Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Network

Ethics and crisis translation: insights from the work of Paul Ricoeur

Posted by Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Network in Announcements, Research

New Paper by Donal O’Mathuna & Matthew Hunt

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/DPM-01-2019-0006/full/

“Paul Ricoeur was one of the leading philosophers in the twentieth century, writing on a wide variety of topics. From these, his work on translation and on ethics provided suitable ways to examine ethical issues in crisis translation. In particular, his concept of “linguistic hospitality” provides an important lens through which translation ethics can be examined. In addition, Ricoeur’s approach to ethics emphasized relational and justice dimensions which are crucial to examine in humanitarian settings.”

Epistemic Injustice and Humanitarian Action: The case of language and translation

Posted by Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Network in Commentaries, Research

Ryoa Chung is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Université de Montréal.

Matthew Hunt is an Associate Professor and the Director of Research in the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy at McGill University.

This article originally appears on the University of Edinburgh Law’s Justice in Global Health Emergencies & Humanitarian Crises Blog.

“Access to information has been described as a humanitarian good, alongside other basic needs such as food, water, shelter and healthcare [1]. Accountability is a major priority in the humanitarian sector, including accountability of non-governmental organizations toward the communities they serve. Coordination of aid between humanitarian organizations, and with local governments and agencies, has been identified as a key concern for effective crisis response [2]. And yet, All three of these activities – sharing information, practicing accountability and coordinating aid responses – are predicated upon the mobilization and exchange of knowledge, and serve to illustrate their centrality to humanitarian action. Important ethical concerns exist, however, when some individuals or groups are excluded from the pooling and exchange of knowledge. One source of exclusion relates to the linguistic dimensions of humanitarian aid: what languages are spoken by whom and for which purposes, what language barriers exist, what credibility or authority is or is not associated with people speaking certain languages, and whether translation is available….”

[1] Greenwood F, Howarth C, Poole D, Raymond N, Scarnecchia D. The Signal Code: A Human Rights Approach to Information During Crisis. Cambridge; 2016.

[2] Stephenson, Jr, M. (2005). Making humanitarian relief networks more effective: operational coordination, trust and sense making. Disasters, 29(4), 337-350.

On World Humanitarian Day, let’s reflect on relieving suffering through palliative care.

Posted by Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Network in Announcements, In the News, Palliative Care Research (EPC-IHA), Research

Follow this link to see how Dr. Lisa Schwartz and the HHE team were the focus of a reflection on World Humanitarian Day by the McMaster Global Health Office.

This team is tackling injustices in global health emergencies & humanitarian crises

Posted by Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Network in Announcements, Invitations to Participate

A little over a year ago, several researchers working on ethical and justice based questions arising in global health emergencies (health crises of global concern) and in other humanitarian crises came together on a Wellcome Trust funded project entitled: “Vulnerability and Justice in Global Health Emergency Regulation: Developing Future Ethical Models.” Our key concerns were around how inequalities, vulnerabilities and various forms of injustices are often reinforced in these contexts, and how future public health responses could be better attuned to these issues.

We are delighted to announce that we recently launched our website “Justice in Global Health Emergencies & Humanitarian Crises”.

On this platform, we’re aiming to explore issues around vulnerability and justice during global health emergencies and humanitarian crises through a range of media:

Short animations that explain concepts that are central to our project, such as structural injustice, epistemic injustice, the importance of denaturalising disasters, among others.
Blog-like applied illustrations of the relevance of central concepts in real-world scenarios and examples.
A podcast, “Just Emergencies”, where we sit down with humanitarian workers and researchers to talk about their work and interests.
A series of invited blog posts, which capture the knowledge and experiences of a diverse range of people who share with us the pressing issues of working in the global health and humanitarian sectors.
A developing section dedicated to modelling for global health emergencies in the future.
A list of articles, books and websites that might be of use to those researching, teaching or generally interested in these topics.

We’re hoping that this website is a useful resource to academics, humanitarian workers, students, and the interested public alike. Ideally, we would like this to develop into a platform where researchers and humanitarian actors can engage with these topics and in dialogue with us.

If you are willing to share your thoughts and experience as practitioners or researcher in the form of a blog post, or would like to talk about your global health emergency or humanitarian crises experience on the podcast, please get in touch at ghe@ed.ac.uk.

New content will be posted on a regular basis, so we warmly invite you to sign up to our newsletter. You can also follow us on twitter (@GanguliMitra)

“And whom do you let go?” a poster on palliative care in natural disaster settings

Posted by Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Network in Announcements, Palliative Care Research (EPC-IHA), Research

Takhliq Amir presented her fourth-year research project poster this week at McMaster University. Congratulations on the great analysis!

How well was HHErg represented at HEI Research Day 2019? Extremely well, thank you.

Posted by Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Network in Announcements, Events, Palliative Care Research (EPC-IHA), Research

On March 14, McMaster’s Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact hosted its annual Research Day.

The HHErg was well represented this year with two poster presentations (below) and an oral presentation entitled, “Dying in the Margins: Palliative Care, Humanitarian Crises and the Intersection of Global and Local Health Systems.”

Pictured from L to R, Jhalok Talukdar, Rachel Yantzi, and Takhliq Amir.

Downloadable PDF of the Natural Disasters Array poster.

Downloadable PDF of the Opportunities and Challenges poster.

Can a Television Change Perceptions of Ebola?

Posted by Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Network in Announcements, Commentaries, EVD Research (EVD-IQR), Palliative Care Research (EPC-IHA)

Fear and dread of Ebola is shared by patients, healthcare providers and the general public. Some of this fear comes from a lack of understanding of how the disease is experienced combatted. Follow this link to read a commentary by HHERG’s Sonya de Laat, Postdoctoral Fellow in Humanitarian Health Ethics at McMaster University, on the role of a television set in contributing to a change in perception about Ebola Virus Disease.