Making Health Work for Peace in Humanitarian Situations

From the time of Florence Nightingale, humanitarian health and aid workers have dedicated themselves to the welfare of patients outside of their own communities, nobly sacrificing their own safety, economic well being, mental health, and sometimes even life. They witness and deal with the human consequences of violent conflict and care for those that are directly affected by it. Dedicated humanitarian professionals such as Albert Schweitzer, Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, and James Orbinski, representing Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), all accepted Nobel Peace Prizes for such work.

The primary mission during natural and “human-made” disasters may be to assist persons in need, to shine a ray of hope, and to create humanitarian space, but health professionals in particular, are also potentially in influential positions to promote peace. With their direct involvement in healing they have a certain credibility with the global community, which can contribute to their influence as advocates for peace, whether through raising awareness of relevant issues with the general public or specific interest groups, or by influencing decision makers directly.     

Democracy and corruption: a complex relationship

We argue that an ‘electoral democracy’ is not sufficient to reduce corruption. Our contention is that the institutions associated with mature democracy are crucial to successfully deterring corrupt behaviour. At the core of our argument is the idea that with well-functioning institutions, the probability of detection and punishment is sufficiently high to deter most decision makers from choosing to act corruptly. The empirical evidence we present supports this idea. The nonlinearity of democracy variables is tested to confirm that an advanced stage of democracy is crucial for combating corruption.