كانون الثاني 2021 – خمسون عامًا من الإنسانية

Whenever I had the chance to witness MSF teams provide medical humanitarian relief on the ground, I was always struck by the number of women in waiting rooms of hospitals. In Kabul or Karachi, Erbil or Cairo, on the Greek island of Lesvos;
I always saw women waiting for medical care they urgently needed and this often made me think of the specific price women – particularly those of color – pay for the ills and injustices of the world whether poverty, lack of access to medicine or war.
Maybe I looked for women, because I am a woman myself. Over the last 12 years that I’ve been part of MSF’s work, I’ve noticed an increasing number of female staff in key strategic positions; women are running our headquarters and our hospitals, they are leading teams across continents in more than 70 countries around the world, designing operational and medical strategies and asking uncomfortable and difficult questions that will change humanitarian aid, and our world, slowly but surely.
Today, I’m thinking of girls and women, mothers, widows, sisters, friends and lovers. On the front lines at home, at work, at war, in love. Waiting in hospitals, fighting in prison cells and refugee camps. Waiting for phone-calls, standing in protests, staring at computer screens, burning food in kitchens, speaking out in classrooms and meeting rooms. Never stop saying.
