| -January 1980, France: MSF splits, MDM is created by doctors, especially Pierre Pradier, the former president of the French National Union of Students (UNEF), and Bernard Kouchner, a former far-left activist in May 1968 (he was in charge of maintaining order for the Communist Students’ Union; he took in Algerian independence fighters of the National Liberation Front). Yet MDM is not a “leftist organisation”, contrary to what is often said. After the socialists came into office in May 1981, for instance, the former spokesman of President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Xavier Gouyou-Beauchamps, joins MDM. As to Bernard Kouchner and Pierre Pradier, they will resign from their responsibilities within MDM precisely to enter politics, the former in May 1988 when he is chosen to be the Secretary of State in charge of social integration in the Michel Rocard government, the latter in June 1994 so as to be candidate in the European Parliament elections on the list of Bernard Tapie’s radical party. Far from the cases of corruption and exercising pressure on witnesses which lead to Bernard Tapie’s ineligibility, Pierre Pradier dies of cancer on April 25 2003. Still honorary President of MDM, Bernard Kouchner is named minister for humanitarian action and health in the Pierre Bérégovoy government in April 1992, again within the spheres of the socialist party. Then, on a list led by Michel Rocard in June 1994, he is elected to the European Parliament where he chairs the Development Commission. After joining in January 1996 the Radical Socialist Party, of which he will shortly be the co-President, Bernard Kouchner joins the Socialist Party and is named Secretary of State for Health within the ministry for employment and solidarity of Martine Aubry in Lionel Jospin’s government in June 1997. Special envoy of the United Nations General Secretary between July 1999 and January 2001, he then becomes head of the civil administration of Kosovo within the framework of the MINUK (United Nations Mission in Kosovo). Back in France after having failed to get the post of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, he becomes between February 2001 and April 2002 minister delegated to health under the supervision of Elisabeth Guigou, minister for social affairs. -From 1980, Afghanistan: MDM teams pass the Pakistani border illegally and rescue the Mujaheddins fighting against the Red Army. When the Soviets leave in 1989, the rules obviously change. In June 1991, MDM decides to close its mission. As Olivier Weber, a journalist, reports, Philippe Bonhour, one of the doctors working in the country at that time, explains how he “understood who the Mujaheddins really were, not always very nice people, taking advantage of the aid, hijacking it. Until a certain point, we would find it normal; we would turn a blind eye on it. Of course, they would use our cars for their own purpose… I personally remember being irritated by some manners, notably the way the leaders of Wardak tried to rip us off on transports, on wages”. When Kabul falls to the fundamentalist Taliban on the 26th of September 1996, the new regime imposes a strict application of the Koranic law, the sharia, and wants to keep men and women separate in medical structures. On the 6th of September 1997, a minister of Health’s decree compels women to be treated only in one hospital in Kabul, Rabia Balkhi, even though it is not completely functional. Back in the country, MDM has to compromise. After negotiations with the ICRC and NGOs, the Taliban allow women to be admitted into other hospitals, where men and women will be kept apart. But in April 1998, as the authorities are trying to control the recruitment of local staff and to select the recipients of international relief, they want NGOs to move to a neighbourhood more easily controlled in the capital city. As an agreement discriminating against women is signed between the United Nations and the Taliban on the 14th of May, MDM refuses to comply and is therefore expelled from the country on the 20th of July 1998. Because they cannot find sufficiently trained Afghan medics to take over from them, the association’s expatriates negotiate a difficult return. In an issue of Médecins du Monde Actualités dated June 2001, the person in charge in Kabul is worried that the humanitarian workers have made it possible for the Taliban “to keep making war” “by fulfilling their social and protection duties”. During the American military intervention in October 2001, this time, the local employees take over the field operations as MDM has to evacuate briefly its expatriate staff. -From 1981, El Salvador: in order to be officially allowed to get to guerrilla controlled areas in June 1981, MDM has to give a part of its relief aid to governmental authorities, who can supply their troops. The association, which the local television soon accuses of helping the rebels in El Merillo, is closely watched over by the army. Then, MDM clandestinely supports Salvadorian refugee camps in Colomoncagua, Honduras. Those camps are infiltrated by the FMLN (National Liberation Farabundo Marti Front) which uses them as supply bases, intimidating people out of going back to El Salvador. -From 1981, Nicaragua, Honduras: in Managua MDM sets up a blood bank with the Sandinista government, which is fighting the Mosquito Indians on the Coast, and the guerrillas of Eden Pastora "Zero" in the North. MDM is sympathetic to the social improvements of the Sandinista revolution and so decides not to intervene in those rebel areas. It is true that an exploratory mission at the Mosquitos’ had been used by the Indians to bring in weapons at the bottom of the pirogues carrying the medicine. Moreover, the association doesn’t want to put at risk its team working in the Somotillo hospital, in Sandinista controlled territory.
-From January 1982, Poland: MDM starts to support the Solidarnós´c’s trade union against the military dictatorship of General Wojciech Jaruzelski. That year, nearly one quarter of MDM budget is dedicated to Poland where Roneos, ink and typewriters are smuggled in along with medicine supplies. In his autobiography, the Doctor Jacques Lebas admits that such an aid was more political than humanitarian. The links with Poland remain after the period of martial law and a sister organisation of MDM, Lekarze Swiata, is set up under the direction of a person previously responsible for health matters within Solidarnós´c. The partnership with doctors in the field though is not always easy. Jacques Lebas says to regret not having dared mention openly the question of abortion, which is banned by the Council of the Polish Medical Association following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. -1982-1987, Vietnam: after having chartered a boat, the Akouna, to take in the boat people, MDM takes part in a joint operation with two ships from the French Navy, the cargo boat Le Goelo and the corvette Le Balny, in order to bring 1500 refugees to the Philippines. In 1985, MDM rescues 500 more boat people with an oceanographic ship, the Jean Marcot, and a corvette, the Victor Schoelcher. The next year, MDM takes in almost 900 boat people on the Cap Anamur, which has been chartered with the German NGO Cap Anamur. Finally, in 1987, MDM works in co-operation with a helicopter carrier from the French Navy, the Jeanne d’Arc, so as to answer the needs of the boat people who are taken on the Rose Schiaffano, and then on the Mary, a cargo boat bought specifically for this rescue operation. -1983-1988, Thailand: in March 1983, MDM starts helping Karen refugees near River Moei and Burma. In september 1985, the organisation crosses the border illegally and signs an agreement with the leader of the rebels, Bo Mya, to run a field hospital in Htoo Wa Lu, where it takes care of civilians as well as fighters from the KNLA (Karen National Liberation Army). Alain Deloche, who opens this programme, is ready to propagate the Karen struggle abroad and to organise diplomatic meetings for them with the European Parliament. Yet MDM has to stop its activities when the government in Bangkok wants to close the border in 1988. Already overwhelmed by the Khmer refugees at the Cambodian border, the Thai authorities wish to deal with the Karen issue by themselves and to get rid of NGOs in a region where the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) will intervene only later. -1983-1994, Chile: MDM opens a mission which, according to its co-ordinator, Jacky Mamou, is not justified by the material needs but by the “moral” necessity to support the opposition to the dictatorship of general Augusto Pinochet, in particular through the Church and the National College of medical practitioners. This position earns the Santiago MDM office to be searched by the regime secret police in October 1986. -1984, Ethiopia: MDM is not allowed to intervene during the famine because of its alleged implication in Operation Moses which leads the Falasha, Ethiopian Jews, to Israel through Sudan. -From 1985, South Africa: MDM intervenes in the “independent” homeland of Bophuthatswana where volunteers are whipped and briefly jailed for taking the defence of demonstrators repressed by the police in Winterveld. -1985-1987, Brazil: MDM is not allowed to enter the Yanomami territory, closed by the authorities and devastated by the garimpeiros, gold hunters. Later on, MDM supports the landless movement by ensuring a sustained health control to those poor farmers who occupy uncultivated estate, the “locations” (assentamentos). -From 1986, France: Alain Deloche, who took over from Bernard Kouchner at the head of MDM in 1984, opens a health care centre for the destitute in Paris. Quite soon, the association invests more and more in France, taking part amongst other things in the Universal Health Protection Act of 1999 (Couverture Maladie Universelle). In 1987, MDM opens an anonymous aids screening centre and sets up programmes targeting drug addicts. For orphans, the organisation in 1988 creates an adoption service, different from the “Chain of Hope”, an association created in 1985, administered by MDM until 1994 and which fosters children at distance (between July 1992 and July 1993, for instance, it helps to evacuate 86 wounded children from Sarajevo so that they can be cared for in France). In his book, Olivier Demoinet, explains that he left MDM in November 1998 to personally look after a young girl from Kosovo, getting her all the necessary visas to have a surgical operation in France. -January 1987, France: MDM organizes in Paris the “first international conference on humanitarian law and ethics”. Amongst the participants are President François Mitterrand, his Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, and Bernard Kouchner’s political friends, i.e. Lech Walesa, the leader of Poland’s Solidarnós´c’s trade union, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, the secretary general of the Kurds Democratic Party of Iran, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the great opponent of apartheid in South Africa. MDM argues in favour of a humanitarian principle of interference, and Professor Mario Bettati gives legal grounds to this principle in the United Nations. Later on, the UN General Assembly votes resolution n°43/131, dated 8th December 1988 on “humanitarian aid to victims of natural disaster and emergency situations of the same kind”, and resolution n°45/100, dated 14th December 1990 on the establishment of “humanitarian corridors”. Such jurisprudence makes it possible to intervene in Iraqi Kurdistan during the Gulf war in 1991, in Somalia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, in Liberia and in Croatia in 1993, in Rwanda in 1994. -1987, United States of America: MDM opens a health care centre in Bronx, New York. -December 1988, Armenia: for the first time, the USSR allows MDM to go and help the victims of an earthquake which killed 20,000 people. -November 1989-November 1991, France: Doctor Jacques Lebas is elected president of MDM after Patrick Aeberhard; the organization is recognized as a charity by the government. Doctor Gilles Brucker then takes over from Jacques Lebas as MDM’s president in September 1991. -January 1990, Romania: MDM decides not to start an emergency programme after learning that the information about the Timisoara massacres and mass graves were not true. The organisation though will run long term programmes in Romania to help orphans suffering from aids, and neglected by the local health authorities.
-March 31 1990, Poland: at a meeting of doctors in Cracowa, MDM helps forward the adoption of a European charter of humanitarian action according to which “the principle of non-interference stops when begins the risk of failing to assist a person in danger”. -From 1991, Iraq: taking advantage of Operation Provide Comfort and of the US military intervention, MDM, who had been illegally acting in Kurdistan since 1984, is finally allowed by Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship to administer the hospitals of Ranya and Azadi from Jordan, along with the Iran Kurdish Democratic Party. Until then the organisation had very bad relations with the regime and three of its employees were held hostage by the authorities in Baghdad for two months after the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. Yet in 2003, MDM condemns the military intervention of the Coalition forces and criticises the decision of the United States Army to supervise humanitarian aid during its war against Saddam Hussein. In a joint release with HI, PU, ACF, EMDH and Solidarités on 3rd of March 2003, MDM claims its “refusal to subordinate its action in the field to a military authority that takes part in the fight”. The organisation does not want to relay the Coalition forces in the medical field and limits its operations. In July 2003, for instance, it says nothing about its future programmes so that they are not integrated by the United States into the Iraqi national budget for 2004. But because security does not improve after the US troops landed in Baghdad and captured Saddam Hussein, a director of MDM requires a better protection by the Allies. In an interview published in Libération on the 9th of September 2004, this position is criticised by the president of MSF, Jean-Hervé Bradol, because a military supervision by the Coalition does not prevent attacks against civil personnel and compromise the neutrality of humanitarian organisations. MDM, whose office in Bassora is looted and whose expatriates are threatened, eventually leaves the country in March 2004. -From 1992, ex-Yugoslavia: six months after president Bernard Kouchner and François Mitterrand’s short visit in Sarajevo on 28th June 1992, a MDM convoy tries to enter into the besieged capital but stays blocked twenty miles or so away from the city, in the small village of Visoko, where, for want of anything better, the medical supplies are handed out there and then. Coming up to Christmas, MDM launches a very controversial advertising campaign which compares the Serbs Nationalists to Nazis in order to expose their ethnic cleansing on the Bosnian Muslims. Such a strong line earns MDM-France to be banned from Serbia and to have to send Polish doctors to Belgrade and American ones to Kosovo. In 1993, MDM-France backed with its own funds opens a mission in Sarajevo despite the disapproval of both the United Nations and the European Union, which have been told not to intervene. The doctors are escorted by the United Nations troops because of insecurity. Fight, car robberies and numerous thefts compel MDM to leave Zenica for a while and to withdraw to Split in August 1993. That same year, the association collects testimonies from war victims in Croatia and in Bosnia. Published in a book, L’Enfer yougoslave (“Hell in Yugoslavia”), some of these testimonies are transmitted to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that the United Nations has just created. From 1993 to 1996 Yugoslavia, along with the African Region of the Great Lakes, will represent a third of MDM’s total budget for missions abroad. In Kosovo, MDM-France then gets involved along with the Albanians. As for MDM-Greece, it doesn’t hide its sympathy with the Serbs and goes for it alone. In 1999, it denounces NATO’s bombings (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) and works in territories controlled by Beograd. Unlike MSF, which severed relations with its Greek section for these reasons, MDM-Greece remains part of the International Committee of MDM. -May-October 1993, Somalia: during the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM), MDM collaborates with the French army and runs two health centres in Wajid and Bardera. -From November 1994, Congo-Kinshasa: after signing jointly with MSF, Care, Oxfam, PSF and IRC a petition against insecurity, physical threats and the uneasy access to Rwandese refugees in the Goma Region, MDM decides to continue its programmes in the camps infiltrated with “genociders” preparing to reconquer their country. To prevent militiamen from hijacking the aid, MDM refocuses its programmes on women, an African Rights report showing that they have also largely participated in the genocide. In many humanitarian organisations, women and children are perceived as innocent victims. According to Father François Lefort, who worked for MDM in Goma in July 1994 then in Rwandese refugees camps in Amisi and Tingui-Tingui in December 1996, "no genocide should ever justify the killing of women and children who bear no responsibility in passed crimes". -Since 1995, Russia, Chechnya: in 1998 MDM expatriate volunteers are called back home as they might be abducted or bombed. However, the organisation carries on its activities with local doctors supplied from Ingushya and Daghistan. In 1999 MDM says it is the only western NGO still working in Chechnya. -January 1996, Rwanda: three workers of MDM-Spain, Manuel Madrazo Osuna, Maria Flores Sirena and Luis Maria Voltuena, are killed. -Since 1996, Mali: in the North of the country MDM helps with rehabilitating and pacifying the Gundam district, where Tuaregs had been fighting against the army. -1997, Sudan, North Korea: MDM withdraws for lack of free access to those in need. -1998, Burundi : MDM does not want to be part of the forced displacement of peasants and refuses to build medical infrastructures in the camps where the Tutsi-led army started to confine the Hutu after February 1996. The organisation leaves the country in 1998. -September 2000, Lebanon: in the Southern Region, MDM starts a program of psychological assistance for former Khiam prisoners jointly with a local association, Amal. -June 2001, Liberia, Pakistan: in Monrovia, MDM closes a mission it opened in 1995 and which worked on its own funds since 1999, for lack of international financial backers. Some programmes are left to a local partner, LUDA (Lorplay United Development Association), created in 1997 in the Nimba county. In the same way, in Pakistan, to the South-East of Punjab, MDM starts withdrawing and supporting an NGO created in 2000, MCWAK (Maternity and Child Welfare Association of Khanpur). -April 2002, China: with the approval of sanitary authorities, MDM settles in a region of yak breeders, the Gande County in the Golok Disctrict, Qinghai Province, North-East of the Tibetan Plateau. -From May 2002, Palestine/Israel: jointly with the FIDH (Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l'Homme), MDM leads an investigation in Naplouse and denounces the war crimes committed by the Israeli military during its “Defensive Wall” Operation in occupied territories. In May 2004, another investigation is conducted with the FIDH about the Operation Rainbow of the Israeli military in Rafah, South of the Gaza strip. -May 2004, France: following Claude Moncorgé, Françoise Jeanson is elected as president of MDM and becomes the first woman to chair the organisation. -2005, Indonesia: MDM helps the victims of the tsunami and uses helicopters of the French Army to bring relief to villagers isolated by the tidal wave.
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