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Just what does Post-Conflict mean? For me, it sometimes looks and feels much more like international development as there isn’t the same sense of urgency you might find in conflict zones. The ‘just do it’ of an emergency is replaced by budget constraints and planning and proper paperwork. The problems and contextual issues are no longer so obvious and I have to go looking to find them.
Sometimes it also feels a bit more like a job and I feel a bit less like a humanitarian in action. I can spend entire days sorting out overtime hours or writing monthly reports or counting pills and this certainly doesn’t feel like savings lives or alleviating suffering, as in the MSF mandate. It is even possible to go days without leaving the compound or actually seeing any patients or feeling a sense of urgency in what we do.
However, it is all so relevant. Without MSF, the health care in the area would be very limited. No surgery. No patient transfers. No blood transfusions. No free medicine. And the population really has nothing. They survive in grass huts on subsistence agriculture. The mosquito net distributed by MSF is one of very few possessions. So many more people would die if MSF was not working here.
Post-conflict work seems to find its way into the gray zone between international development and humanitarian relief work. It may not catch as many headlines but it is a big part of MSF and plays a vital and often forget role in international assistance. It is also what I am experiencing for the first time here in Shamwana.
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Post-conflict work in conflict areas is like an angel walking among wounded and starving civilians healing their wounds by a magic touch. MSF is like the IRC one of the pioneer international medical humanitarian institution which is helping to heal millions of wounded innocent civilians around the world under very difficult and dangerious situations in conflict areas. Many of these international institutions like MSF has been praised and given donations for their devoted services by many international bodies including the Swedish Nobel foundation. To me who is from a long ethnic conflict area in Srilanka knows first hand what are in the minds of poor affected civilians in those areas when they are completely neglected by everybody. They believe they are like angels coming out of the sky to help them heal their wounds and feed them they wholeheartly pray for these angels and for theirs institutions for the post conflict works done i!
nternationaly.
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Grant Assenheimer is a logistician working with the Canadian branch of aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Shamwana, a tiny village in DR Congo's Katanga province. This is his second mission with MSF. Grant is a Canadian from Barrhead, Alberta.
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21 Feb 2009 18:29:34 GMT
Post-conflict work in conflict areas is like an angel walking among wounded and starving civilians healing their wounds by a magic touch. MSF is like the IRC one of the pioneer international medical humanitarian institution which is helping to heal millions of wounded innocent civilians around the world under very difficult and dangerious situations in conflict areas. Many of these international institutions like MSF has been praised and given donations for their devoted services by many international bodies including the Swedish Nobel foundation. To me who is from a long ethnic conflict area in Srilanka knows first hand what are in the minds of poor affected civilians in those areas when they are completely neglected by everybody. They believe they are like angels coming out of the sky to help them heal their wounds and feed them they wholeheartly pray for these angels and for theirs institutions for the post conflict works done i! nternationaly.