Triage: Dr. James Orbinski’s Humanitarian Dilemma

Dr. James Orbinski spent years working with people marginalized by war, famine, and disease in Rwanda and Somalia. Patrick Reed's mesmerizing film TRIAGE follows Dr. James as he revisits places where he worked 15 years ago, catching up with people whose lives he saved, and telling the stories of the multitudes he couldn't. He now struggles with how to write a book that can possibly reflect the scope of the disasters: “It comes from a place of silence. There's no way in words to capture what it is. And so the challenge of writing is, how do you capture what has no words? Because in the expression, you lose it.” The past president of Doctors Without Borders, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for the organization in 1999, Orbinski is an eloquent and sober critic of non-governmental organizations that swoop into areas of crisis with too little help, too late. An opponent of the “politics of opportunity,” he suggests we rethink the way we provide aid by setting up community-based care agencies. Orbinski's “An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action for the 21st Century” will be published this April. Thankfully, he has found some words to help the rest of us begin to understand. – BB