Public Health


A River of Death: How Oil Pollution is Impacting Health and Livelihoods in Conflict-Affected North East Syria

2020 | PAX
Wim Zwijnenburg and Yifang Shi

A River of Death shows how persistent pollution from a degrading oil facility has led to tens-of-thousands of barrels of oil flowing into canals and…


Enhancing Environmental Protection during Occupation through Human Rights

2020 | Goettingen Journal of International Law
Karen Hulme

Environmental  protection  is  not  specifically  included  in  treaty  law  relating  to  State obligations during situations of occupation. While clearly not of the same scale as…


Enhancing the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts – The Draft Principles of the International Law Commission and Beyond

2020 | Goettingen Journal of International Law
Britta Sjöstedt and Anne Dienelt

In 2011, the UN International Law Commission (ILC) took up the topic Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts. The decision was triggered…


Environmental Consequences of the Gulf War in Kuwait: Impact on Water Resources

1992 | Water Science & Technology
P. Literathy

As a result of the Iraqi occupation and the armed conflict in Kuwait 6 to 8 million barrels of crude oil were spilled into the…


The Maladies of Water and War: Addressing Poor Water Quality in Iraq

2013 | American Journal of Public Health
Tara Rava Zolnikov

Water is essential in providing nutrients, but contaminated water contributes to poor population health. Water quality and availability can change in unstructured situations, such as…


Double Crisis: Addressing the Impact of Protracted Conflict and Covid-19 in Ukraine

2020 | Norwegian Refugee Council

The Covid-19 pandemic is exacerbating already existing protection needs and unveiling new ones. In eastern Ukraine, already exhausted by the ongoing conflict, the vulnerabilities are…


Want Progress in Water? Let Women Lead

2020 | International Water Resources Association
Claire Miller and James E. Nickum

Women's grassroots role in disaster resilience and water-related health matters often goes "unseen." This brief explores how, in order to achieve water resilience, women's experience and…


Gender and Climate Change in the Context of COVID-19

2020 | UN Women, UN Environment, and EmPower

2020 was intended to be a pivotal year for the global gender equality agenda and global climate change ambition. It was supposed to be a…


EU Water Diplomacy

2020 | International Journal of Water Management and Diplomacy
Carmen Marques Ruiz

Water is essential for life. With increasing water demand due to population growth and the growing impact of climate change, water scarcity affects a quarter…


Knowledge Synthesis and Translation in Global Food and Nutrition Security to Evaluate and Accelerate Priority Actions

2020 | BMJ Nutrition, Prevention, & Health
Jorgen Torgerstuen Johnsen, Luke Buckner, and Sumantra Ray

As highlighted in the global nutrition report (GNR) 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, there is increasing emphasis on the central role of nutrition in health…


Ecology and Sociology Analysis for Mineral Resources Management in Indonesia

2020 | IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science
T. Hidayat, L. Fitrianingrum, Suharto, and Sudibyo

Mineral resources should be an important resource in supporting the Indonesian economy. However, equal welfare has not been felt by the people of Indonesia for…


Climate-Fragility Risk Brief: Latin America and the Caribbean

2020 | adelphi
Adriana Erthal Abdenur and Lukas Rüttinger

Climate change is expected to have differential impacts across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), a region encompassing ecological systems as varied as the islands…


The Environmental Peacemaker [Audio]

2020 | Tel Aviv Review

There’s no time like the COVID-19 pandemic to learn about the interconnectedness of countries in the Middle East – even across conflict lines. Gidon Bromberg,…


Yemen Food Security Outlook Update April 2020

2020 | Relief Web
Famine Early Warning Systems Network

Persistent conflict and deteriorating macroeconomic conditions – as well as some COVID-19 related disruptions – are resulting in further food price increases and restricted income-earning…


Central African Republic: Projection Update: May to August 2020 (Lean Season)

2020 | Relief Web
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Projection

Between May and August 2020, corresponding to the lean season, it is estimated that despite planned food assistance, 29 sub-prefectures or 0.75 million people, representing…


State of Environment and Outlook Report for the Occupied Palestinian Territory 2020

2020 | UN Environment Programme

This report provides an overview of the current state of the environment in the occupied Palestinian territory. Building on earlier work by the United Nations…


Water, Conflict, and Hope

2009 | American Journal of Public Health
Michael R. Greenberg

Water has been both a source of conflict and a weapon used in conflicts, and water systems have been targets in conflicts started for a…


Water Rights and Water Fights: Preventing and Resolving Conflicts before They Boil Over

2011 | Americal Journal of Public Health
Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel

Scarcity of freshwater is an increasingly critical public health problem in many parts of the world. World leaders, including United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, have…


Occupational Hazards

2014 | Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins

Stamatopoulou-Robbins’s essay begins with an unlikely meeting between two groups—Israeli settlers and Palestinian village residents—who together opposed construction of a Palestinian Authority–run landfill in the…


COVID-19 and Armed Conflict

2020 | SSRN Working Paper
Tobias Ide

This paper studies the impact of COVID-19 on armed conflict. The pandemic has significant health, economic and political effects. These can change the grievances and…


Unpacking Covid-19 and the Connections Between Ecosystems, Human Health, and Security [Audio]

2020 | New Security Beat
Eliana Guterman

“What are the underlying drivers of risk that created the conditions for Covid-19 to emerge, and how do we better address them?” said Lauren Herzer…


Lessons Never Learned: Crisis and Gender‐Based Violence

2020 | Bioethics
Neetu John, Sara E. Casey, Giselle Carino, and Terry McGovern

The COVID‐19 pandemic exposes underlying inequalities in our socio‐economic and health systems, such as gender‐based violence (GBV). In emergencies, particularly ones that involve quarantine, GBV…


EnPAx Icon Water, Sanitation, COVID-19, and Peace in the Middle East [Video]

2020 | Environmental Peacebuilding Association
Gidon Bromberg, Tessa Terpstra, Pamela Elisabeth Minnigh, Mahmoud Daher, and Erika Weinthal

A panel discussion about the effects of COVID-19 on water politics in the Middle East and potential opportunities as well as proposed solutions. 


MERS Guidance in Response to COVID-19

2020 | The SEEP Network

Markets play a critical role in how people survive, as well as being physical places where people meet to buy and sell goods. As COVID-19…


COVID-19 and Conflict: Seven Trends to Watch

2020 | International Crisis Group

The COVID-19 pandemic unquestionably presents an era-defining challenge to public health and the global economy. Its political consequences, both short- and long-term, are less well…


Gaza: The Undrinkable Water of a Land under Seige [Video]

2020 | International Middle East Media Center
Rakan Abed El Rahman

Experts say Israeli policies and wars are to blame for a deepening water crisis in Gaza that will have detrimental effects on public health, especially…