Health, Conflict, Stability and Statebuilding: A House Built on Sand?

Abstract

Increasingly, the purpose of third party health interventions in fragile states has become linked to statebuilding agendas in order to build government through health programmes. However, there is only limited data to support the efficacy of such an assumption. Indeed, this approach may instead invert the desired outcome of social legitimacy and undermine the rationale for which it is intended. This paper examines the strategic response from donors vis-à-vis the objective of statebuilding, and concludes that new research is required. It concludes that until there is empirically based evidence of the benefits of health interventions for statebuilding, the goals of health interventions should remain fixed primarily on improving health indicators instead.

Keywords:

• health
• stabilization
• state
• legitimacy
• stability

Notes

1. Interview with Egbert Sondorp, Senior Lecturer in Health and Conflict at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 15 April 2011.