The belief that the favelas of Rio de Janeiro constitute a ‘war zone’ is widely held in Brazilian society. intensity violence and level organization some armed actors are comparable to those officially recognized non-international conflicts elsewhere world. As increasingly fought situations where it challenging distinguish civilians from combatants, binary divisions international law failing ad...

Armed conflicts often constitute ‘complex emergencies’, defined as situations affecting large civilian populations which combine war or civil strife with food shortages and population displacement [1,2]. Wars can increase the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STI) and facilitate HIV transmission through sexual routes, injection drug use (IDU), contaminated blood transfusions and occupa...