On February 11, 2011, MSF held a one-day Conference in Montréal, Canada. 70 participants, ranging from various NGOs, CIDA to academia, gathered to discuss current perception realities and future humanitarian challenges, as well as ethics in humanitarian action. The conference was a follow up with the work from the two-day perception workshop hosted by MSF in Geneva, Switzerland, which was held in October 2010. As a follow up of the three-year perception study, MSF-Switzerland is publishing a book entitiled "Dans l'oeil des autres, Perception de l'action humanitaire et de MSF" ( s/d C. Abu-Sada, MSF Suisse, Editions Antipodes, Lausanne, 2011).

For all inquiries related to the MSF perception project, please address:

Khurshida Mambetova
Perception Project Officer
Médecins Sans Frontières Canada
Tél.: (514) 845-5621 (ext. 631)
kmambetova@msf.org

or

Caroline Abu-Sada
Research Unit Coordinator
Médecins Sans Frontières Suisse
Tel: +41 22 849 8950
Mobile: +41 76 514 3327
caroline.abu-sada@geneva.msf.org

---

Joni Guptil, Medical Doctor and President of MSF-Canada, welcomes the Conference’s Guests and Speakers. Joni has been working with MSF since 1990, both in the field and on the National Board.

---

Caroline Abu Sada, a Political Science PhD, is the Coordinator of MSF-Switzerland’s Research Unit and also represents them at the Centre for Education and Research on Humanitarian Action (CERAH).

Abstract:
MSF-Switzerland has conducted a 3-year-long project of operational research in some 10 countries where MSF is currently working. Considering that the issue of our acceptance in local fabrics has become increasingly essential for reasons of safety, proximity and simple effectiveness, this project aimed at understanding how we are perceived in the field by patients, national and international staff, local populations, authorities, partners, other development or humanitarian actors, and the UN. As such, it may be perceived as an aid to improving MSF’s work in the field. This presentation will show some of the trends highlighted in this research and identify potential “gaps of perception” that may exist between various actors.

---

Peter Walker is the Director of the Feinstein International Centre at Tufts University. Working in the field for over 25 years, he also founded the annual World Disasters Report in 1993.

Abstract:
This presentation explores the consequences that climate change and globalization are likely to inflict on humanitarian crises over the next generation. In particular, it examines the relationship between Northern foreign policy and humanitarian response, as well as the link between rapid and unexpected change in society and the propensity for a shift towards violence and fear.

In building this future scenario, the presentation begins with an analysis of the evolving shape of humanitarian crises, which have shifted from largely short term interventions to multi-year holding operations, blurring the distinction between relief operations and development aid. It will also discuss the ways in which aid agencies can better prepare themselves for this new world and highlight some of the difficult decisions they will likely face in the near future.

---

François Cooren is a full professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at UdeM. His current research focuses on MSF humanitarian actions from an ethnographic and communication perspective.

Abstract:
The desire to be seen in a favourable light implies a wish for recognition of what differentiates us as individuals or organizations. We attempt to project traits that characterize our identities, based on our values and principles. While this proactive approach may, in part, be within our control, it is still at the mercy of persons whom we are attempting to influence since the reflection that they feed back to us also carries its own share of projection, making it difficult to know what others actually think.

On the frontiers of perception therefore suggests studying instead how MSF players work in their daily activities, especially when interacting or communicating with patients, partners or representatives. This analytical work – extending over five years of observation – shows how MSF representatives attempt to manage perceptions through this “daily work of projection,” which is carried out one interaction at a time, through iteration and re-production.

---

Abby Stoddard is the co-director of the Humanitarian Outcomes Research Group and has coordinated the research program on International Humanitarian Action at NYU’s Centre on International Cooperation.

Abstract:
This presentation discusses the work that Humanitarian Outcomes Research Group did on security and humanitarian action in situations of crises. Specifically, it discusses the situation of national aid workers in emergencies, how the security of these workers is supported (or not) by the international aid community, and how they represent the key of problems of perception that have endangered them.

---

Marilyn McHarg, one of the founders of MSF-Canada, has extensive MSF field experience as a nurse, coordinator and Head of Mission and since 2006 has been the General Director of MSF-Canada.

Abstract:
The presentation focuses on the ways how MSF perceives current and emerging humanitarian challenges and the organizational response to it. It particularly highlights institutional challenges in contextual analyses, cultural differences, insecurity of humanitarian workers and recalibration of power balances, perception gaps and ethical dilemmas of MSF. It also draws attention to sometimes inherited tensions between MSF desire to provide medical assistance at higher standards and limited resources; growing number of dying patients and limited institutional capacities; MSF value system and principles of care and isolation in contextual understanding, etc.

---

Lisa Schwartz is the Arnold L. Johnson Chair in Health Care Ethics and an associate professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University.

Abstract:
In this session we will look at the preparation health workers have and require to manage ethical challenges in the field - given that they work in unfamiliar cultural, legal, professional, and historical contexts, with new or exaggerated constraints on the resources they can draw upon, and that the health conditions are challenging. I wish to focus on what happens when there is a lack of harmony between factors: between the motivations and intentions health workers have for wanting to do humanitarian health care work, the needs of the community they go to, and the expectations the agency has of them. Concepts will be illustrated using stories and quotes from our CIHR funded study Ethics in Conditions of disaster & deprivation: learning from health workers’ narratives.

---

Kirsten Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at McGill and the Director of the department’s International Division, as well as the Program Director of the Humanitarian Studies Initiative.

Abstract:
The international humanitarian response to crises is a huge undertaking, and although the provision and coordination of relief efforts has improved over the last two decades, mistakes continue and lessons need to be passed on. Consequently, the humanitarian enterprise has developed standards, principles, codes of conduct and practices to guide humanitarians and their organizations through the difficult moral, technical and political landscapes that characterize today’s disasters. These are embodied in a large range of guidelines, tools, training programs, academic degrees and field techniques or ‘field-craft’ that agencies, governments and academics have developed to guide risk management strategies and related interventions. Despite this, there exists no formally recognized occupational or educational training standard to guide performance in the field.

This presentation will discuss the case for professionalizing humanitarian action through an international professional association, the development of core competencies, and the creation of a universal certification system for aid workers.

---

John Pringle is a Registered Nurse and epidemiologist, and has undertaken several field missions with MSF. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto.

Abstract:
In February 2010, young children in a remote village in northern Nigeria started becoming sick and, despite the efforts of the local community health worker, many were dying. When a disease outbreak surveillance team from MSF heard about the deaths they went to investigate, and ensured 24-hour medical care for the children. Discovering that the illnesses coincided with an increase in the gold mining activities in the village, the team sent blood samples to an accredited lab in Germany and found that the children had very high levels of lead, far above those considered fatal.

How does the global rise in the price of gold lead to sickness and death for hundreds of children? Humanitarian organizations are increasingly confronted by the fall-out of neoliberal globalization, and this presentation highlights the emerging humanitarian and global health ethical challenges faced by organizations, with the Nigerian lead poisoning outbreak as a case study.

---

Larissa Fast, whose research has focused primarily on violence against aid workers, is Assistant Professor of Conflict Resolution at the Kroc Institute and Department of Sociology, University of Notre Dame

Abstract:
"Acceptance" is an approach to NGO security management that requires the consent of various stakeholder groups for the presence and programming of an organization. This acceptance, in turn, is built upon how communities and stakeholders perceive an aid agency. This presentation will propose an expanded definition of acceptance that draws upon image and perceptions as a cross-cutting component of acceptance.