The guerrillas are not alone in using violence to control territory. As their presence and power have expanded, so have the illegal selfdefense organizations, also known as paramilitaries, dedicated to eradicating the insurgency. The autodefensas, or self-defense groups, are the third party in Colombia’s three-sided civil conflict.1 Local armed self-defense groups have developed throughout Colo...

Armed conflicts are as old humanity itself. In past, regular armies were not established. The individuals, ordinarily the adults of hostile tribes, used to participate in armed conflicts. However, participation children was also common certain situations. Although would have been active participants, they engaged a strategic tool and proved be most vulnerable segment such situation. With passag...

One of the negative environmental impacts of the last armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the use of radioactive ammunition containing depleted uranium. The United Nations Environment Programme measurements detected higher radioactivity at several examined sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of those places is in the area of Hadzići, close to Sarajevo. This research included an evalua...

Americanpediatricianshavegone towar foralmostas longaspediatrics has been a specialty. A decade after Jacobi, Osler, and Forchheimer founded the American Pediatric Society in 1888, pediatricians, or “pediatrists” as they were sometimes called, were serving with the American military on foreign soil. Across more than a century of service, the role of pediatricians in armed conflict has often bee...

The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), formed in 2001, turned national attention toward the serious mental health consequences of the country's 20-year internal armed conflict. The TRC prioritized reparations in mental health, using a legal justification that provided victims-survivors of the war with a rights-based framework for demanding that the public sector attend to their...

In settings of armed conflict, traditional HIV prevention programmes that promote risk avoidance via abstinence and fidelity and risk reduction via condom use and needle exchange are not viable. In such contexts, HIV risk depends less on personal choice than on exposure to physical, emotional and structural violence. War in northern Uganda has created three realities (internally displaced peopl...

The aphorism of Hippocrates has become a cliché. From Larrey to Pirogov, Winnett-Orr and Trueta to DeBakey, the cliché has been proven to be a reality. The idea that surgery during armed conflict advances our knowledge of medicine and surgery has become commonplace. After 35 years’ experience, I think back on some of the implications of these clichés and commonplace ideas. Some progress has bee...

The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction prohibits the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of microbial or other biological agents, or toxins in a manner which has no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes. It also ban...