This article is based on the author’s latest book ‘Sick of It: the Global Fight for Women’s Health.’
In the 2ndn.d In July 2024 the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) reported ‘another horrific attack on one of our health clinics’ killing and injuring staff in Darfur. IPPF Director General, Alvaro Bermejo commented:
Where will women and girls look for these services now? In the end there must be a critical mass of people of conscience who say enough is enough of this forgotten tragedy.’
The forgotten problem that Bermejo was talking about was the conflict in Darfur, an attack on the region’s health and the sexual and reproductive health needs of 800,000 people, but it can also apply to the broader issue of attacks on women’s health in conflict. During the Darfur invasion of 2n.d and the publication of my new book Sick of It: the Global Fight for Women’s Health on the 11ththThe World Health Organization (WHO) reported 18 health attacks, mainly in Ukraine, but also in Sudan and Myanmar. Attacks on health care and ‘dangerous medicine’ have been a ubiquitous violation of international law from the conflicts in Afghanistan to Syria to Ukraine to Gaza. Such abundance has been compared to images of bombed-out maternity hospitals in the news and constant abandonment. European and US leaders have condemned Russia’s attacks on Ukraine and Syria, while the South African government has cited health attacks in Gaza as part of a murder case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Few talk about Darfur.
What’s happening in the conflict is staring at news footage of bombed-out maternity clinics: health care – especially women’s health care – is under attack. As I argue Sick of ItAttacks on women’s health are at the core of the conflict, from slightly reducing restrictions or barriers to access to women’s health to the bombing of maternity hospitals. Such attacks are an extreme way in which women’s lives are exploited in world politics. Attacks on women’s lives are part of the destruction of infrastructure in a country or region. However, there is another very clear reason why the attack on women’s health is a central conflict: it is about the future. The mother’s life, in particular, becomes ‘inextricably linked to the future of the world: something to be protected, controlled or destroyed, depending on your situation.’ These attacks are central to understanding conflict, Women, Peace and Security, and human health security. As the lead of the Researching the Impact of Attacks on Healthcare project, Larissa Fast explained to me when I was researching this book, data on attacks on healthcare — especially how attacks affect men and women differently — is hard to come by and poorly researched. .
Women’s health has long been a neglected subject of International Relations (IR), easily dismissed as an issue of health, medicine, or development and welfare. While the foundational documents emphasize the role of sexual and reproductive health (SRHR) and campaigns against FGM in the international movement, global feminism, and the creation of important UN organizations such as UNFPA and UN Women, when it comes . in women’s health, IR lost attention in the late 1990s. This is interesting given the dominance of women’s health in international development and foreign aid programs (especially the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals), US foreign policy (the Global Gag Rule is a prime example of this), the role of abortion and far-right populism , the importance of women’s lives in colonial projects, the gendered aspects of global health emergencies and epidemics, and the crime and work of conflict obstetric violence. Women’s health has a close perspective in the critical analysis of the economy of women’s politics in terms of gender care and labor – where the health security of many modern women is built – and more attention in the barometer of international relations without international journals and conferences, student dissertations.
In Sick of It I argue that women’s health is used as political capital to gain and sustain power in international politics in two ways. First, with the exploitation of women’s lives as a subject; secondly, with the exploitation of women working in the health sector. It’s not just the usual suspects – right-wing religious groups – who are exploiting, or the usual bikini issues – especially abortion – that dominate. The problem with such exploitation is those people who claim to improve the health of women who are some of the worst perpetrators, from Rwanda using the amazing progress in women’s health to wash the authority of the government, aid organizations exploiting free public health work. workers, in humanitarian organizations using images of women at risk of income. This goes right to the heart of the power of women’s lives as political currency: the assumption that saving women is natural, no matter what the purpose or who is doing it.
Issues that are becoming a natural commodity in world politics are ready to be exploited. People turn away. The natural beauty of women’s health becomes the only one that passes external inspection: in the case of the WHO, yes there was the worst case of sexual harassment, abuse and exploitation of women and girls by WHO staff by a single agency in the history of the UN, but look at the important work of the institution in maternal health. It is the same for women working in the health sector: global health cannot be gender-based, it suffers from gender inequality or representation problems because women make up 70% of the world’s health workers.
Sick of It I was inspired by a question that I have returned to throughout my work – why do women die needlessly? This is not just a question of scientific research on the leading causes of death for women, health financing and infrastructure that meet the needs of women, or public health messages that prevent the causes of death and disease. It is a question of international politics. What stands out about women’s health is how much political will, commitment and investment there is in it. It is not a problem of invisibility or indifference, but the wrong kind of attention – attention not to improve women’s health, but to gain and maintain power in the world.
Further Studies in E-International Relations
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