Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Médecins sans Frontières operates on a different plane, or in a different way, though again pushing in the same direction. Founded in 1971 by a group of French doctors to provide emergency medical assistance in wartime and crisis areas, they strive like the ICRC to be neutral in any conflict, yet they also are willing, like Amnesty International, to speak out against atrocities being committed. This they did in recent times, for example, in Darfur, where the Sudanese government had shut out foreign news correspondents. Being one of the very first NGOs on the ground (along with, say, local missionaries or the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development [CAFOD] and OXFAM), they can draw international attention to a burgeoning crisis. As such, they act as an “early alert system” for the United Nations itself, even if they insist on being seen as a nongovernmental player. They are usually welcomed by all sides in a dispute or a famine, because their intentions are so transparent: to bring medical services, food supplies, sanitation—in a word, relief—to the tortured parts of our earth. . . . In 1999, the MSF’s head openly requested President Boris Yeltsin to stop the bombings of civilians in Chechnya." [Kennedy: Parliament of Man, Kindle Edition, Location 3668]