Humanitarian fables: morals, meanings and consequences for humanitarian practice

ABSTRACT

This article describes how events are turned into fables in humanitarian organisations. It explores how these fables circulate, the lessons they come to embody and their influence in maintaining an organisational status quo. The article argues that such stories teach new humanitarian employees certain ‘facts’ about ‘the field’ and help form and consolidate consensus about why things are the way they are in an organisation. By describing three such fables circulating amongst Médecins Sans Frontières ‘international’ employees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, each of which suggested a need for foreign humanitarians to maintain a certain distance from local citizens (including their nationally hired colleagues) as a means of personal and organisational security, the article illustrates how such fables can ‘justify’ certain organisational decisions that ultimately reinforce structures of unequal power relations between different humanitarian employees.

KEYWORDS:

• Humanitarianism
• conflict and security
• DRC
• health
• Great Lakes Region

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to everyone who took the time to speak to me and tried to help me understand what humanitarian work looked like in practice, away from the ivory towers. In particular, I am grateful to MSF for their integrity in allowing an outsider to examine the difficulties and complexities involved in providing humanitarian relief. I thank the reviewers for their feedback, which greatly improved this article. Any errors remain my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 ‘Open Letter to Senior Management and Colleagues in MSF: Beyond Words to Anti-Racist Action’, https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16TF7CTAP3S8BoV4MUOrZxYcIUk_-qT_MUYxSQKhThDU/viewform?edit_requested=true [accessed February 2021].

2 The research undertaken for this article formed part of a DPhil in the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. Ethics approval was obtained by the Department of International Development’s Departmental Research Ethics Committee. The DPhil was facilitated by Médecins Sans Frontières Centre de Réflexion sur l’Action et les Savoirs Humanitaires (MSF-CRASH). Interviewees were informed of the aim of the research and consent to their participation obtained on the understanding of anonymity.

3 MSF International Activity Report 2018, https://www.msf.org/international-activity-report-2018/figures [accessed February 2021].

4 This was not specific to MSF – organisations commonly ask ‘international’ humanitarians to avoid having intimate dealings with ‘locals’ (Beerli 2018). However, these rules do not prevent intimate relations as well as sexual exploitation by aid workers, which has recently been widely documented during the Ebola response in eastern DRC (see Flummerfelt and Kasongo 2021).

5 The name of the project has been anonymised.

6 Interview, North Kivu, August 2018.

7 MSF France, Guide Secu Poche (2020, Goma). In author’s possession.

8 Interview, Goma, February 2018.

9 Interview, North Kivu, September 2018.

10 ‘OCA 2012 Standard Framework Responsible Behaviour’, MSF. In author’s possession.

11 Goma, January 2018.

12 Interview, Skype, August 2017.

13 In 2006, the MSF sections agreed to try and improve diversity and inclusiveness in the La Mancha Agreement, 25 June, Athens: http://associativehistory.msf.org/la-mancha-agreement [accessed February 2021].

14 Interview, Paris, May 2018.

15 Interviews: Paris, May 2018; Goma, August 2018.

16 Interview, Goma, November 2017.

17 Interview, Goma, January 2018.

18 Interview, Goma, August 2018.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by St. John’s College, University of Oxford: 450th Anniversary Fund Scholarship.

Notes on contributors

Myfanwy James

Myfanwy James is Lecturer in Development Studies at the Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Previously, she was Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She holds a DPhil in International Development from the University of Oxford. Her research interests include issues of power, security and social identity in aid intervention during violent conflict, with a focus on the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.