Tackling institutional discrimination and racism within MSF

In 2020, the deep inequities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic converged with powerful movements for racial equality around the world. In parallel, a multitude of grassroots voices denounced MSF’s own struggle to tackle racism and discrimination.

Despite years of raising awareness and efforts to address these issues, we acknowledged that progress had not been fast enough. In July 2020, recognising the pain and anguish expressed by many of our staff and patients, MSF made a public commitment to tackle discrimination and racism within our organisation. We committed to “lead the way for the radical action sought after and demanded by our associations” and identified the following seven areas as needing urgent and concrete action:

1: Management of abuse and inappropriate behaviour 

2: Staff reward, including remuneration and benefits 

3: Exposure to risk – safety and security  

4: People recruitment and development  

5: Communications and fundraising 

6: Standards of care for the patients and communities with whom we work

7: Executive governance and representation 

Almost 18 months into the process, it is time to provide an honest update of where we are and how much more we need to do.

“We are aware that staff, association members, partners, donors and the communities we strive to help are observing us and our actions. They are looking at our capacity to change for the better. We welcome their scrutiny and we commit to being accountable for our failures, progress and achievements as we go along.”

Dr Christos Christou, MSF International President 

The information provided here is not an exhaustive list of all initiatives but summarises some of the main movement-wide progress based on priorities agreed by MSF’s Executive Committee. There are countless initiatives being carried out in our projects and headquarters that are not covered in this update. This should serve as a baseline for future reporting on these issues.

A longer and more detailed version of this report was made available to all MSF staff. It is very much an internal document but we are making it available publicly here Tackling institutional discrimination and racism within MSF | MSF Eastern Africa , while acknowledging that internal MSF jargon and assumed knowledge does not make it easy to read for an external audience.