30 years of Médecins du Monde
In 1986, Médecins du Monde, which carries out humanitarian work internationally, turned its attention to exclusion on its doorstep and opened its first free healthcare centre for the most disadvantaged in Paris. Thirty years later, more than 20 centres continue to provide free healthcare to women, men and children affected by increasingly severe poverty. Six photographers have observed how those living in precarious conditions cope with their daily lives, how they try to maintain ties at all costs, however tenuous they may be.
The people whom I encountered became migrants before reaching adulthood. Isolated, these teenagers crossed Europe and have now been living in France for several weeks. Their stories are similar: persecution, survival, leaving Nigeria, Chad or Eritrea, taking the same routes across the Mediterranean and Italy. They have no parents and have left everything behind. For the NGO Médecins du Monde, I spent a few days with them, between those who are being cared for in their tiny hotel room and those who are rushing from medical examination to medical examination to prove that they are minors, because France has an obligation to take them in.
