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A Public Health Approach to Warfare

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Book cover Warfare Ecology

Abstract

The field of public health aims to protect and promote the health and wellbeing of human populations. Warfare poses threats to human beings in many ways that the public health approach can help define and track through time. The impact of war on civilians is a particular feature of concern to public health experts, who have in recent years contributed to our general understanding of civilian morbidity and mortality in war by documenting numbers of people affected, describing patterns of morbidity and mortality, and identifying vulnerable risk groups. Among the particular technologies of warfare that are pervasively harmful to civilian populations, public health investigators have been especially concerned with the short and longer-term consequences of antipersonnel landmines and other explosive remnants of war. Yet despite the evidence, which public health methods have helped to accumulate, that warfare constitutes a devastating assault on human life, the field of public health has also been influenced in positive ways by military activity and experience. Advances in science (including technology), law, and social mobilization have been incorporated into public health practice and analytic frameworks. Public health strategies of prevention and mitigation are influenced by these advances and in turn offer options for policy engagement with all phases of warfare that might help to reduce the most severe impacts of war on civilian populations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Major nineteenth century exceptions were Rudolf Virchow and Florence Nightingale; exceptions in the twentieth century are military physicians concerned with the environmental and occupational health of the armed forces and civilian public health and other physicians active in the social movements against nuclear weapons and explosive remnants of war.

  2. 2.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

  3. 3.

    http://www.theirc.org/sites/default/files/migrated/resources/2007/2006-7_congomortalitysurvey.pdf

  4. 4.

    http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2007/

  5. 5.

    The UN Commission of Experts, in an interim 1993 report to the Security Council, defined “ethnic cleansing” as “rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.” Re-quoted in: United Nations Final Report of the Commission of Experts on Yugoslavia. S/1994/6774-27 May 1994. Section IIIB. http://www.his.com/~twarrick/commxyu1.htm

  6. 6.

    Global Security.org. Cluster munitions. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/cluster.htm

  7. 7.

    Martens clause, preamble to 1899 Hague Convention II with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/150?OpenDocument

  8. 8.

    http://www.ushahidi.com/about

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Jennifer Leaning

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  1. Jennifer Leaning
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Correspondence to Jennifer Leaning .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , College of Natural Resources, University of Idaho, Moscow, 83844, Idaho, USA

    Gary E. Machlis

  2. False Bay Dr. 351, Friday Harbor, 98250, Washington, USA

    Thor Hanson

  3. , Institute for Applied Ecology, Oikon Ltd., Avenija Dubrovnik 6-8, Zagreb, 10 020, Croatia

    Zdravko Špirić

  4. Association of American Geographers, 1710 16th Street, NW, Washington, 20009-3198, District of Columbia, USA

    Jean E. McKendry

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Leaning, J. (2011). A Public Health Approach to Warfare. In: Machlis, G., Hanson, T., Špirić, Z., McKendry, J. (eds) Warfare Ecology. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1214-0_10

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