Medico international
| Medico international | |
|---|---|
|
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| legal form | non-profit registered association |
| founding | 1968 |
| Seat | Frankfurt am Main ( ⊙ ) |
| precursor | action medico |
| purpose | Aid and human rights organization |
| Chair | Anne Blum |
| Managing directors | Christian Weis |
| sales | 10,995,784 euros (2018) |
| Employees | 60 (2018) |
| Members | 58 (2019) |
| Website | www.medico.de |
medico international is an aid and human rights organization based in Frankfurt am Main . The organization is committed to the global realization of the human right to health. To this end, the organization supports partner organizations in Africa , Asia and Latin America . Together with partners, medico provides emergency aid in disaster situations and supports long-term projects in the areas of health care, human rights and psychosocial work. The second focus of the organization is critical public relations and campaign work. The causes of need and poverty are criticized in regular publications, at public events and in joint campaigns with other organizations and initiatives, and alternatives are discussed. Medico international provides information about its work and the situation in the projects in a newsletter and a quarterly circular.
The organization has received the DZI - Donation seal and member of the Alliance Development Works .
organization structure
The organization is a registered association with a voluntary board that meets every two weeks. The managing director is Christian Weis. In the Frankfurt medico office, more than 40 full-time employees work in project support, public relations and administration. The organization also has four foreign offices in Central America , Israel / Palestine and Algeria . One of the best-known medico international employees is Thomas Seibert.
In 2004 the medico international foundation was also established. The income from the foundation's capital is primarily used to support the work of the association. The foundation's board of trustees includes cabaret artist Georg Schramm and the former Hessian Minister of Justice Rupert von Plottnitz . The now deceased psychoanalysts Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen and Paul Parin were also active as members of the board of trustees for the medico international foundation.
history
Since it was founded in 1968, then still under the name action medico , the way the organization works has changed fundamentally. Originally set up to organize a drug collection for Biafra , personnel and vehicles were soon dispatched to disaster areas. The experience with this type of help led medico to rethink: In order to achieve lasting improvements, the causes of need and poverty should be given more attention. The approach that medico pursued in the future relied on the support of local initiatives and political commitment to change the circumstances that first lead to the emergence of the emergency instead of collecting medicines and short-term assignments by foreign specialists.
Long-term projects became the focus of medico's activities. As a consequence of the failure of a major project in Mali in 1973 - the establishment of a social-medical complex in cooperation with the government of the country - medico concentrated more and more on a basic medical approach. The “Primary Health Care” concept, which was also adopted by the World Health Organization in 1978 , increasingly shaped the work of the Frankfurt aid organization. Central to this concept was that health for everyone cannot be achieved through centrally prescribed policy measures, but only through the significant participation of those affected.
In the 1980s, the organization primarily supported liberation movements in Central America, southern Africa, and the Near and Middle East. In Nicaragua, for example, medico supported the establishment of local health centers, the training of nursing staff and the improvement of the drinking water supply. In Nicaragua, medico also began to get involved in psychosocial work. This form of help remained part of the organization's commitment in the following decades.
In 1991 the organization initiated the International Campaign to Ban Landmines with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation . The campaign grew into a worldwide movement that eventually led to the conclusion of the Ottawa Treaty in 1997, which banned anti-personnel mines internationally. In the same year the campaign was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The organization has been supporting the SANGOCO (South African National NGO Coalition) , the umbrella organization of South African non-governmental organizations, which, together with churches and some of the country's trade unions, has called for debt relief from international lenders since 1998 . This raised the question of the joint responsibility of foreign financial and industrial companies for apartheid conditions , which had supported the South African regime in its domestic and foreign policy in various ways with their investments, exploiting low-wage conditions. The German financial sector held the top position among all foreign investors, ahead of the USA, in that in 1993 it only claimed a share of 27.5% of debt-related claims within South Africa's public economic sector. To this end, Medico undertook appropriate campaigns with partner organizations. A related lawsuit against IBM, Daimler, Rheinmetall and other companies in the USA failed in 2013.
In 2003, the organization, together with the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Institute for Educational Sciences at the University of Frankfurt, organized the congress Power and Powerlessness of Aid with almost 300 participants.
Since 2008 medico has been supporting the Israeli non-governmental organization Schovrim Schtika , German Breaking Silence . The organization of former and active soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) wants to inform the Israeli public about the activities of the army in the Palestinian territories. In 2015, Breaking The Silence published the testimony of over 60 soldiers who were involved in Operation Protective Edge .
In 2014, the organization started a campaign together with the chairmen of DGB , IG Metall and ver.di to support textile workers in South Asia. Two years after the factory fire at Ali Enterprises in Karachi , Pakistan , in which over 300 people died, medico and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights are supporting a lawsuit brought by four survivors against the German textile company KiK. In Bangladesh, medico supports a fund for those injured in the collapse of the Rana Plaza textile factory , in which over 1,127 people died and 2,438 were injured.
Projects and way of working
The organization currently supports a total of 114 projects in 29 countries. The main focus of the organization's activities is on Central America and the Middle East . But medico also works with partner organizations in South America , Africa and Asia .
The organization provides emergency aid in acute disaster situations, such as armed conflicts, flight and environmental disasters. However, the emergency aid should always be combined with long-term projects in order to achieve sustainable improvements. Central to the work of medico is the cooperation with local organizations, which should not be seen as mere recipients of aid, but as independent partners.
The organization puts the realization of the right to health of all people at the center of its activities. According to the definition of the World Health Organization , the organization understands health as complete physical, psychological and social well-being, not as the mere absence of illness. Therefore, medico not only works with organizations that are active in medical health care, but also supports other development cooperation projects , human rights organizations and cultural initiatives. For example, the organization works with the Freedom Theater Jenin , which offers children and young people from the Jenin refugee camp a space in which they can express themselves freely, as well as with the Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe, who campaign for the rights of sexual minorities , and supports mine clearance and mine reconnaissance projects in Afghanistan and Colombia .
Public relations and campaigns
Medico international aims to conduct public relations work that goes beyond the mere acquisition of donations. The organization provides information on the situation in the countries in which it has partner organizations and criticizes the causes of injustice and poverty. The most important information media are the homepage www.medico.de and the free medico circular, which appears four times a year, with reports and background reports from the project countries. Once a year medico publishes an annual report in which the project work of the past year is reported and details of the financial development and organizational structure are made transparent.
medico initiates or regularly takes part in political campaigns. Together with the globalization-critical network attac , the organization launched a campaign in 2011 entitled The EU calls it raw materials initiative ... We call it raw material theft , which is against the EU's strategy of aggressively pushing for access to raw material deposits in developing countries. Medico is also involved in the alliance Umfairteile , in which trade unions, social associations and NGOs have come together to campaign for a stronger taxation of wealth.
International networking with civil society initiatives is important to medico. The organization is a member of the People's Health Movement, in which numerous health initiatives from all over the world have come together. The network is committed to the global implementation of the concept of basic health care. Health care should be made available as a common good with the participation of the people affected at the local level.
The medico house in Frankfurt's Osthafen was opened at the end of 2017 . The Osthafenforum located on the ground floor sees itself as a "resonance space for processes of emancipation".
medico international Switzerland
The Swiss aid organization Centrale Sanitaire Suisse , founded in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War , renamed itself medico international Switzerland in 2002. However, the organization remained independent.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Organization chart. In: medico.de. April 1, 2019, accessed November 3, 2019 .
- ^ Medico international eV In: DZI . Retrieved November 15, 2017 .
- ↑ Alliance Development Helps.
- ↑ Annual report 2014. Our work at a glance. In: medico international. May 26, 2015. Retrieved November 15, 2017 .
- ↑ Council members: Thomas Seibert. In: attac network. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015 ; accessed on November 15, 2017 .
- ↑ https: //www.solidäre-moderne.de/de/article/22.dr-thomas-seibert.html
- ↑ http://www.linksnet.de/de/autorin/seibert_thomas
- ↑ http://www.taz.de/!145709/
- ^ Radical Left and Solidarity Modernism. In: Avanti. Project undogmatic left. Archived from the original on April 5, 2015 ; accessed on November 15, 2017 .
- ↑ structure. In: medico international. June 2016, accessed November 15, 2017 .
- ↑ From the medico circular 01/2008.
- ↑ From the medico circular 02/2008.
- ^ International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
- ↑ http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1997/
- ↑ Who pays the costs of apartheid? International campaign for debt relief and compensation in southern Africa . Article from October 1, 2008 on www.medico.de
- ↑ Apartheid Victims vs. Daimler. Hand over signatures for apartheid damage . Report of November 3, 2010 on www.medico.de
- ^ Apartheid proceedings rejected in USA. A serious setback for lawsuits against human rights violations . Report from August 23, 2013 on www.medico.de
- ↑ Narnia Bohler-Muller; Human Sciences Research Council: Apartheid victim group scores symbolic victory against multinationals . at www.hsrc.ac.za (English)
- ↑ medico international (ed.): Power and powerlessness of help. A documentary about the humanitarian crisis. Mabuse-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 978-3935964425 .
- ↑ 10 years of Breaking The Silence
- ^ Protective Edge. Soldiers' testimonies from Gaza
- ↑ Reiner Hoffmann (DGB chairman), Detlef Wetzel (IG Metall chairman) and Frank Bsirske (ver.di chairman): "We are at the beginning"
- ↑ More Than 300 Killed in Pakistani Factory Fires . In: The New York Times, September 12, 2012, accessed October 25, 2012
- ↑ You are suing KiK
- ↑ We act now
- ↑ 1,127 dead, 2,438 injured ( memento from June 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), Tagesschau, May 13, 2013
- ↑ Annual report 2014
- ^ Declaration by Alma Ata (1978). (PDF; 80 kB)
- ^ Esther Boldt: Cultural Intifada. In: taz , September 22, 2009, No. 8994.
- ↑ Umfair dividing alliance. ( Memento from February 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ medico international: Global - fair - healthy? Facts, backgrounds and strategies on world health. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3899652932 .
- ↑ medico international: Well laid out - the new medico house. Retrieved September 3, 2019 .
- ↑ Osthafenforum. Retrieved September 3, 2019 .