A Photo Essay: 9 Inspiring Faces Of Humanity When The Going Got Tough

On its 50th anniversary, MSF and Magnum Photos have published a book that captures the years of humanitarian crises

Yves Coyette, an MSF doctor, treats a sick baby in Khao I Dang refugee camp. Thailand 1984.

© Burt Glinn / Magnum Photos

A Rohingya man carries a woman on his back as they cross the Naf River, seeking safety in Bangladesh. 2017.

Free Syrian Army fighters move on the front line of Al-Arkub, in Aleppo province where thousands of civilians were wounded during the Arab spring rocked Syria in 2012. MSF has been supporting numerous health structures in the country through other local actors.

The armed conflict in Khartoum, caused more than 300,000 deaths while displacing thousands. Children were the most affected. MSF responded immediately by providing medical and nutritional treatment to displaced people. Mothers brought their children to MSF’s therapeutic feeding centre in South Darfur. Sudan 2004.

Kosovo, the southern province of former Yugoslavia had seen repeated cases of human rights abuses against Albanians. In the winter of 1999, photographer Cristina Garcia Rodero recollected how thousands of displaced people were living in the forest with very little aid. Albania 1999.

MSF set up its mission in Northern Afghanistan in 1980. Four tons of medical equipment was transported on the backs of mules and horses through the Afghan mountains for 35 days. MSF finds unique ways and works in liaison with different state actors to deliver humanitarian aid to the survivors of war. In this photograph, people walk past bombed-out buildings in Kabul. Afghanistan 1995.

Rwandans are scarred with a painful history of ethnic cleansing and genocide. During the period 1994 to 1997, MSF teams provided assistance against a background of extreme violence and wholesale slaughter in the Great Lakes region. MSF staff found themselves faced with a succession of unprecedented situations. In this photograph, a man with a terribly wounded face looks into the camera at a hospital near a camp in Kabgayi. Rwanda 1994.

In the 1970s, one million people fled from Cambodia and Vietnam to neighbouring Thailand where they lived in refugee camps. Facing a lack of supplies and staff in the camps in Thailand and wanting to meet the refugees’ needs, MSF realized that a solid, organized structure was required, backed by a logistics system and thus, set up a mission there. In this photograph, Yves Coyette, an MSF doctor, treats a sick baby in Khao I Dang refugee camp. Thailand 1984.

Once called the Paris of the Middle East, Beirut had been hit by a double whammy of internal sectarian wars and the repercussions of the armed conflict in neighbouring Syria and Israel. MSF intervened in Beirut in the besieged neighborhood of Nabaa-Borj Hammond at the end of 1975. In this photograph, children play in damaged cars near Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut. Lebanon,1983.

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) was founded by a group of French doctors and journalists to provide relief and assistance to people in distress. In 1969, a group of doctors had gone to Biafra, a territory seeking to secede from Nigeria who decided to provide care to the vulnerable. Nigeria, 1971.

In his book, Man’s Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl wrote, “For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.”

War, conflict and natural disasters continue to ravage countries across the world. Which has forced to millions of people to become homeless and stateless. There are now 82 million forcibly displaced people around the world—more than at any time in modern history. Perhaps, the greatest misconception is that any conflict is limited to that region alone. The decades of war in the Middle East and photographs of people clutching to their dinghy as they brave the English Channel to re-start a new life in a European country have shown that any conflict has far-ranging ramifications.

As Fred Ritchin, Dean Emeritus of the International Center of Photography (ICP) explains, “Personally, I was haunted by the images of people starving to death, by their extraordinary grace in the face of adversity, by the responsibility of possessing these photographs, by the sense that people needed to know the misery of others in order to respond. They resonated with me, linked to the oft-repeated hope that if only there had been more images of the World War II concentration camps published then the devastating consequences of the Holocaust might have been lessened.”

But documenting a crumbling region is just the first step to aiding the vulnerable. Since its inception in 1971, the emergency aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has delivered crucial aid in regions where others struggled. Founded by a group of French doctors and journalists, MSF provides relief and assistance to the distressed across the world. Medical and non-medical action is the heart of its mission; bearing witness is inseparable from that. Over the last 50 years, MSF often has been the first responder to any unfolding crises - Whether it is a small team of medics treating the wounded in Beirut’s besieged Nabaa-Borj Hammoud district in 1975 or offering logistical support to those displaced in Darfur in 2003 when they were caught in the crossfire between rebel groups and the Janjaweed militia armed by the Sudanese national government.

On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) has collaborated with Magnum Photos and published a unique book that revisits the last fifty years. Founded two years after the apocalyptic World War II, Magnum Photos is the world’s most prestigious photographic agency. Formed by four photographers who lived through the horrors of the war, capturing it one frame at a time, Magnum Photos today is a platform that has gone above recognizing the commitment of photojournalists. It is a global community that invites everyone who wants to show the world how survivors are fighting to live, explain their grievances, and talk truth to power.

MSF and Magnum have collectively probed their archives and documented the years of crises in a historical book composed of their shared experiences. Get your copy of the book here!