Representing Médecins Sans Frontières involves bringing together the humanitarian world and the world of the EU institutions, says Andrea Pontiroli.
The Jette district of Brussels is hardly a hotbed of European affairs, but Andrea Pontiroli has good reason to call it home. He is the European Union representative of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), and the international humanitarian organisation has one of its five operational centres in Jette.
Around 200 people work there supporting MSF medical teams delivering aid to people caught up in armed conflicts, epidemics and other natural disasters, or simply excluded from healthcare.
“It’s an incredible advantage to be sitting there, because that really exposes me to daily operations,” Pontiroli says. “Then you have all the people who pass through, who work with this operational centre but who are based in the field.” This means that when he goes to talk with officials in the European Commission, for example, he can take along colleagues with experience of countries where few other organisations have access. “That’s what makes the relationship mutually interesting.”
Pontiroli began by studying economics in his native Italy, but then an interest in the politics of war pushed him towards international relations and a masters degree at the London School of Economics and Political Science. After an internship in communications with Echo, the Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Office, in 2001-02, he joined the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), working in Rwanda and Burundi.
In 2005 he moved to MSF, heading its media relations team in Italy. When the Brussels post opened up in 2010, the attraction was clear. “I could combine my two passions, the more political, external affairs debate on the one hand, with humanitarian action on the other.”
Pontiroli is the first person to have a permanent role representing MSF in Brussels. “There were always some contacts, of course, especially with Echo, but nothing so systematic,” he says. The post was created as part of a broader initiative to increase dialogue between MSF and previously neglected decision-making organisations around the world.
Once he was here, doors opened easily. “My feeling was that people had been waiting for MSF to be more present,” Pontiroli says, suggesting that its role and the intelligence it can bring from the field set it apart from other aid organisations. “This is something that people in Brussels are sometimes missing, because they are so far away.”
His past experience in communications, both in Italy, and in Africa with the ICRC, was useful in establishing MSF’s presence. “It’s an ability to shape your message according to your interlocutors. Knowing how to do that is what allows you to put in touch two worlds, the humanitarian world and the world of the institutions, and to find the right way to convey messages from one to the other.”
Sometimes the messages are about conditions in conflict zones where the EU has either political influence or a role delivering humanitarian aid. “The main priorities at the moment are the Sahel area and the Horn of Africa, Syria, of course, but also crises which are a bit more forgotten, like the Central African Republic.”
Meanwhile MSF also hopes to contribute to EU policy on humanitarian aid, development, health and nutrition, migration and external action more generally. Pontiroli will soon be joined by a colleague who will work specifically on access to essential medicines, a brief that covers topics from research and development and intellectual property rights to trade agreements.
The attraction of the work lies in the issues and the range of people Pontiroli meets, within MSF and the EU sphere. But he also feels he is making a difference. “Somehow what you do here has an impact all the way down the line,” he says. “It facilitates the opening of a mission or overcoming a problem of access to a population in danger, for instance.”
Ian Mundell is a freelance journalist based in Brussels.
Click Here: United Kingdom Rugby Jerseys