Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, In Partnership with (WHO), has started the initial preparations for holding GCMHP's 5th international conference entitled "Siege and Mental Health… Walls vs. Bridges". The conference is decided to take place in Gaza city and Rammallah through the video conference technique, on 27th - 29th October, 2008.
The conference aims at discussing issues related to siege and its impacts on mental health and human rights. Further, it will give opportunity to the participants including: international academics, policy makers, and civil society groups to first hand understand the impacts of siege and violence on the reality of mental health and human rights. The conference will include keynote speakers, workshops, and discussions sharing experiences on the conference themes. Also, it will include field visits to various places in the Gaza Strip including Hospitals, camps, razed farms and destroyed homes. At the end of the visits, a press conference will be held jointly by all groups. Additionally, the conference will include documentaries about the effects of siege on all aspects of life in Gaza Strip.
In addition, the conference will address the scientific and practical reality of siege, and humanitarian suffering of the Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, as well as the disastrous ramifications of the siege on the mental health status especially among children and women. Moreover, the conference will address various themes such as: Siege and mental health, culture, democracy, civil society, impact of adversity on individual, family, community, siege in international law and human rights, international experiences of siege, siege and public health, siege and development, impacts of living in adversity situations, history of sieges and their impact on mental health and behavior, women and children under military siege.
In this context, the invitations were distributed to interested and specialized individuals, groups, and organizations in the local and international communities to participate in the conference and offer work papers on the themes of the conference. It is worth to mention that this invitation received wide responses in the international, Arab and local communities, and many work papers were received from interested individuals worldwide.
For more information about the conference, please visit:
http://www.gcmhp.net/File_files/conference2008/index-conf2k8.htm