When you find someone to sit with and talk to, things change,” 17-year-old Iyad tells my colleagues. “You stop thinking about your injury and pain,” finishes 21-year-old Hossam without missing a beat.
Critically injured years apart in different wars, these two young people met as inpatients at the Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reconstructive surgery hospital in Amman, Jordan. Far from home, Hossam and Iyad have forged a close friendship built on shared experiences, laughter and support.
Like so many stories I have the privilege of hearing in my work with MSF, theirs stayed with me long after it came across my desk. The sentiment that friendship and community can transcend hardship and loneliness resonated with me deeply.
The idea of stories that linger – stories of humanity and connection – inspired this edition of Dispatches. They remind us of the threads that connect us, and we hope you’ll see how your generosity links you to MSF teams, patients and communities worldwide.
Inside, you’ll hear more from Iyad and Hossam about their journeys and hopes for the future. You’ll also read first-person accounts from my Palestinian colleagues who have lived and worked through devastation in Gaza for more than two years. Their stories and portraits were originally featured on the online storytelling platform, Humans of New York, in collaboration with MSF communications specialist Nour Alsaqqa.
We also share a testimony from MSF physiotherapist Mubarak Mutawakkil, who recounts his experience working with a young boy and his mother during the ongoing malnutrition crisis in Nigeria. MSF teams like his are doing everything they can to respond to this out-of-control emergency, which continues to worsen as governments cut funding for international aid.
“We must continue to choose relentless empathy over hopelessness.”
Our teams are seeing the consequences of these budget cuts in many other places where we work, including Afghanistan and Somalia, as lifesaving humanitarian aid is insidiously treated as ‘optional’ by donor governments. Because MSF is almost entirely funded by private donors, we are not directly impacted by these cuts. But no one organization can do this work alone.
As humanitarianism itself is threatened, we must continue to choose relentless empathy over hopelessness. I find myself coming back to this question: how much further would we go if we saw a bit of ourselves in each other?
For me, it comes back to human connection. It’s the threads that link us – mothers and children, friends and neighbours, doctors and patients – stretching across borders and divides. These threads form the very fabric of the humanitarian movement you and I are part of.
Thank you for your support. Your compassion and care matter.