Health and Human Rights Course

Spring 2012

PubH 6807 Global Health, Relief, Development and Religious & Non-Religious NGOs

 Wednesdays, 5:40-8:30 pm,  1/18-5/2 (3 Cr)

Instructor: Kirk C. Allison, Ph.D., M.S.

Open to all Academic Health Center, Graduate, Professional students and advanced undergraduates (interested others, including from the community, may contact instructor: 612-626-6559, alli0001@umn.edu)

Enrollment via U of MN Onestop (#59681)

Materials include Thomas Barnett & Thomas G. Weiss edited volume, Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics (Cornell UP, 2008, in bookstore & online) and articles and background researches via Moodle, Electronic Reserve or linked through the syllabus. Guest speakers will illuminate specific contexts.

This course counts toward the SPH Global Health Interdisciplinary Concentration, the Graduate Minor in Human Rights and Masters of Development Practice.

The course critically explores interesections of global health, relief, and development under a public health horizon; historical emergence of humanitarianism; relation to human rights; relationships between (inter)governmental agencies & NGOs in development and humanitarian response; models of operation; confessional content, convergences and conflicts in relief and development contexts; military humanitarian interve relief and development informed by a wide variety of religious and philosophical traditions.   

Topics include: 

• Historical emergence of humanitarianism
• Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) & global health
• Relief, development and human rights
• International Committee of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies Code of Conduct
• Aid and unintended consequences
• Culture, relief and development
• Development and HIV/AIDS, TB & malaria
• Remittances, private and governmental development flows
• UN, Intergovernmental Organizations and relief and development
• IMF, World Bank, globalization and development
• Women, children, disability & vulnerable populaitons in relief & development
• International and/or local NGOs and actors
• Religion, relief and development: Collaboration or conflict?
• Relief, development and religious NGOs and traditions: Islamic, Christian (Orthodox, Catholic, Evangelical, Anabaptist), Jewish, Buddhist, Taoist, Secularist
• Military-humanitarian intervention 
• Aid workers, security, and politics 

Guest speakers will illuminate specific contexts.

Written work: Reaction papers (3 x 3 pgs), final paper (10-15 pgs), Moodle log entries, written final.