, it has endorsed a vocabulary of “humanitarian diplomacy”, developing a network of representations before international agencies by which MSF intended to engage with diplomats around the world on different issues of interest.

And even more recently, following suit with quite a dominant trend within the humanitarian sector, MSF has engaged into public and diplomatic campaign centered around a critic of the aid system or the protection of the medical mission.

This paper will review these developments, and will attempt to elaborate a critic. In particular, it will look at the way so called advocacy efforts have developed at the expense of a more frontal and specific public communication approach.

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