Rethinking the Humanitarian Health Response to Violent Conflict - London Exploratory Meeting

Maslakh Camp for Displaced, Afghanistan; UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
Maslakh Camp for Displaced, Afghanistan; UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London

10 to 11 June 2019

The meeting was convened on behalf of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Dr Robin McNeill Love, Vice President of the IHFFC, attended the meeting to represent the IHFFC.

The purpose of the meeting was to define a work programme on Rethinking the Humanitarian Health Response to Violent Conflict and to consider how a project on this topic could make important, pragmatic contributions to the development of more effective humanitarian health responses in areas experiencing violent conflict.

The discussion was aimed to build on an exploratory meeting hosted by the American Academy in Cambridge, MA in January 2019.

The London exploratory meeting aimed to bring together leaders of UN and non-governmental humanitarian organizations with operational responsibilities in the field, humanitarian health organizations (local and international), donors, military medical professionals, global health scholars, economists, legal scholars, politicians, and innovators in health in an effort to examine:

  • The current challenges to efficient health interventions inconflicts.
  • Possible strategies and innovative approaches to face thesechallenges.
  • Innovative dissemination methods to reach out to the wider public as well as decisionmakers.
  • How future work at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House might best contribute in this area. 

This was a very comprehensive meeting and at every opportunity, where appropriate, Dr McNeill Love reminded the delegates of the background, mission and the availably of the IHFFC to fulfil its remit in ensuring respect for International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in the relevant areas of the Humanitarian Health Response to Violent Conflict. Hosts and delegates expressed appreciation of the IHFFC’s presence and contribution to the meeting.

There are fifteen members of the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission.