Health Workers as Agents for Peace

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Health Workers as Agents for Peace

• Track 15 Peace and Health
• APACPH 2007, Japan
• Friday 23 November 2007
• klaus.melf_at_sih.uit.no

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What Medical Peace Work is NOT
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Medical Peace Work is awareness, competence and
action
The role of physicians and other health workers
in the preservation and promotion of peace is the
most significant factor for the attainment of
health for all. (World Health Assembly,
Resolution 34.38, 1981)
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Peace

• Absence of war
• Absence of terror
• Absence of human rights violations
• Absence of interpersonal violence and suicide
• Individual and social harmony
• Development and justice
• Fulfilment of basic needs
• Human security

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What is Peace Work ?
Direct violence

• Interventions which
• reduce or abolish direct, structural or
  cultural violence
• build harmonious, mutual beneficial relations and
  structures
• strengthen the peace capacity of individuals /
  societies

Structural violence
Cultural violence
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The concepts of peace and health overlap
Peace
Health

• Well-being
• Basic needs
• Human security
• Human Rights
• Absence of suffering, trauma, harm

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Implicit explicit Medical Peace Work
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Thank you!