Doctor Group Gets Nobel

In a year that saw few peace breakthroughs, Sweden’s Royal Academy chose Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, as the winner of the last Nobel Peace Prize of the twentieth century.

Doctors without Borders won the prize in recongition of the organization's "pioneering humanitarian work on several continents," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the international name of the volunteer organization that treats victims of war, famine and other disasters, has more than 2,000 medical professionals volunteering in 80 countries.

“Since its foundation in the early 1970s, Doctors Without Borders has adhered to the fundamental principle that all disaster victims, whether the disaster is natural or human in origin, have a right to professional assistance given as quickly and as efficiently as possible,” the committee said.

MSF welcomed the award -- one of the least controversial Nobel Peace Prizes in years. But it expressed concern that the prestige of the prize might jeopardize the independence it built up since it was founded in 1971, mainly by French doctors.

“National boundaries and political circumstances or sympathies must have no influence on who is to receive humanitarian help. By maintaining a high degree of independence, the organization has succeeded in living up to these ideals,” the committee said.

James Orbinski, MSF International president, said in Paris that the award was ... “an important high-level confirmation of the fundamental right of ordinary people to humanitarian assistance and protection.”

He called it ... “an opportunity to highlight the forgotten populations of the world who exist in extremely precarious situations, for example in Congo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and in many of the other 80 countries where we work.”

Praise for the prize came from politicians including French President Jacques Chirac, who called it an “honor for France” and a tribute to MSF's volunteers. The Red Cross and the U.N. refugee agency, both former laureates, also praised MSF.

Orbinski, a Canadian, sounded a wary note that the award ... “is in some ways a risk for MSF because it in some ways reinforces the institutionalisation of humanitarian assistance.”

MSF co-founder Bernard Kouchner, an ex-French health minister and now interim U.N. administrator in Kosovo, said that the presence of groups like MSF would make massacres such as at Auschwitz, Cambodia and Rwanda impossible in the next century.

The group was founded in Paris in 1971 by a small group of idealistic French doctors disillusioned with the neutral policies of the Red Cross. The group quickly became known as “the French doctors,” and the first wave of volunteers made their mark in helping the starving and ill victims of the war in Biafra.
In the nearly 30 years since the group was founded, the organization's doctors and volunteers have traveled to disaster areas in Nicaragua, Vietnam, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Ethopia, Rwanda, Kosovo and now Timor.

“By intervening so rapidly, Doctors Without Borders calls public attention to humanitarian catastrophes, and by pointing to the causes of such catastrophes, the organization helps to form bodies of public opinion opposed to violations and abuses of power,” the committee said.

It was the first Nobel Peace Prize given solely to an organization since the U.N. peacekeeping forces won the award in 1988. The last medical group to win was International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, in 1985.

The five-member awards committee works in secrecy during its five or six meetings a year, and refuses to comment on or release candidates' names. This year it said only that there were 136 nominees and the winner was selected on Sept. 29.

Some names were known because those making the nominations announce their candidates for the prize, which includes a cash award of $960,000.

In past years, favorites have emerged from world events and the committee's wish to nurture ongoing peace efforts. Last year, the Northern Ireland peace process was at a key junction and the prize went to Protestant David Trimble and Catholic John Hume.

The 1997 prize went to American Jody Williams and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the 1994 award to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, and the 1993 prize was awarded to South Africa's Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk.

The prizes, first given in 1901, are always presented on the Dec. 10 anniversary of the death of their creator, Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel. The peace prize is awarded in Oslo, and the others in Stockholm.

Other Nobel winners for 1999 include:

• Economics: Columbia University Professor Robert A. Mundell, for his analysis of exchange rates and how they affect monetary policies.
• Chemistry: Egyptian-American scientist Ahmed H. Zewail, for demonstrating that a rapid laser technique can observe the motion of atoms in a molecule as they occur during a chemical reaction.
• Physics:Dutch scientists Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus J.G. Veltman, for their theoretical work on the structure and motion of subatomic particles.
• Medicine: Dr. Guenter Blobel of The Rockefeller University in New York, for protein research that shed new light on diseases including cystic fibrosis and early development of kidney stones.
• Literature: German novelist Günter Grass, for work that resuscitated German literature "after decades of linguistic and moral destruction."

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