Statement made on 17 November 2011 by Senator Roméo Dallaire
Hon. Roméo Antonius Dallaire:
Honourable senators, from November 13 to 15, 2011, Montreal hosted a global health conference, which was put on by McGill University and international development agencies from both Canada and the United States.
One of the themes discussed showed that conflicts around the world are a source of concern for global health. The conference addressed some wide-ranging topics. For example, international conflicts that require the creation of refugee camps can lead to inhumane conditions and sources of diseases that can provoke pandemics.
Global pandemics that may arise through conflicts because of the international displaced camps and refugee camps in the world are a threat to countries like ours, as they are spread not only by the refugees who are permitted to enter but also by all those who work to try to protect them.
The second dimension of conflict and how it will affect global health is that such conflicts can perpetuate themselves because those big refugee camps and camps of internally displaced persons are a source of extremism and terrorism. Thus, there is a continuous cycle of creating problems through these camps. The camps are created due to conflicts and within those camps conflicts will continue to be regenerated because of extremism and terrorism.
Ultimately, this puts the global atmosphere — the global scenario for humanity — at risk because we are not resolving the conflicts. It is not that we do not have the tools to control some of the pandemics that exist around the world, such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and so on, but we do not seem to want to use the proactive tools to stop the continued conflicts in imploding nations and failing states, which lead to mass atrocities and abuses that create a situation in which we guarantee a future pandemic and the risk to our countries because of conflicts in far-off lands. Therefore, it is in our self-interest to consider global health also in terms of security.