Blow to Somalia as medical organisation withdraws services

By RAWLINGS OTIENO

After working continuously in Somalia since 1991, international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) closed all its programmes in Somalia.

MSF said it pulled out of the war-torn country after a series of extreme attacks on its staff in an environment where armed groups and civilian leaders increasingly supported, tolerated, or condoned the killing, assault, and abduction of humanitarian aid workers.

In some cases, actors, who must negotiate minimum guarantees to respect medical humanitarian mission, MSF said, played a role in abuses against staff, either through direct involvement or tacit approval.

MSF’s international president Unni Karunakara said the actions and tolerance of a hostile environment effectively cuts off thousands of Somali civilians from humanitarian aid.

“We are ending our programmes in Somalia because the situation in the country has created an untenable imbalance between the risks and compromises our staff must make, and our ability to provide assistance to the Somali people.”

According to Karunakara, the most recent incidents include the brutal killing of two MSF staff in Mogadishu in December 2011, and the subsequent early release of the convicted killer, and the violent abduction of two staff from Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya that ended after a 21-month captivity in south central Somalia. Some 14 other MSF staff had been killed, and the organisation experienced dozens of attacks on its staff, ambulances and medical facilities since 1991.

“In choosing to kill, attack, and abduct humanitarian aid workers, these armed groups, and the civilian authorities, who tolerate their actions, have sealed the fate of countless lives in Somalia,” said Karunakara.

Beyond the killings, abductions, and abuses against its staff, operating in Somalia meant MSF had to take the exceptional measure of utilising armed guards, which it does not do in any other country, and to tolerate extreme limits on its ability to independently assess and respond to the needs of the population.

Warring parties

Humanitarian action requires a minimum level of recognition of the value of medical work, the acceptance by all warring parties and communities to allow the provision of medical assistance, as well as operational principles of independence and impartiality.

The actors should demonstrate the capacity and willingness to uphold negotiated minimum-security guarantees for patients and staff.

This acceptance, always fragile in conflict zones, no longer exists in Somalia today.

Already, citizens have been receiving far less assistance than is needed; the armed groups’ targeting humanitarian aid and civilian leaders’ tolerance of abuses has effectively taken away what little access to medical care is available to the Somali people.

In addition, MSF will be closing its medical programmes across Somalia, including in the capital Mogadishu and the suburbs of Afgooye and Daynille, as well as in Balad, Dinsor, Galkayo, Jilib, Jowhar, Kismayo, Marere, and Burao.

More than 1,500 staff provided services, including free primary healthcare, malnutrition treatment, maternal health, surgery, epidemic response, immunisation campaigns, water, and relief supplies.