Description
Violence is increasingly framed as a public health problem and medical approaches to violence prevention are progressively occupying center-stage in global responses to violence. (Mitton 2019; Riemann 2019) This paper investigates the consequences of adopting such an approach in conflict and post-conflict environments. We do so by analysing the application of the Cure Violence Global (CVG) model in Israel and Palestine. CVG is unique in its approach as it sees violence as an actual disease that can be controlled and contained via epidemiological methods and strategies that are applied in disease control. Despite its short-term successes in reducing levels of violence, we argue that such an approach is at risk of de-politicizing conflict-resolution. Rooted in methodological individualism and evidence-based epistemology, this approach has the tendency to overlook structural causes and drivers of conflict, while concentrating its efforts on the individual alone. Conflict resolution, henceforth, becomes an individualized task, with the responsibility for success (or failure) entirely transferred onto the individual. As such, public-health-based approaches to conflict resolution overlook the centrality of complex structural conditions as well as the role of collective agency in conflict resolution.
