Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides medical healthcare to people in crisis worldwide. To deliver quality medical care, our staff must be willing to live and work in places that may be considerably different to their everyday lives, in nearly every aspect.
No matter how strong your motivation is, humanitarian work is not a decision to be taken lightly. Life on assignment is full of challenges and frustrations, as well as being enormously satisfying and rewarding.
Our projects can be in remote locations, and are often in challenging environments with limited access to resources and amenities. This can mean you'll be using different medical equipment and supplies to what you have trained with, and varying living quarters depending on your location. We therefore recommend considering the following before applying to work with MSF.
Security and safety
Our purpose is to deliver medical assistance to people in distress, which could be in areas experiencing active conflict, or post-conflict environments. Working in these settings provides inherent risks, potential danger, and ongoing threats to safety and security. While we cannot exclude all risks in the areas we work, we have comprehensive security protocols in place to help mitigate these risks. By working with MSF, you accept that you will be working with heightened safety and security threats. Once on assignment, all MSF staff must observe security rules and regulations; failure to do so may result in dismissal.
MSF’s safety regulations may restrict your freedom of movement or your ability to interact with local communities and amenities outside of working hours including weekends. You may be under curfew and required to remain in the staff compound when your working day is over. It is important to consider these potential restrictions before you apply to work with MSF.
Living Conditions
Working overseas with MSF may require you to adjust to living conditions that are different from those you are accustomed to, including adjustments to your routine, living quarters, diet, pace of life, forms of entertainment, spoken language, and the people you live with.
MSF will place you on assignment in a project where your skills are needed most. It is therefore important that when you applying to MSF, you are open to working in different contexts.
Cultural awareness
Working in an unfamiliar culture can involve challenges in communication and perceptions. MSF recruits people who can adapt where necessary to ensure that good working relations are maintained.
Being able to understand and respect other cultures is of the utmost importance working for MSF. Cultural differences may include punctuality at work, respect for personal space or restricted interactions between genders. We require you to be prepared to live closely with, and show respect to people with beliefs and cultures that differ from your own.
Length of assignment
Please see your profile page to find out the typical length of assignment for your role.
A placement can be from three to twelve months, and will vary depending on the role and project needs. For example surgeons, obstetricians-gynecologists and anaesthetists can be exempt from this requirement due to the nature of their on-call responsibilities when on assignment. Some projects are launched in response to sudden crises, requiring the participation of staff who are available on short notice and for shorter duration.
All internationally mobile staff need time to acclimatise to the work and the environment in order to assume a significant level of responsibility on a project, as well as to provide continuity for both national staff and patients. For this reason, most assignments are for nine months or longer.
Learn more
To learn more about working with MSF overseas, sign up to our recruitment updates to get the latest information on the roles we actively need and upcoming recruitment webinars where you can hear from our international staff about their experiences on assignment.
Find out how to be a successful candidate when applying to MSF in our recent blog.