Gaza: A perspective on children in war zones

Dr. Sawsan Abdulrahim is a Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the American University of Beirut where she teaches courses on health promotion theory, social epidemiology, and forced migration. Her work centers human rights principles to illuminate and act upon social inequities in health across the life course, with a focus on refugee populations and labor migrants in the Arab region and beyond. She is the lead author of the Arab Watch Report 2023 on the Right to Health, a live document intended to inform policy and advocacy efforts toward achieving health for all in the Arab region. Her substantive research areas include migration and health; the syndemic of early marriage and mental distress in forced displacement; and aging and the wellbeing of women migrant care workers.

Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH, is a senior fellow at the Harvard FXB Center and Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. As associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, she is a faculty member in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She served as the director of the Harvard FXB Center from January 1, 2010 until September 1, 2018. Her research interests focus on issues of public health and international law in response to war and disaster, early warning for mass atrocities, and problems of human security in the context of forced migration and conflict. She has field experience in assessment of issues of public health, human rights, and international humanitarian law in a range of crisis situations (including Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Kosovo, the Middle East, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, Somalia, the Chad-Darfur border, and the African Great Lakes area).  She has published widely on these topics and submitted reports and policy briefings to US and UN agencies, the International Criminal Court, and major NGOs.