Croatian Medical Journal
Volume 40, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 438-445

Challenge of goodness II: New humanitarian technology, developed in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1991-1995, and applied and evaluated in Kosovo 1999 (Review)

Lang S.*
  • a Andrija Stampar Sch. of Pub. Hlth., Zagreb University, School of Medicine, Zagreb, Croatia, Department of Social Medicine, Andrija Stampar Sch. of Pub. Hlth., Zagreb University School of Medicine, Rockefellerova 4, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

This paper presents improvements of the humanitarian proposals of the Challenge of Goodness project published earlier (1). In 1999 Kosovo crisis, these proposals were checked in practice. The priority was again on the practical intervention - helping people directly - to prevent, stop, and ease suffering. Kosovo experience also prompted us to modify the concept of the Challenge of Goodness. It should include research and education (1. redefinition of health, 2. confronting genocide, 3. university studies and education, and 4. collecting experience); evaluation (1. Red Cross forum, 2. organization and technology assessment, 3. Open Hand-Experience of Good People); activities in different stages of war of conflict in: 1. prevention (right to a home, Hate Watch, early warning), 2. duration (refugee camps, prisoners-of-war camps, global hospital, minorities), 3. end of conflict (planned, organized, and evaluated protection), 4. post conflict (remaining and abandoned populations, prisoners of war and missing persons, civilian participation, return, and renewal). Effectiveness of humanitarian intervention may be performed by politicians, soldiers, humanitarian workers, and volunteers, but the responsibility lies on science. Science must objectively collect data, develop hypotheses, check them in practice, allow education, and be the force of good, upon which everybody can rely. Never since the World War II has anybody in Europe suffered in war and conflict so much as peoples in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. We should search for the meaning of their suffering, and develop new knowledge and technology of peace.

Author Keywords

Bosnia-herzegovina Prisoners of war World Health Organization Helsinki Declaration human rights Kosovo War Refugees Red Cross Croatia

Index Keywords

education social justice red cross refugee Croatia conflict Refugees war prisoner Prisoners medical ethics Bosnia and Herzegovina international cooperation organization human rights health Bosnia-Herzegovina altruism technology science Humans homicide responsibility Minority Groups Review research Hospitals

Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-0032778972&partnerID=40&md5=bb75b6843e17c85ffdf9f8dec8d9b046

ISSN: 03539504
Cited by: 16
Original Language: English