Over the past ten years, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has provided medical care to almost 118,000 victims of sexual violence. Integrating related care into MSF general assistance to populations affected by crisis and conflicts has presented a considerable institutional struggle and continues to be a challenge. Tensions regarding the role of MSF in providing care to victims of sexual violence and when facing the multiple challenges inherent in dealing with this crime persist.
This article analyzes Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) organizational transformation serving victims of sexual violence. It examines how conflicts, AIDS, and media coverage shaped the institutional environment’s resistance and motivation to change. Using social representations of victims and ethical and technical issues MSF reconsidered its field interventions and institutional learning dynamic.
The war in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been the subject of numerous studies related to the problem of sexual violence. Such violence is known to be part of strategic war plans to conquer and destroy communities, but it is now unfortunately prevalent in times of relative calm.
In this article, Françoise Duroch looks at feminine representations – women often viewed through the lens of motherhood – in humanitarian communication. She also analyzes MSF’s appropriation of the concept of "violence against women".
This work offers to analyse the learning process of the humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontière (Doctors Without Borders / MSF) around the notions of victims of sexual violence. The first part is dedicated to a conceptual and critical essay on the concepts of rape victims, in particular in the field of social sciences, as well as to an introduction to the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The second part of the study presents a qualitative study of one MSF’s most important intervention in Eastern DRC in favour of victims of sexual violence.
This work offers to analyse the learning process of the humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without borders / MSF) around the notions of victims of sexual violence.
At the "Bon Marché" hospital in Bunia, a 300-bed hospital designed by Médecins sans Frontières in 2003, women who have experienced the horror of rape receive free health care.
Bunia, located in the Ituri District of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, is an area that has been the center for the multidimensional inter-ethnic confrontations ravaging the region since 1999. The peak of violence was in May of 2003 when, upon the withdrawal of Ugandan troops, a confrontation between two parties representing main warring ethnic tribes resulted in the death and displacement of thousands of civilians.
A year ago, all of MSF's offices debated the organization's role in providing specialized health care to women. One particular area of concern that is becoming better recognized as a part of our work is care for victims of rape and other types of sexual violence. It is important to evaluate our success in enabling all of our operational teams to provide suitable care and support to these women and girls and to consider some of the obstacles facing them as they attempt to do so.
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