The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is intensifying as hundreds of thousands of people flee south in response to Israel’s warnings of an imminent “significant ground operation,” according to The New York Times. Over the weekend, the U.N. agency that helps Palestinians said nearly one million people have been displaced and Israel has enacted a siege on the territory that prohibits food, water, electricity or fuel from entering the territory. At the same time, the World Health Organization warns that the health system in Gaza is at the breaking point.
Faculty experts at the George Washington University are available to offer insight, commentary and analysis about the unfolding humanitarian and medical crisis in the Middle East. If you would like to speak with an expert, please contact Kathleen Fackelmann at [email protected] or Cate Douglass at [email protected].
Ramin Asgary, professor of global health and director of Humanitarian Health MPH, is a health services researcher and public health educator and practitioner. Asgary started working in humanitarian settings and complex emergencies with multiple humanitarian agencies and Doctors Without Borders-MSF in the mid 90s as field physician, medical coordinator, director, and senior health and research advisor in more than two dozen projects and missions in regions including Eurasia/Former Soviet States, Sub-Saharan/East/South Africa, South/Central America, and often in conflict or refugee settings.
Michael Barnett, University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science, is an expert on international affairs, global governance, global ethics, humanitarianism, the Middle East and the United Nations. Barnett’s current research projects include an edited volume and the changing forms of global governance; hierarchies in humanitarian governance; the end of the two state-solution and the rise of the one-state reality in Israel and Palestine; and the relationship between suffering and progress in the liberal international order. Among his authored books include the edited collection Humanitarianism and Human Rights: Worlds of Differences?
Ilana Feldman is a professor of anthropology, history, and international affairs. Her research has focused on the Palestinian experience, both inside and outside of historic Palestine, examining practices of government, humanitarianism, policing, displacement, and citizenship. She is the author of Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917-67, Police Encounters: Security and Surveillance in Gaza under Egyptian Rule, Life Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics; and co-editor of In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care.
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