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Coda. Remembering the Past and Envisioning the Future
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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CODA Remembering the Past and Envisioning the Future Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières celebrated its fortieth anniversary and held the first meeting of its newly created International General Assembly on December 16–18, 2011, in Saint-Denis, a commune in the suburbs of Paris, at a conference center called L’Usine (The Factory). Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, until the 1970s, SaintDenis was one of the most heavily industrialized communities in France. It declined economically after that; its factories closed; unemployment became widespread; and its immigrant population grew.1 It is also the locale of the Royal Cathedral Basilica of Saint-Denis, named after the first bishop of Paris, a patron saint of France, and a model for numerous Gothic cathedrals, particularly in northern France and England.2 The other notable physical landmark of Saint-Denis is a secular one, and of recent vintage: the Stade-de-France, a modern stadium where the 1998 World Cup football (soccer) finals were held, and a structure that is viewed as a harbinger of Saint-Denis’s recovery. L’Usine is located near the Stade-de-France. Built in 1862, it was a central factory of the pharmaceutical company founded by Émile-Justin Menier in 1816, which prepared and sold medicinal powders, and used chocolate to coat 250 Doctors Without Borders the bitter-tasting pills it produced. Over time it developed into the Menier Chocolate Company, the largest chocolate maker in France, and one of the leading chocolate manufacturers in the world—statuses that it maintained until the end of World War I.3 It was coincidental that the locale of this meeting was contextually related to a factory that once manufactured medical drugs, and to the habitat of an immigrant population—which are both foci of MSF’s concerns and action. However, it was not accidental that its venue was in Paris, France, and that MSF France hosted the meeting. For, as MSF’s international president Unni Karunakara stated at the opening of the meeting, “[I]t was here in Paris . . . forty years ago, [that] the band of volunteers . . . started our sans-frontières movement.” Three hundred members of MSF attended, including two representatives from each of MSF’s nineteen sections,4 and also from the four new MSF “entities ”—MSF Brazil, MSF East Africa, MSF Latin America, and MSF South Africa— that were applying to the Assembly to become full-fledged members of MSF International. Parts of the proceedings were live-streamed, so that wherever they were located in the world, MSFers could view and hear and ask questions in real time, or tune in later to the sessions, discussions, and debates that had already taken place. I attended the entire meeting as an invited guest. “It is a great pleasure for me to invite you to MSF’s first International General Assembly ,” MSF’s International President Karunakara had written to me: This assembly coincides with our 40th anniversary and will mark the conclusion of a two-year reform process and the implementation of a new, more inclusive governance set-up. The event is a key moment in the life of our movement. . . . [It] will be both an opportunity for reflection on forty years of medical humanitarian action and a discussion about the future, examining our ambitions and ongoing commitment to medical action.5 Commingled in the agenda of the meeting and its opening atmosphere were festive sentiments of reunion and comradeship; an ebullient commitment to MSF as a movement; a collective sense of appreciation for what MSF had accomplished; a self-questioning awareness of its shortcomings and limits , and of old and new challenges that it faced in the field; and an emerging vision of MSF’s future as pragmatic as it was utopian. Permeating the meeting were positive expectations about how the reform of MSF’s international governance, through the establishment of an International General Assembly [44.193.29.184] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:30 GMT) Remembering the Past and Envisioning the Future 251 and an International Board, might make the organization’s inner and outer functioning more global, in spirit and fact, and more responsive to change. The Meaning of the MSF T-Shirt Most attendees were dressed casually—many in blue jeans and T-shirts. I saw fewer wearers of MSF T-shirts than at other MSF gatherings I have attended, but a book of photographs available for purchase paid tribute to their symbolic importance.6 This album-like volume was...