Human Rights Violations and Health: Need to Target Both in Conflict
The last few decades have brought enormous amount of human suffering through the conflicts. The conflicts threatened health of those affected and contributed to widespread human rights violations. Recognizing the link between human rights violations and health, as well as targeting both human rights and health simultaneously by human rights workers and health professionals is important.
Conflict is one of the major threats to human health. Its effects are numerous and threaten both physical and mental conditions of those affected. Direct impacts of the conflict on health include injury, death, and violence-related diseases such as Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PSD), just to name some out of many. Destruction of the health infrastructure in the country affected by conflict, an indirect effect on health, leads to malnutrition, spread of infectious diseases and increase in maternal and child mortality. Effects of the conflict on health are usually long-term, and the conditions of population often deteriorate even long after the peace is established[1]. Thus, it is not surprising that nations that endure protracted conflicts have the world’s worst health indicators[2]. Currently, the health of the biggest part of the world population is, in one way or another, negatively influenced by conflicts, with a total of 26,000,000 people being internally displaced[3] and thousands of lives lost everyday as a result of casualties.
While numerous efforts of international community are organized to target conflict-related health issues, the goal of overcoming the vicious circle of conflict and poor health, in many cases, appears to be extremely difficult to achieve[4]. I wish to argue further that the success or failure of these efforts is greatly dependent on consideration of the relation between health and human rights and simultaneous targeting of both.
Paragraph 3 of General Comment No. 14 on the right to the highest attainable standard of health (article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) emphasizes the interdependence of health and other human rights in the following manner: “The right to health is closely related to, and dependent upon, the realization of other human rights, as contained in the International Bill of Rights, including the rights to: [1] food, [2] housing, [3] work, [4] education, [5] human dignity, [6] life, [7] non-discrimination, [8] equality, [9] the prohibition against torture, [10] privacy, [11] access to information, [12] association, [13] assembly and [14] movement”[5].
In practice however, this relation is often disregarded failing to improve health of the population affected by conflict. In 1991 Iraq, for instance, the system of food distribution was organized for refugee Kurds who arrived to the border with Iran and Turkey, with men refugees assigned to distribute the rations. In a couple of days, however, aid workers noticed that one part of the families, those headed by women, was suffering from malnourishment. The health of one part of women and children therefore was put at risk due to the issues of discrimination and equality not being considered[6]. Cases of discriminatory provision of the health care after the conflict due to political reasons[7] are also frequent.
The impact of human rights violations on health is also evident from the inter- disciplinary researches conducted recently. Through inclusion of human rights questions to the health surveys held in Burma a team from John Hopkins University was able to compare the health of respondents subjected to human rights violations with those who were not subjected to it. The study concluded that those experiencing human rights violations are more likely to have health problems, experience child mortality and landmine injury[8].
As the relation between human rights violations and health is apparent and could be seen from the examples above, it is surprising that human rights workers and health professionals have been for long working in the isolation from each other and are merely starting to operate together to achieve the common goal of human wellbeing[9].
It is possible to make a conclusion that in order to improve the health conditions of the populations affected by conflict it is vital to tackle both health issues and other human rights simultaneously. Cooperation of human rights workers and health professionals in data collection and aid provision is particularly important.
[1] Thoms, O. NT, Ron, J. Public health, conflict and human rights: toward a collaborative research agenda: Conflict and Health, 2007
[2] Spiegel P., Le, P., Ververs, MT., Salama, P. Occurrence and overlap of natural disasters, complex emergencies and epidemics during the past decade (1995 – 2004): Conflict and Health, 2007
[3] iDMC, Global statistics, 2008 http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004CE90B/(httpPages)/22FB1D4E2B196DAA802570BB005E787C?OpenDocument&count=1000
[4] Singh, S., Orbinski, J. J., Mills, E. J. Conflict and health: a paradigm shift in a global health and human rights: Conflict and Health, 2007
[5] GC 14, para. 3
[6] Diaz, M. F., Refugee Women. Overcoming the Odds
[7] Thoms, O. NT, Ron, J. Public health, conflict and human rights: toward a collaborative research agenda: Conflict and Health, 2007
[8] Thoms, O. NT, Ron, J. Public health, conflict and human rights: toward a collaborative research agenda: Conflict and Health, 2007
[9] Singh, S., Orbinski, J. J., Mills, E. J. Conflict and health: a paradigm shift in a global health and human rights: Conflict and Health, 2007
© 2010, Olga Yevetska. All rights reserved.