Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) broadcast a $400,000 (£307,000) TV fundraising campaign in Canada despite warnings from staff that it was exploitative, reinforced racist “white saviour” stereotypes and breached the medical charity’s ethical guidelines, the Guardian has learned.
A damning review of the decision to run and later withdraw the advert, which featured the REM track Everybody Hurts played over images of crying black children being treated by MSF medics, concluded it exposed a lack of trust in leadership and triggered an “organisational crisis” at MSF Canada.
Some staff and board members alleged they felt pressured to remain silent about their objections to the advert, according to the review, published internally in May.
One former board member cited the “current ongoing crisis” at MSF Canada as among the reasons for their recent resignation and called for an independent inquiry into allegations of racism, sexism and abuse of power, according to a letter seen by the Guardian.
Staff, MSF association and former board members who talked to the Guardian echoed calls for an investigation and urged a change in leadership.
MSF Canada said it was commissioning an independent investigation into the board’s leadership in response to complaints, and planned a special general assembly to review the organisation’s makeup.
The advert fallout is the latest blow to the Nobel peace prize-winning aid group, which was accused of being “institutionally racist” and “run by a white minority workforce” in an internal statement signed by 1,000 staff in July.
Last month, Arnab Majumdar said he left the charity’s main operational centre in the Netherlands after experiencing “institutional racism” as he attempted to tackle racial bias. Majumdar, who also worked in MSF’s Toronto office, accused MSF Canada of a “distinct culture of racism, modelled and promoted at the top” in an article on the news site the New Humanitarian. MSF in the Netherlands and Canada have since apologised and said they are committed to changing the culture and practices that allow racism to occur.
The TV advert, which MSF was not able to share with the Guardian, but which was cut from a longer version broadcast in Brazil, ran for three and a half weeks on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2019 before it was pulled.
“Senior management at MSF Canada ignored staff and association members until their voices became too loud,” Hassan Valji, who resigned as an MSF association member in May, told the Guardian.
“It hit me personally. I was the brown kid in my grade 3 class. When I arrived in Canada from Tanzania in the 80s, the vision of Africa was kids with flies in their faces and distended stomachs. All stuff that made it harder for a person of colour. We were doing to the next generation of Canadians what had been done to me.”
He added: “It is not enough to not be racist any more. You have to be anti-racist. If you have an all-white management, team, how can you understand the issue?”
Médecins Sans Frontières is ‘institutionally racist’, say 1,000 insiders
Read more
One staffer said that people who spoke out against the advert were shouted down. “It did not feel like a safe working environment. It was toxic. Trust has been broken and still is.”
“We are seeing people of colour coming into the organisation and immediately leave because they are shocked by what they see.”
For another staffer, the last straw was the co-opting of two white men on to the board in June.
Staff paid tribute to MSF’s “incredible work” on the ground, but said: “It cannot continue to put out colonial ideas.”
The MSF Stockholm Evaluation Unit’s review of the advert, which was commissioned by MSF Canada, concluded that 68% of association members “either disliked it or hated it”. Staff felt it put the charity’s reputation at risk.
An MSF Canada report on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), published in January 2019, found that trust had been broken at the organisation after “abuse of power issues”. Staff “reported experiences of favouritism, bias and perceived nepotism”.
MSF Canada said: “We are committed to creating a safe work environment for all our staff and are continually reinforcing the mechanisms and procedures designed to support them.”
It said it had immediately responded to staff concerns over the advert by editing the video before determining it should be pulled, and had conducted a rigorous review of the decision-making process and feedback received.
The ad had “brought into sharp focus” what was needed to move forward, it said.
“We know that this is a work in progress and that we still have a lot of work ahead to become the organisation we want to be.”
The EDI report prompted work on diversity, inclusion, anti-racism and building trust, it said. The organisation’s most recent survey “indicates that 70% of our staff feel that MSF Canada’s working culture is inclusive, an increase of 11% over the previous year.”
Dr Wendy Lai, the president of MSF Canada’s board, said she agreed with calls from staff for a more diverse leadership and said the organisation was applying EDI principles to recruitment.
The recent appointments of two white men to the board was because of specific “technical and background knowledge” unfulfilled by the members who were elected, she said.
MSF could not disclose how many diverse staff had left, for confidentiality reasons, Lai said, but a “handful” had cited racism in exit interviews. She acknowledged the leadership team was currently made up of all-white members but that at the time of the advert, one was from the “global south”.
Свежие комментарии