Honourable Ministers, Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
Thank you all for joining us today, and my special thanks to BMJ Global Health for putting together this special issue on peace and health.
I would also like to thank my brother Ahmed and my sister Carissa for being guest editors with me, and my colleague Ghaffar for helping to put it all together.
This topic has never been more timely.
From Afghanistan to Ethiopia to Ukraine to Yemen and the occupied Palestinian territory, we live in a time of deep unrest.
As you know, I decided to make "Health for peace and peace for health" the theme of this year's World Health Assembly.
For health workers, WHO staff and humanitarian partners on the ground, war makes everything exponentially harder, and sometimes impossible.
The impact of war is immediate not only on the frontlines. Prolonged conflicts frequently lead to epidemics, displacement and starvation.
War shakes and shatters the foundations on which previously stable societies stood.
It deprives whole communities of essential health services:
leaving children at risk of vaccine preventable diseases;
women at increased risk of sexual violence;
expectant mothers at risk of an unsafe birth;
and people who live with communicable and noncommunicable diseases without access to the lifesaving services and treatments on which they depend.
And it leaves psychological scars that can take years or decades to heal.
Modern conflicts come with a new and despicable feature: attacks on health.
So far this year, WHO has documented 856 attacks on health globally, with more than 200 deaths in 15 countries and territories.
Tragically, 7 of those 15 countries are here in the Eastern Mediterranean Region, where we have documented 170 incidents, with 71 deaths.
Such attacks are a violation of international humanitarian law. Health care must never be a target.
In any conflict, we expect all parties to safeguard access to health services and medicines for civilians.
WHO has long worked to promote peace for health and health as a bridge to peace, beginning with our work in Central America in the 1980s.
Building on this legacy, WHO launched the Global Health for Peace Initiative in 2020, to deliver health programmes in conflict-affected areas that also help to build peace.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
This initiative builds on the understanding that health programmes can not only alleviate suffering in conflict, but can also help to address some of its underlying causes.
Conflict-sensitive health interventions can also improve trust and communication between people and governments, by improving equitable access to health services and other common health goals.
This can be a bridge to collaboration and improve social cohesion.
This special issue of BMJ Global Health will help to build a strong evidence base on health interventions that support peace-building and health security, and can bolster the important work of health diplomacy.
===
Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
Health is one of the few areas in which nations can work together across ideological divides to find common solutions to common problems, and build bridges.
More than ever before, we need peace for health, and health for peace.
I would like to thank Oman and Switzerland for working on this the past three years. They have pioneered this work. This is something that is very serious now, and should be a common focus globally. Health should be a bridge for peace.
I thank you.
