Humanitarian medicine: up the garden path and down the slippery slope

doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7462.398

BMJ 2004;329:398-399 (14 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7462.398

Education and debate

Humanitarian medicine: up the garden path and down the slippery slope

Deborah Harding-Pink, former medical officer¹

¹ Geneva, 1203 Switzerland harding@bluewin.ch

Doctors dealing with asylum seekers need clearer direction onhow to manage human rights issues and avoid being drawn intoabuses

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Introduction

Twelve years ago, I joined an International Committee of theRed Cross mission to visit detainees in South African policestations under apartheid. As I was leaving, a colleague gaveme Medicine Betrayed, the BMA's pioneering report on the participationof doctors in human rights abuses.¹ It seemed so relevant tothe issues with which I was confronted as a "humanitarian" doctor.My missions with the Red Cross and then with MédecinsSans Frontières took me to countries at war such as Liberia,Tajikistan, Rwanda, Burundi, and Kosovo. These experiences reinforcedmy conviction that humanitarian medicine was a powerful antidoteto the violations I had read about in Medicine Betrayed. I nowworry that it can also become an unsuspecting accomplice ofthese same violations.

Asylum seekers and migrants

In 1995, I joined the International Organisation of Migration(IOM), another organisation with a humanitarian mandate. Asits occupational health officer, I followed . . . [Full text of this article]

Nauru

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Vigilance to abuse

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