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To Do No Harm: Humanitarian Aid in Conflict Demands Political Engagement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2018

Ronak B. Patel  and
Hannah B. Wild
Ronak B. Patel*
Affiliation:
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Department of Emergency Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford, California
Hannah B. Wild
Affiliation:
Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to Ronak B. Patel, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, 14 Story St., Second Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138 (e-mail: rbpatel11@bwh.harvard.edu)
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Abstract

Humanitarian aid in settings of conflict has always been fraught with challenges. In the absence of political engagement, however, manipulation by state authorities, however, have the potential to pervert aid intervention to inflict harm. South Sudan exemplifies how states may abuse the humanitarian response to retreat from public responsibility, divert funds to further violence and conflict and dictate the distribution of aid. Recent trends toward nationalist policies in the West that favor disengagement and limited military strikes have the very effect of allowing this abuse to transform humanitarian aid into a tool for harm. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;12:567–568)

Keywords

vulnerable populationsviolencestate governmentrelief workpolicy-making
Type
Policy Analysis
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 12 , Issue 5 , October 2018 , pp. 567 - 568
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 2018 

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References

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