Learn about our mission, our charter and principles, and who we are.
See what triggers an intervention and how supply and logistics allow our teams to respond quickly.
Discover our governance and what it means to be an association. Find a quick visual guide to our offices around the world.
Read through our annual financial and activity reports, and find out about where our funds come from and how they are spent.
Visit this section to get in touch with our offices around the world.
Médecins Sans Frontières brings medical humanitarian assistance to victims of conflict, natural disasters, epidemics or healthcare exclusion.
Learn about how, why, and where MSF teams respond to different diseases around the world, and the challenges we face in providing treatment.
Learn about the different contexts and situations in which MSF teams respond to provide care, including war and natural disaster settings, and how and why we adapt our activities to each.
Learn about our response and our work in depth on specific themes and events.
In more than 70 countries, Médecins Sans Frontières provides medical humanitarian assistance to save lives and ease the suffering of people in crisis situations.
Our staff “own” and manage MSF, making sure that we stay true to our mission and principles, through the MSF Associations.
We set up the MSF Access Campaign in 1999 to push for access to, and the development of, life-saving and life-prolonging medicines, diagnostic tests and vaccines for people in our programmes and beyond.
Read stories from our staff as they carry out their work around the world.
Hear directly from the inspirational people we help as they talk about their experiences dealing with often neglected, life-threatening diseases.
Based in Paris, CRASH conducts and directs studies and analysis of MSF actions. They participate in internal training sessions and assessment missions in the field.
Based in Geneva, UREPH (or Research Unit) aims to improve the way MSF projects are implemented in the field and to participate in critical thinking on humanitarian and medical action.
Based in Barcelona, ARHP documents and reflects on the operational challenges and dilemmas faced by the MSF field teams.
Based in Brussels, MSF Analysis intends to stimulate reflection and debate on humanitarian topics organised around the themes of migration, refugees, aid access, health policy and the environment in which aid operates.
This logistical and supply centre in Brussels provides storage of and delivers medical equipment, logistics and drugs for international purchases for MSF missions.
This supply and logistics centre in Bordeaux, France, provides warehousing and delivery of medical equipment, logistics and drugs for international purchases for MSF missions.
This logistical centre in Amsterdam purchases, tests, and stores equipment including vehicles, communications material, power supplies, water-processing facilities and nutritional supplements.
SAMU provides strategic, clinical and implementation support to various MSF projects with medical activities related to HIV and TB. This medical unit is based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Regional logistic centre for the whole East Africa region
BRAMU specialises in neglected tropical diseases, such as dengue and Chagas, and other infectious diseases. This medical unit is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Our medical guidelines are based on scientific data collected from MSF’s experiences, the World Health Organization (WHO), other renowned international medical institutions, and medical and scientific journals.
Find important research based on our field experience on our dedicated Field Research website.
The Manson Unit is a London, UK-based team of medical specialists who provide medical and technical support, and conduct research for MSF.
Providing epidemiological expertise to underpin our operations, conducting research and training to support our goal of providing medical aid in areas where people are affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or excluded from health care.
Evaluation Units have been established in Vienna, Stockholm, and Paris, assessing the potential and limitations of medical humanitarian action, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of our medical humanitarian work.
The Luxembourg Operational Research (LuxOR) unit coordinates field research projects and operational research training, and provides support for documentation activities and routine data collection.
The Intersectional Benchmarking Unit collects and analyses data about local labour markets in all locations where MSF employs people.
To upskill and provide training to locally-hired MSF staff in several countries, MSF has created the MSF Academy for Healthcare.
This Guide explains the terms, concepts, and rules of humanitarian law in accessible and reader-friendly alphabetical entries.
The MSF Paediatric Days is an event for paediatric field staff, policy makers and academia to exchange ideas, align efforts, inspire and share frontline research to advance urgent paediatric issues of direct concern for the humanitarian field.
The MSF Foundation aims to create a fertile arena for logistics and medical knowledge-sharing to meet the needs of MSF and the humanitarian sector as a whole.
A collaborative, patients’ needs-driven, non-profit drug research and development organisation that is developing new treatments for neglected diseases, founded in 2003 by seven organisations from around the world.
Belgrade/ Brussels- Testimonies from patients and corroborating medical data from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) indicate alarming and repeated use of violence, allegedly committed by Hungarian authorities, against people crossing the border between Serbia and Hungary. Beatings with belts and batons, kicking, punching, various forms of humiliation, use of pepper spray and teargas are all reported to be common deterrence practices, prior to pushbacks and denial of assistance. For more than eight years, MSF doctors and nurses have continued to treat and record accounts of people being systematically beaten, humiliated, and abused at borders for seeking safety in the European Union.
“The consistency and regularity of violence we treat at the Hungary-Serbia border is indiscriminate,” says Andjela Marcetic, MSF medical doctor in Serbia. “Every week, we see several patients, including some children, with severe bruising, deep wounds and cuts, dislocations and fractures, often on their legs, arms and sometimes on the head.” “The physical injuries we treat in medical consultations are consistent with the testimonies of the patients who describe violent beatings at the hands of Hungarian police prior to pushbacks to Serbia,” says Marcetic. “While we can treat some of the wounds, we are also concerned about the long-term repercussions of such trauma on their psychological wellbeing.” Since January 2021, MSF mobile medical teams have treated 423 patients with injuries, reportedly due to violent incidents at the Hungary-Serbia border. Most of these accounts follow a similar pattern of beatings, denial of access to basic needs, and harassment, often with racially charged humiliation. Some people say they experienced theft and the destruction of personal belongings, while others were forced to strip, even in cold winter temperatures, and sometimes endured other forms of humiliation such as being urinated on by border officials during roundups
MSF also treats injuries resulting from people falling off the four-metre-high system of fences and razor wire built along the border. “One patient had a two-centimetre-deep cut on his upper lip because of the razor blades on the border fence. Many others report fractures all over their bodies from falling while trying to cross,” says Marcetic. Several patients, including two unaccompanied minors, reported to MSF that they were transported to a small shipping container before being expelled to Serbia. Here, they say, border officials systematically assaulted them and regularly released pepper spray inside the container. Two patients reported the additional use of teargas, which is apparently dispersed inside the container to force people to create space for newcomers. “We were brought to a small white container in between the fences with 40 other people. We spent approximately 12 hours in the container. I asked to go to the bathroom, but they did not allow me to go. [Border authorities] were repeatedly spraying our faces with pepper spray and regularly spraying the inside of the container from a small window on the side,” explains ‘A’, an MSF patient. “It made me cough. It had a bitter taste, and we were not able to breathe,” adds ‘E’, another of MSF’s patients. The container is described as being two by four metres in size, with a single door and sometimes windowless. In their testimonies, patients said they were denied water, food, access to toilets and were sprayed if they demanded any of these basic needs. Further exchanges with other community members have highlighted that this practice is not isolated but frequently observed on a wider scale.
“These accounts indicate that European Union member states continue to intentionally use violence and harmful infrastructure to deter people from seeking asylum in the European Union,” says Shahbaz Israr Khan, MSF head of mission in the North Balkans. “They’re investing in razor blade fences and drones while turning a blind eye to disturbing and unprecedented levels of violence at borders.” “Not only do these practices cause serious physical and psychological harm, but they also push people to travel more dangerous routes,” says Khan.
MSF has been present in Serbia since 2014, providing medical care to migrants in transit through the Balkan route. In 2022, two mobile clinics are providing primary healthcare, psycho-social support and health promotion activities in informal settlements in northern Serbia, close to the Hungary-Serbia and Serbia-Romania borders. To date our medical teams have treated 1844 patients. Since 2021, 423 patients have been assessed and treated for physical injuries, mostly on the arms and legs, including contusions, articular or skin lesions allegedly due to physical assaults at the hands of Hungarian border forces or because of lacerations due to the razor-wired fence along the border. All the patients who were involved in a violent incident at the border reported being pushed back into Serbia.
Your donations pay for millions of consultations, surgeries, treatments and vaccinations every year.
78 Rue de Lausanne CP 1016 1211 Geneva Switzerland Federal identification number: UID CH-660.1.555.004-1