As the U.N. Security Council deliberates about what to do about the carnage in Syria and elsewhere, speakers at the 5th Atlanta Global Health Summit agreed that the world has fallen into “an age of barbarism” where health providers along with women and children are killed indiscriminately.
Dr. J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president and director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Global Atlanta that all panels at the conference held in Buckhead on May 2 echoed the keynote address that Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, delivered highlighting the the atrocities taking place in Syria.
“He provided a loaded, strong message that was echoed on every panel by a lot of practitioners and a lot of close observers.”
Dr. Morrison pointed to the decay of the Geneva Conventions that established the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of war.
“The attacks on civilians on health providers, and the attacks on hospitals and clinics,” including those on facilities of the Doctors Without Borders, he said, have undermined the entire concept of neutrality.
“Health providers now are seen as the enemy,” by ISIS and Al-Qaeda, he added, who seek them out “for hostage taking or ritualistic murder.” Curbing anti-Western violence in these conflicts “is going to be a very tough nut to crack.”
He also said that the non-governmental organizations are hesitant to seek military support because such a strategy would erode their stance as neutral providers of humanitarian aid.
A result has been that NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders are moving their operations to the periphery of conflicts and work quietly and remotely through local partners who don’t wear insignia when delivering medical and life-sustaining supplies.
He called this development “not very satisfying,” or effective.
Meanwhile, he said that measures are being introduced in the U.N. General Assembly to make the governments involved more accountable. At the same time, the American Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and others, are developing databases to track the losses of human life and help to build pressure on high level initiatives insisting on the restoration of the protection of the health workers and other innocents.
The conference highlighted, he added, the urgency of recognizing the need to help the hundreds of thousands of refugees that these crises have spawned. Instead, he said,“We are turning towards isolationism and fear as opposed to compassion and openness.”
Simon Henshaw, principal deputy assistant secretary at the bureau of population, refugees and migration, at the U.S. State Department told Global Atlanta that his hope was that the conference would kindle support for the settlement of refugees in the U.S.
Despite the rhetoric of the current political primaries, he said that he was aware of many successful refugee resettlement programs in the United States including Atlanta.
He added that he could cite mayors throughout the country who have contacted his bureau to encourage resettlement of refugees in their cities.
He mentioned Buffalo, N.Y., specifically because Burmese refugees had restored blocks of deteriorating housing and helped raise the census within the city limits.
Ambassador Charles Shapiro, president of the World Affairs Council of Atlanta, moderated a panel discussion of the issues faced by refugees that featured Curi Kim, director of Refugee Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Dabney P. Evans, assistant professor of Global Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and J.D. McCrary, executive director of the International Rescue Committee.
The summit, titled “Global Health and Refugees,” was sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Atlanta, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and CARE.
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