Delivering Humanitarian Health Services in Violent Conflicts

After decades of nonenforcement, international humanitarian law has lost purchase with many twenty-first-century combatants. The deliberate targeting of hospitals and civilian infrastructure has been a defining characteristic of Russia’s air bombardment of Ukraine, Syria, and Chechnya, as well as in intrastate conflicts in Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As a result, humanitarian health actors have been put under enormous strain, and traditional humanitarian strategies have not often been up to the task. At the same time, ethical imperatives to decolonize and localize health services are challenging the field’s longstanding values and power systems.

The Spring 2023 issue of Dædalus takes a transdisciplinary approach to understanding the dilemmas facing humanitarian health actors, and to finding room for innovation in humanitarian health delivery. Recognizing that shared compassion cannot be proscribed but must be felt, the issue also draws on the power of the arts, and features paintings, poetry, photography, fiction, and creative nonfiction by artists whose lives have been shaped by violent conflict and displacement.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe, but it is far from the only one. In Ethiopia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, the erosion of respect for international humanitarian law, combined with intensifying geopolitical competition and the rapidly changing character of modern warfare, has put enormous strain on humanitarian actors. And in the Americas, migrants from South and Central America seeking asylum in the United States and Mexico are targeted by organized criminal networks engaged in human trafficking. Humanitarian actors must not only reimagine how they think about violent conflict and health services delivery, but also meet the ethical imperatives to decolonize and localize health services. 

The Spring 2023 issue of Dædalus on “Delivering Humanitarian Health Services in Violent Conflicts,” guest edited by Jaime Sepúlveda, Jennifer M. Welsh, and Paul H. Wise, takes a transdisciplinary approach to understanding the dilemmas facing humanitarian health actors and the potential for innovation in humanitarian health delivery. Recognizing that shared compassion cannot be mandated but must be authentically felt, the issue also draws on the power of the arts and features visual artists, poets, writers, and photographers whose lives have been shaped by violent conflict and displacement. 

This Dædalus issue is a part of the Academy’s project on Rethinking the Humanitarian Health Response to Violent Conflict. Financial support for the project was provided by Louise Henry Bryson and John E. Bryson, the Malcolm Hewitt Wiener Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation.

https://www.amacad.org/daedalus/delivering-humanitarian-health-services-violent-conflicts