Conflict and health: a paradigm shift in global health and human rights

We are not born equal. The possibility for equality must first be imagined, and then actively created. The 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights [1] is one such imagining, and it is far from being fully realized. The day before it was signed in Paris, the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide [2] was passed. Its aspirations too, are far from being fully realized. The practice of humanitarianism in war, while having evolved since its formal inception in 1864 [3], today risks being overwhelmed by both military and political agendas. Rapid advances in public health and modern medicine have increased life expectancy in many countries by several decades, though widening inequalities between developed and developing countries and within various national groups continue to exist and in many cases flourish. In each of these domains, however, we are further along, though by how much, and in what direction, is not always known.