WGBH Forum Network; An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action for the Twenty-First Century
Description:
Physician and humanitarian James Orbinski discusses his new book, An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action for the Twenty-First Century.During his medical school days, James Orbinski journeyed to Rwanda on a year-long research trip. While there he saw unimaginable pain and suffering, suffering which his medical education had taught him was avoidable. The experience led him to found the Canadian chapter of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders, or MSF). After many years of traveling and providing aid in Peru, Somalia, and Afghanistan, he answered a call to serve in Rwanda, during the worst of the brutality of the Rwandan genocide. Confronted by indescribable cruelty, he struggled to regain his footing as a doctor, a humanitarian, and a man. In the end he chose not to retreat from the world, but resumed his work with MSF, and was the organization's president when it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.An Imperfect Offering is a deeply personal, deeply political book. With unstinting candor, Orbinski explores the nature of humanitarian action in the 21st century, and asserts the fundamental imperative of seeing as human those whose political systems have most brutally failed. He insists that in responding to the suffering of others, we must never lose sight of the dignity of those being helped or deny them the right to act as agents in their own lives. He takes readers on a journey to some of the darkest places of our history but finds there unimaginable acts of courage and empathy. Here he is doctor as witness, recording voices that must be heard around the world; calling on others to meet their responsibility.
