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In the Wake of Conflict, Gaza Faces Severe Public Health Challenges
›February 4, 2009 // By Lauren Herzer RisiAn 18-month blockade, three weeks of intense bombardment, and continuing sporadic violence are setting up the Gaza Strip for a “devastating humanitarian crisis,” according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. As of January 31, 1,380 Palestinians had been killed and 5,380 had been injured in the conflict, including many civilians. Additionally, the World Health Organization recently warned that…
Enduring [health] risks include complications and excess mortality in patients with chronic diseases as a result of the suspension of treatment and delayed access to health care during the conflict; diarrhea outbreaks from water-borne and food-borne diseases as a result of the lack of access to clean water and sanitation and the weak public health surveillance system; as well as long-term mental health problems as a result of the conflict.
Slightly more than twice the size of Washington, D.C., with a population of 1.5 million people, the Gaza Strip is among the most densely populated regions in the world. Gaza’s high population density has likely compounded residents’ vulnerability to white phosphorus, a highly flammable chemical that provides smoke screens for troop movements. The outrage provoked by its use by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) stems from the intense, uncontrollable fires it causes. The IDF has admitted to using white phosphorus in Gaza against Hamas and is investigating whether it also used it against residents, which is prohibited by the 1980 Convention on Conventional Military Weapons.
In 2008, prior to the war, the UN Relief and Works Agency reported that despite the humanitarian assistance flowing to Gaza, 51.8 percent of households were below the poverty line, and unemployment was at an unprecedented high of 45.3 percent. Prior to the recent conflict, 80 percent of the population was dependent on aid from the United Nations.
Although the current ceasefire has allowed for a slight increase in access to Gaza, humanitarian agencies and aid workers still struggle to get supplies into the territory. Day after day, truckloads of supplies—everything from food, clothing, and baby formula to blankets, plastic tarps, and technical equipment to draw water from the ground—sit at border crossings in Egypt, waiting for permission to enter Gaza. While Egyptians blame the Israelis for limiting access, Israeli officials claim that the Egyptians have not done enough to coordinate the flood of aid. Regardless of who is to blame, it is clear that limiting the access of humanitarian workers and supplies is having dire consequences for the residents of Gaza.
Photo: Humanitarian cargo waits at the Rafah border crossing on the Gaza-Egyptian border on January 9, 2009. Photo courtesy of Ekram Elhuni (World Food Programme) and Flickr user Peter Casier. -
VIDEO: Christian Leuprecht on Demography, Conflict, and National Security
›January 29, 2009 // By Wilson Center Staff“Demographics are going to be to the 21st century what class cleavages were to the 19th century,” says Christian Leuprecht in this short expert analysis from the Environmental Change and Security Program. In this video, Leuprecht, an assistant professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, makes the case for the importance of demographic dynamics and their connections to conflict and security. -
Reading Radar– A Weekly Roundup
›January 23, 2009 // By Wilson Center Staff“As long as we continue to subsidize Gaza’s extreme demographic armament, young Palestinians will likely continue killing their brothers or neighbors. And yet, despite claiming that it wants to bring peace to the region, the West continues to make the population explosion in Gaza worse every year. By generously supporting UNRWA’s budget, the West assists a rate of population increase that is 10 times higher than in their own countries,” argues the University of Bremen’s Gunnar Heinsohn in the Wall Street Journal.
In an article for the Huffington Post, Water Advocates’ John Sauer argues that we should group together waterborne diseases like diarrhea, typhoid, and cholera under the name “No-Plumbing Disease,” to help water and sanitation get the attention they deserve.
It takes a strong editor to push for stories on development issues like poverty and public health, but there is often surprisingly high interest in these stories, writes Richard Kavuma for the Guardian.Yale Environment 360 sums up President Obama’s statements on the environment in his inaugural address.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has cancelled nearly 60 percent of its logging contracts in an attempt to end corrupt and environmentally destructive logging, report the BBC and Reuters.
“Could the crises of food, fuel and finance that we experienced in 2008 simply be three canaries in the coalmine? What if these are just the early-warning signals that our current economic system is not sustainable at a much deeper level?” asks Dominic Waughray, head of environmental initiatives at the World Economic Forum.
“A flurry of scientific field work and environmental reports have linked the spread of oil palm plantations in Indonesia to the decimation of rain forests, increased conflict between logging and oil palm interests and rural and indigenous people, and massive CO2 emissions through logging, burning, and the draining of carbon-rich peat lands,” writes Tom Knudson on Yale Environment 360.
A nickel mine in Madagascar is likely to harm biodiversity in one of the world’s most biologically unique places, reports mongabay.com.
“It is high time that India and Pakistan consider the primacy of ecological cooperation as a means of lasting conflict resolution,” argues
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