Resources

The ‘To live together’ initiative was born at a meeting in February 1996 with Professor Emeritus Antoine Cuendet, a pediatric surgeon, former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Geneva University, and chairman of the Geneva Foundation to Protect Health in War (hereafter the Geneva Foundation). His foundation was in a process of trying to better define its scope of action within the large theme of ‘health and war’, and to identify areas of research that would deserve priority support. We agreed that, at a time when politicians had entered an era of peacemaking in the Middle-East, the situation might be suitable for Palestinians and Israelis to venture into joint research projects. In particular, a potentially fruitful project could be to examine the effects of long term, protracted conflicts-such as the Israeli-Palestinian one-on the mental and social health of children. Little was known about how much of their anxiety, psychosomatic complaints, agressivity, behavioural disorders or school failures may be linked with direct or indirect consequences of the conflict. What were the interventions or instruments that may counterbalance, or even correct such problems? Was there any kind of an educational programme, for instance, that might be demonstrated to be efficacious in counteracting those putative effects of the conflict; and that might prove of value in actually accelerating the healing of the traumatisms, while simultaneously strengthening the construction of peace?