Dont hide behind your good intentions
[Applause]
hi
my name is marie and i work for doctors
without borders
as migration and displacement expert
doctors without borders offers medical
humanitarian assistance
in over 70 countries worldwide
we help treat people when disasters hit
their homes
we vaccinate thousands of children
against measles
1.3 million last year alone
we assist mothers to give birth over 300
000 last year
we fight against outbreaks of cholera or
malaria
we help treat life-threatening diseases
like tuberculosis or the damaging
effects of snake bites
we assist survivors of torture or sexual
violence
and we support some of the 80 million
people worldwide
who are forced to leave their homes due
to violence or threats of persecution
this is the part i myself focus on most
80 million people displaced most of them
stay in neighboring countries or never
even leave their own country
hiding in dire conditions in urban
settings
others are stopped by closed borders or
deterrence strategies of countries that
don’t want to receive refugees
they leave families unaccompanied
children pregnant women to live in vast
refugee camps for years i
live and walk in germany and here
some people seem to have the impression
that all of the world’s displaced people
wait
just outside european borders however
not even 15 percent of all the world’s
refugees actually come to europe
and europe doesn’t exactly receive them
with a warm welcome either
i’ve been to the refugee camps on the
greek islands and i’ve seen the shameful
conditions people have to live in there
trapped in uncertainty with no one
really feeling responsible for them
caged in a camp the size of a small town
consisting of thin tents and makeshift
shelters
in the mud a european slum
160 people sharing one toilet
200 people sharing one shower and if
this wasn’t enough
you’ll all have seen the news last week
the largest refugee camp on the island
of lesbos maurya burned down leaving
over 12 000 people
to live on the streets you cannot
imagine
the pain that these people have to
endure while at the same time it is
incredible to see how brave and
resilient so many of them are
coping every day with the sheer
brutality and harmfulness of borders
like my colleague who walked me through
the slum of moria for hours
he’s a refugee himself lost most of his
family to war
arrived in lespos three years ago as an
unaccompanied child
and now he works for doctors with our
borders as health promoter
and he’s the most dedicated colleague
you can imagine
always smiling making others laugh
caring for others listening to people’s
needs
whether they just arrived in a camp and
need orientation
or whether they’ve been stuck there for
months or years and
fight against losing the last bit of
hope medical teams of doctors without
borders
work just outside camps like this in
small clinics
we treat whatever illnesses the refugees
suffer from
most medical conditions are either
caused or worsened by life in these
camps
going wherever people face such
boundaries in their search for
safety and health is what we do it’s
even in our name
doctors without borders
but despite our name also we frequently
face boundaries so today i also want to
talk to you about these boundaries
boundaries that lie
within ourselves within the humanitarian
system
within myself personally actually as i
painfully realized when i started to
prepare for this talk
but to get to these boundaries i need to
tell you a little bit about where i come
from
like many good stories mine begins late
at night in a bar in berlin
where a friend of mine introduced me to
a friend of his who had just set up a
small school project
for syrian school children in lebanon
these children had barely just crossed
the border into lebanon with their
families and were now living in
little huts scattered over farmland they
didn’t have enough food to eat every day
not even think of getting
getting any formal school education
at that time it was now almost six years
ago
i was working as a media lawyer
negotiating licenses for commercial tv
and radio companies my job was
all about whether or not cable companies
should pay
more or less money to broadcasters
i had traveled the middle east quite a
bit and
i followed the news and the war in syria
but i
have to say that the full extent of the
disaster unfolding in and around syria
was not really present in the german
public back then
in winter 2014 the media was
busy reporting on the euro crisis
and aid packages for greece
in any in any case talking to this man
in the bar
about these syrian children stuck in my
mind i just
couldn’t get rid of the pictures of all
these families along the syrian border
so two months later i
went there i bought a plane ticket and
got on my way to pay this project to
visit
and what i experienced there right at
the border to war torn syria
was completely overwhelming here was i
coming from my safe job as a media
lawyer in germany
and there were them children who just
wanted to be children parents who did
everything they could to support their
families
and an increasingly overwhelmed lebanese
society
seeing all this made me feel powerless
and at the same time terribly privileged
back in germany i knew i couldn’t go on
with my life as it was
i knew i needed to quit my job
but then what i wanted to become
as loud a voice as possible for people
on the move
i had no idea how i could manage such a
transition or what my personal value
added would be
so i wrote to all the people i had ever
met who worked with refugees and
bluntly interrogated them i took my
remaining annual leave
for intensive courses and asylum law and
international humanitarian law
and as lost as i felt in those days i
did feel that i was on the right track
and i will never forget the energy all
set free in me almost
six intensive and eventful years later
i’m standing here
introducing myself as migration and
displacement
expert for doctors without borders i
don’t talk about tv licenses anymore
now my job is to advocate for the
well-being of our patients worldwide
it is exhausting work but it also makes
me
very happy to have the chance to work
towards the change we need
so i’m happy with my work maybe even a
little proud at times
when i started to prepare for this talk
i collected ideas and information the
most
impressive figures in data about the
reality of life of people in the movie i
wanted to present to all of you
i collected individual stories that had
been told either to me personally or to
my colleagues
each story a piece and mosaic of both
great vulnerability
and great resilience
i wanted to be a loud voice for our
patients
this talk would be the perfect stage for
them all
so i thought but the more i tried to
summarize
their stories for my talk the louder
feeling of resistance grew inside me and
the painful question came up
how can i be a loud voice tell the
stories of people who’ve suffered so
much
who are so much less privileged than i
am why me
a white woman with a german passport
with all the privileges and
zero experience of displacement myself
how can i call myself a migration and
displacement expert even
is that good enough
am i not reaching the boundaries of my
good will
am i hiding behind my good intentions
in a blog entry by my colleagues charity
camo and aaron yeagen i
recently found the clear answer to my
dilemma
and i quote it is not okay
to help fight the effects of conflict
poverty and disease globally but to
remain
blissfully unaware of the racial
privileges and exclusions
that color the world around us
as i said when i started my job my goal
was
to give people in need a voice but the
more i talk to people in refugee camps
the more i understood
these people don’t need me to give them
a voice
they have a voice they just need to be
heard
society and politicians need to become
willing to
listen to them listen to
people like my colleague in moria
so i started to change my view of what i
was doing i started to understand myself
not as the voice of our patients but as
their messenger i listen to people’s
stories
and i relay them to politicians not
because the people couldn’t tell their
stories themselves
but because they don’t get the chance to
talk to the people who make decisions
so i go meet politicians and
try to make them understand the
consequences of their political
decisions for our patients
i confront them with what i’ve seen on
my visits to our medical projects around
the external european
external borders of the european union i
confront them with
data that my colleagues collect and that
so clearly indicate the devastating
effects of deterrence policies
i challenge them to act again and again
i use my legal background
to analyze their political arguments and
identify their flaws
i use my strategic skills i gain when
negotiating media contracts in my former
life
to sharpen our political messaging
i use my german citizenship to confront
my own government
make them aware of their accountability
to our patients
make them understand the responsibility
that comes with their power
i explained to them how policy changes
really could improve the lives of our
patients
i tell them that deterrence measures at
borders are not okay
that they need to stop promoting and
feeding social boundaries
stop hindering people from finding
safety and shelter stop criminalizing
solidarity stop
cementing hierarchies and privileges
like this i find a way how to use my
privilege in a useful way obviously i
still struggle about the question
how to deal with the boundaries of my
own person
yet i truly believe i must take
responsibility for my privileges
this applies to me personally it applies
to my organization
and to the aid sector as a whole
but most importantly and this is my deep
conviction
and why i chose to talk to you about
this today
it applies to our whole society
sometimes people contact me and ask me
what they can do to help
how they can get engaged i tell them
what i came here to tell all of you
first of all be aware of your privileges
follow your call but don’t fall into the
trap of
wanting to do something good and then be
celebrated for it
take responsibility do not hide away not
even behind your
best intentions go where your fears are
dare to confront the unbearable double
standards that we’ve created
especially for people on the move
challenge
structural discrimination look around
you and you will
all find examples of it show real
solidarity with people in need of help
and at the same time do not pretend that
we can be some sort of
white savior who can bring salvation to
anyone anywhere in the world
be an ally not a savior get engaged
but be humble about it get engaged
not out of pity but out of genuine
solidarity
and then embrace the lessons
that less privileged people can teach
you
thank you