Médecins Sans Frontières 

Description of organisation 

Women Refugee Route (WRR) strives to create more inclusive societies by changing today’s system of decision-making towards a feminist humanitarian system that places the power and leadership of girls and women at the center, in both local, national and international contexts. All our workings seek to 

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an independent medical-humanitarian organization that provides assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. MSF provided humanitarian assistance in displacement and migration contexts since the 1970s working in refugee and IDPs camps. During the 1990s and early 2000s, MSF missions increasingly began to respond to migrants in urban and informal settings as well as with populations in transit. MSF projects range from providing healthcare to refugees, IDPs and stateless people in Bangladesh, Kenya and Lebanon to working in informal settlements in urban centers such as Johannesburg and Rome, to providing assistance to those in detention and detention-like settings in Nauru, Libya Greece and Malta and providing lifesaving assistance to those in transit including those making dangerous border crossing whether at sea or land. Additionally, we have built expertise in providing rehabilitative care to victims of torture and violence with clinics in Greece, Italy, Egypt and Mexico. MSF is also present in Brazil, Jordan and South Africa in responding to vulnerable communities’ health-based needs. 

In 2015, MSF began its life-saving search and rescue missions in the Central Mediterranean as well as opened projects in Europe to provide assistance at multiple points along the Balkans route, especially at the borders of Greece and Serbia, providing healthcare, psychological support, sanitation, food, shelter and transportation. We also have projects in Italy and Belgium providing access to primary health care, sanitation and essential relief items at informal settlements and transit camps. In France, MSF offers medical and social support to minors through a drop-in day centre. MSF projects with migrants respond to humanitarian and health-based needs and vulnerabilities; often trying to ensure access to care to excluded populations, continuity of care during mobility and when migrants are contained, treating the mental and physical consequences of violence, ill-treatment and torture suffered at the hands of authorities and criminal networks. MSF staffs respond to the health and life-saving needs of migrants and our teams often conclude that many of the urgent health needs for people are created and compounded by restrictive migration policies.

Staff Profile