Dr. James Orbinski, former president of Doctors Without Borders, has won the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for his book An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century. (Writers' Trust of Canada)

Dr. James Orbinski, former president of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), has won the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for the chronicle about his humanitarian work in Rwanda and Somalia.

The British-born Canadian's book An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century was named this year's winner Wednesday night at the annual Politics and the Pen fundraiser gala in Ottawa.

Toronto Star writer and author Chantal Hébert, Globe and Mail deputy managing editor David Walmsley and author and journalist William Johnson presided over the competition.

In his book, "Orbinski takes us to a different world — where human beings attacked, mutilated, raped, tortured, dismembered and murdered their fellow citizens. Dr. Orbinski was there, saw it, lived it," the jury said in its citation.

"Though he exposes the depths of human depravity, always, in counterpoint, he shines the vision of the idealist, the compassion of the humanitarian. He puts a human face on a poignant public policy dilemma: whether swords can be turned into plowshares, rather than plowshares into swords."

Orbinski was head of MSF when it was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1999 and his experiences were also explored in the documentary Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma.

Orbinski is also an associate professor medicine at the University of Toronto and a fellow at the Munk Centre for International Studies.

The four remaining Cohen Prize finalists — Daphne Bramham (The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in Canada's Polygamous Mormon Sect); Erna Paris (The Sun Climbs Slow: Justice in the Age of Imperial America); Marie Wadden (Where the Pavement Ends: Canada's Aboriginal Recovery Movement and the Urgent Need for Reconciliation); and Chris Wood (Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America) — receive $3,500 each.

The Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing was established in honour of the outspoken and popular member of Parliament from Windsor, Ont., who died on Dec. 9, 1998.

Now in its ninth year, the prize celebrates a non-fiction book about a political subject that captures the interest of Canadians and furthers understanding of the issue.