September 2021

We last updated our progress in February 2021. Now, it is time to do so again. Our work, to confront these issues in a forthright and honest way, and to find sustainable solutions in the areas where MSF UK must improve, is ongoing.

Commitment: A diversity and inclusion action plan by the end of 2020 covering all areas, including recruitment policies and internal language, that is fully implemented by the end of 2022.

Progress: MSF UK’s development of the action plan has slowed significantly since the commitment was first made as a result of the demands of responding to the global pandemic. However, an equity, diversity, inclusion (EDI) audit was conducted to explore current DEI practices and wider organisational culture at MSF UK. The audit focused on the voices of marginalised staff and let their experiences shape our learning priorities.

The consultant’s final report is now with the MSF UK Board of Trustees and Management Team for their review. This is an important milestone on our journey towards meeting this commitment.

The next stage of this work will be to use the results of the audit to further develop and focus MSF UK’s established EDI vision and objectives. We will build a concrete, measurable action plan that clarifies and expands the scope of action currently being undertaken by the organisation.

Following this, the key results from the report, vision and action plan will be shared and discussed with MSF UK staff, ahead of being published on this website.

Commitment: An audit of human resources (HR) policies to check for statements that undermine workforce inclusion, fairness and diversity. If required, MSF UK will update its policies or develop new ones to address any issues identified in the audit by the end of 2020.

Progress: The consultants who conducted the audit also included as part of this process an audit of our HR policies in December 2020. Alongside this, MSF UK completed an internal audit of the same policies in February 2021.

Following both sets of recommendations and related analysis, revised HR policies will be rolled out as each is ready, starting in the last quarter of 2021.

Throughout 2021, MSF UK’s HR department have been working to improve EDI data collection. In July, MSF UK office staff were given the opportunity to provide data relevant to this area, such as ethnic origin and sexual orientation.

While the initial focus was on office staff, the second phase of data gathering will cover our medical humanitarian project staff. The data will be used to create a baseline picture of our organisation against which future improvements can be measured.

Commitment: The proportion of locally hired MSF staff members enrolled as students in the LEAP programme and the GHHM course will be 10 percent higher than the 2020 baseline.

Progress: The 2020 baseline for locally hired staff participation in the LEAP programme and GHHM course are as follows:

2020: 40 percent of staff enrolled in the LEAP programme were recruited locally

2021: 51 percent of staff enrolled in the LEAP programme were recruited locally

2020/21: 39 percent of staff enrolled in the GHHM course were recruited locally

We have also gathered data on the proportion of students from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), which is as follows:

2019: 68 percent of students enrolled in LEAP came from LMICs

2020: 80 percent of students enrolled in LEAP came from LMICs

2019/20: 64 percent of GHHM students were based in LMICs

2020/21: 74 percent of GHHM students were based in LMICs

Commitment: We will be creating ‘safe spaces’; dialogue and support mechanisms for staff across MSF UK, including project and office staff, and members of the MSF UK Association 

Progress: Office staff, MSF UK Association members and UK-contract project staff were surveyed about their opinions on anti-racism initiatives and institutional racism within MSF, with results considered by the Management Team.

The results of these surveys were analysed by the MSF UK anti-racism project team and a report was presented to Board of Trustees in February 2021.

At the end of 2020, MSF UK office staff attended a series of ‘brave spaces’ sessions, facilitated by an anti-racism consultant, where discomfort and honesty were encouraged as a means of learning, challenging and developing personal responses to anti-racism. 

The outcomes and conclusions of the brave spaces sessions were incorporated into the above-mentioned EDI audit. The sessions also launched various grassroots staff initiatives, including an anti-racism reading circle.

Following this, the consultant produced a report, which included seven recommendations for MSF UK. The report and its recommendations can be found here.

MSF UK accepted these recommendations and has already delivered on numbers 3 and 5. Number 7 will form part of our EDI action plan work, while the remainder represent committed goals for MSF UK.

MSF UK continued to hold discussion events around the issues of racism in 2021. In June, the topic was feature at our flagship associative event, the Annual General Meeting, under the title, ‘You can’t choose that for me’.

The talk focused on the unique vulnerabilities that locally hired staff face in places where MSF projects are 'exposed to risk' while providing medical humanitarian assistance, and our duty of care towards them.

Commitment: We will support the process of educating ourselves, signposting to relevant literature and resources, and identifying anti-racism training, with senior managers having undertaken this training by the end of 2020.

Progress: As of February 2021, 89 percent of MSF UK line managers at all levels have undertaken ‘brave space’ capacity building training sessions with our anti-racism consultant. All members of the MSF UK Management Team have completed this training.

MSF UK has created a page of resources on anti-racism on MSF UK’s intranet, including books, articles and audiovisual material, to allow us to educate ourselves on these issues. Staff have been encouraged to undertake this activity as part of their working day, rather than on top of it, with the support of their line managers. The MSF UK Management Team has committed to making space and time for staff to read this material and discuss it in team meetings.

The Management Team has also begun a reading club, where its members share articles and books on topics around anti-racism and dedicate time to discussing them.

Other areas:

MSF UK is continuing its work to ensure that our public communications fully represent the diversity of our global workforce, and to ensure that our public communications push back against traditional humanitarian stereotypes of the ‘white saviour’. 

We are working across the MSF movement to further diversify the staff who speak on our behalf. In recent years, MSF UK identified a challenge regarding the communications materials produced to inform our supporters and the wider public about our work.

An over-reliance on the stories of returning UK-contracted staff to explain our work left the majority of our global workforce under-represented in our communications. To address this, we have developed ways to ensure that colleagues hired and based in the countries where we work have more opportunities to represent MSF, whether via remote link-ups to panel events or through written and audiovisual communications.

In the past six months for which figures are available, we have seen a significant improvement in representation, with 50 percent of the communications products produced entirely within the UK now featuring locally hired colleagues. We are building on this work and will monitor and analyse its results.

To further embed this in MSF UK’s working culture, we have revised our brand guidelines to emphasise how we should present ourselves and those we assist, both in terms of language and imagery. MSF has also produced a language guide to help staff write in ways that focus on inclusion, diversity and the empowerment of all our staff.