What is better ... to tell the truth or to keep mum and keep the aid coming?

I support very few charities these days, and the ones I do support are not so popular with our federal government it seems.

One of my favorite charities is Medicins Sans Frontieres ~ or Doctors Without Borders for you American folk.  They have consistently been out there, actually doing good work in disasters around the world. Their mission statement is: MSF delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, healthcare exclusion and natural or man-made disasters. Unfortunately, in trying to be in the forefront of providing service to those in need around the world, trying to remain in the background and insisting that they are there only to provide services to those in dire need, they find themselves in the middle of political firefights over what they report.

MSF was already in Haiti when the 2010 earthquake devastated the country. They were among the ones blowing the whistle in Haiti when their supplies were being held up by the US Military - or rerouted to the Dominican Republic so other planes could land. 

Here's a quote by Mona Gable from the Huffington Post 1/18/2010: Bill Clinton is on the ground in Haiti with Chelsea touring the rubble. I'm elated the former president was able to get permission from the Defense Department to fly in. It's no small feat. Ipm telling you. Because apparentyly not everyone can.
Take Doctors Without Borders (MSF) the highly respected international medical humanitarian organzation.  You knw, the one Sandra Bullock gae $1 million this week before she won the Golden Globe? They've been in Haiti for years.  They have hundreds of medical staff in place, and are working in five hospitals in Port-au Prince.  They know the country.  They're experts in delivering medical aid.  These are the people you want on the ground after a killer earthquake? Am I right?Then wy was an MSF cargo pane carrying, among other badly needed supplies, an inflatable surgical hospital, not allowed to land in Port-au-Prince on Saturdaay and re-routed to the Dominican Republic?Despite assurances from the United Nations and the Defense Department that its planes would be allowed in?  If this is an air traffic control problem, they need to fix it now.  Maybe Bill Clinton could help."



Just last month, MSF was forced to pull out of Somalia after 22 years of work there. "The decision comes after the release from prison of a Somali man convicted of killing two MSF staff. In December 2011 a Somali employee of MSF who recently learned his contract would not be renewed shot and killed a Belgian and an Indonesian worker at an MSF compound. Though the shooter was convicted and sentenced to 30 years, authorities released him from prison after only three months, MSF said." from the Huffington Post, Jason Straziuso. 8/14/2013





Since 1991, dozens of attacks resulted in the deaths of 16 Doctors Without Borders staff in Somalia. Two MSF employees who were kidnapped in a Kenyan refugee camp near the border and held in Somalia for almost two years were released last month.


MSF denounced "extreme attacks on its staff in an environment where armed groups and civilian leaders increasingly support, tolerate, or condone the killing, assaulting, and abducting of humanitarian aid workers." In what must have been a very tough decision for them, Medicins Sans Frontieres decided they could do no more good and were indeed doing harm to their own employees by staying.


And in Syria, in the midst of the raging civil war there, Medicins Sans Frontieres is in the hot water bucket again. True to their mission of providing medical support to people in need of help wherever that might take them, MSF has been over in Syria working with refugees and victims of violence in Syrian cities during the civil war there. Three hospitals in Syria's Damascus governorate that are supported by MSF have reported that they received approximately 3,600 patients displaying neurotoxic symptoms in less than 3 hours on the morning of Wednesday, August 21st.

Now that an investigation is underway by United Nations inspectors, Medicins Sans Frontieres is trying to remove themselves from the political issue by stating that in its role as an independent medical humanitarian organization, it was not in a position to determine responsibility for the event. Just report what they saw on the ground. MSF’s sole purpose is to save lives, alleviate the suffering of populations torn by Syrian conflict, and bear witness when confronted with a critical event, in strict compliance with the principles of neutrality and impartiality. Medicins Sans Frontieres knows that Bashar Al Assad could easily throw them out of the country if he feels they've become supporters of the other side. Or worse, as in Somalia, condone or support attacks on the MSF staffers trying to provide care and comfort to his own people.


MSF could have kept quiet about the gas attacks, but it would have come out anyway, and reporting what cases they are seeing in the hospitals they support is only good policy. But providing the world with the evidence, whether they choose to accept that they did or not, puts the organization in a very precarious position as it tries to live up to its mission of delivering emergency aid wherever it might be needed.