98. Mental Health Research in the Syrian Humanitarian Crisis by Hussam Jefee-Bahloul and Kaveh Khoshnood

In areas of armed conflicts, efforts to provide mental health services for refugees and internally displaced populations (IDPs) generally lack measures of effectiveness, and the gap between research and practice is significant. The Syrian Crisis has been described by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as "the great tragedy of this century". The UNHCR reports at least 24 agencies currently providing mental health and psychological support to Syrian refugees.

The actual interventions provided vary considerably among the agencies, which complicates the implementation of academic research and mental health services in humanitarian settings. This is further challenged by the limited academic publications on the matters of Syrian refugees' mental health beyond basic needs assessment.

In an effort to standardize mental health interventions in humanitarian settings, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) had published standardized guidelines for provision of mental health services, but had not addressed the role of academic research.

Creating a research agenda for mental health in the less-resourceful settings has been emphasized. However, there are barriers to establish academic research in emergency humanitarian settings. Those barriers have been identified before, and we will mention few examples here in relevance to the Syrian scenario.

Continue: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4032903/

97. Voice of Witness (VOW)

Voice of Witness (VOW) is a non-profit organisation dedicated to fostering a more nuanced, empathy-based understanding of contemporary human rights crises. We do this by amplifying the voices of men and women most closely affected by injustice, and by providing curricular and training support to educators and invested communities.

Go to: http://voiceofwitness.org/

96. Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation. Edited by Cate Malek and Mateo Hoke (Editor)

From Voice of Witness: For more than six decades, Israel and Palestine have been the global focal point of intractable conflict, one that has led to one of the world's most widely reported yet least understood human rights crises.

In their own words, men and women from West Bank and Gaza describe how their lives have been shaped by the conflict. Here are stories that humanize the oft-ignored violations of human rights that occur daily in the occupied Palestinian territories. Narrators include:

EBTIHAJ, whose son, born during the first intifada, was killed by Israeli soldiers during a night raid almost twenty years later.

NADER, a professional marathon runner from the Gaza Strip who is determined to pursue his dream of competing international races in the face of countless challenges, including severe travel restrictions and few resources to help him train.

Amiad Cohen, the head of security for Eli Settlement, which covers eight hilltops in the central West Bank. He talks about the Jewish identity and the conflict from a settler perspective and his conflicted feelings about the settlement project and relationships with Palestinians.

IBTISAM, the director of a children's center in the West Bank whose work is significantly constrained by mobility obstacles in the region.

KIFAH, who was jailed for years with no charges. She believes she was imprisoned for her work as a community leader and outreach to prisoners before her arrest.

Go to: http://voiceofwitness.org/palestine-speaks-voices-from-the-west-bank-and-gaza/#sthash.rNeTesYV.dpuf

95. The Role of Physicians in Conflicts and Humanitarian Crises: Case Studies From the Field Missions of Physicians for Human Rights, 1988 to 1993

Abstract: Violations of human rights in wars, civil conflicts, and brutal repression mounted by governments against their own citizens often have profound consequences to individual and public health and may, in turn, produce humanitarian crises.

The skills of physicians, medical and forensic scientists, and other health workers are uniquely valuable in human rights investigations and documentation, producing evidence of abuse more credible and less vulnerable to challenge than traditional methods of case reporting. Only in recent decades, however, have physicians organized specifically to meet this responsibility.

This article presents case studies from the field missions of Physicians for Human Rights to illustrate the investigation and documentation of violations of medical neutrality, refugee health crises, the use of indiscriminate weapons, torture, deliberate injury and rape, and mass executions.

Participation of health workers in the defense of human rights now includes investigation and documentation of health effects in threatened populations as well as individual victims.

By H. Jack Geiger, MD and Robert M. Cook-Deegan, MD

Go to: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=407732