Our teams may witness violence, atrocities, and neglect in the course of their work. Témoignage – translated as bearing witness – is the act of raising awareness, either in private or in public, about what we see happening in front of us.

At times, MSF may speak out publicly to bring a forgotten crisis into view, or to denounce abuses, or challenge the diversion of assistance, or to call out policies that restrict access to medical care or essential medicines.

In this spirit, we launched the MSF Access Campaign in 1999 to push for access to essential medicines, diagnostic tests and vaccines for patients in our projects and beyond. We funded this initiative with the prize money from the Nobel Peace Prize, which MSF was awarded in 1999