Displacement & Poverty: Treating Symptoms, Ignoring Causes

Sam Jarada – The Public Trust

Introduction

In a recent systematic review, the authors estimated the prevalence of mental health disorders like depression and anxiety to be 22.1% in high-conflict regions (1). This statistic underscores how crucial mental health support is. Yet, it prompts reactions focused on therapy and medical assistance, which are essential for survival, but they don't tackle the deeper issues of displacement and poverty. In turn, mental health outcomes, along with physical health, aren’t always contextualised within their wider, overlooked causes like colonialism, climate change, warfare, occupation and genocide, leading to displacement and poverty among affected populations. 

However, humanitarian health portrays affected populations as patients rather than people with rights (2, 3). By reducing displacement and poverty to mere medical or humanitarian issues, humanitarian health unintentionally silences political and moral imperatives, such as the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees (4), and compensation for populations displaced due to climate change (5). This article critiques this whole approach, advocating for a shift: displaced populations aren’t only seen as patients to be treated, but as people with rights and dignity who demand justice.    

Biomedical & Political Gazes

As mentioned above, humanitarian health has focused on treating symptoms rather than tackling root causes, but how did this come about? This is called the “biomedical gaze”, as coined by Michel Foucault in his book: The Birth of the Clinic, which strips away complicated socioeconomic issues into medical pathologies (2, 3). For example, a malnourished Palestinian child is seen not as a victim of oppression by Israel. Rather, they are seen as a patient needing food aid (6). Likewise, a Syrian refugee with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is rarely seen as a survivor of warfare, but more as a case for trauma therapy (7). 

As we see for Palestinians and Syrians, the biomedical gaze removes context by excluding how political and structural violence contributes to deliberate and wider systemic power imbalances, leading to the biomedical gaze converting displacement and poverty into apolitical health problems (8, 9). Medicalisation doesn’t only simplify suffering; it removes the moral and political dimensions. As explained by physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer, broader factors like war, colonialism and economic exploitation (another form of political and structural violence) create and exacerbate health inequities (2). Therefore, displacement and poverty are depoliticised, concealing perpetrators like the occupiers/settlers, war criminals and fossil fuel companies.

A counterbalance to the biomedical gaze is the political gaze, which highlights justice, power and accountability. It poses vital questions: who benefits from displacement and poverty? Who must be held responsible for the conditions forcing people to leave with scarcity? The political gaze acknowledges that a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh isn’t only a vulnerable person needing aid. They’re a victim of genocide (10). Similarly, climate refugees from the Pacific Islands aren’t only climate change’s victims. They’re resilient against fossil fuel capitalism’s consequences (5). In turn, the political gaze doesn’t ignore health, it contextualises outcomes, ensuring that interconnected causes are accounted for, possibly leading to tailored solutions tackling causes and symptoms.     

Gaps in Humanitarian Health Action

My main critique of humanitarian health is that it focuses solely on treating the symptoms of issues and diseases. Moreover, humanitarian health can overlook the underlying political and structural violence leading to displacement and poverty experienced by populations. Looking back on Gaza, international aid tends to prioritise distributing food and implementing trauma therapy for survivors. However, this approach rarely tackles the blockade limiting access to vital resources and does not substantially critique Israeli oppression and war crimes (4).

Equally, Rohingya refugees in Myanmar and Bangladesh obtain mental health support, but the humanitarian response doesn’t truly acknowledge the genocide leading to the populations forcibly leaving their homes and experiencing poverty (10). Their “neutrality” isn’t apolitical. It’s actively contributing to depoliticisation of health outcomes because by framing displacement and poverty as medical or humanitarian problems, these organisations erase the perpetrators’ identities and silence the victims’ voices in political discourse. As a result, we have a humanitarian health system addressing symptoms of problems, while ignoring the political and structural violence creating them. 

Alternatives: Moving beyond Medicalisation towards Sociostructural Changes

To effectively move beyond medicalisation of humanitarian health, we must rethink its function. We can’t only treat symptoms anymore. We need to address causes and move our collective consciousness from neutrality to accountability, which relies on 3 major changes: 

1. Focusing on community rights and political advocacy
2. Connecting human rights and health advocacy
3. Supporting structural and community-led approaches 

For example, people working in health can use their platforms to document human rights violations and aid legal action. Physicians for Human Rights did this by utilising medical evidence to expose war crimes in Syria and aid cases at the International Criminal Court (11). 

Conclusion

Humanitarian health can't be neutral because it typically means neglecting the political and structural violence forcing people to flee their homes and experience poverty. By moving beyond treating the symptoms and fighting the issues head-on through tackling root causes, healthcare professionals, whether humanitarian or otherwise, can step up as champions for justice, rather than only being aid providers. This involves calling out the perpetrators, pushing for compensation, and giving displaced communities the tools and support they need to devise their own solutions.

References

1. Charlson F, van Ommeren M, Flaxman A, Cornett J, Whiteford H, Saxena S. New WHO prevalence estimates of mental disorders in conflict settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet. 2019;394(10194):240-248. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(19)30934-1 
2. Farmer P. Pathologies of power: rethinking health and human rights. American journal of public health. 1999;89(10):1486-1496. doi:10.2105/ajph.89.10.1486 
3. Suijker CA. Foucault and medicine: challenging normative claims. Medicine Health Care and Philosophy. 2023;26. doi:10.1007/s11019-023-10170-y
4. Al-Haq Annual Field Report on Human Rights Violations in 2022. Al-Haq  |  Defending Human rights in Palestine since 1979. Published 2022. Accessed July 16, 2026. https://www.alhaq.org/monitoring-documentation/21557.html 
5. IPCC. Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability Working Group II Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC. 2022;1(1). doi:10.1017/9781009325844 
6. Nutrition Vulnerability and Situation Analysis / Gaza. 2024. Available from: https://www.nutritioncluster.net/sites/nutritioncluster.com/files/2024-02/GAZA-Nutrition-vulnerability-and-SitAn-v7.pdf  
7. A Decade of Destruction: Attacks on health care in Syria. The IRC. 2025. Available from: https://www.rescue.org/report/decade-destruction-attacks-health-care-syria-0   
8. Sanders D, Wim De Ceukelaire, Hutton B. Health Policies and Health Care in the Context of Neoliberal Globalisation. Oxford Academic. Published online March 16, 2023:154-C5P253. doi:10.1093/oso/9780192858450.003.0005 
9. Murray TA, Breakey S, Coleman CL, et al. Structural violence, population health, and health equity. Nursing Outlook. 2026;74(2):102691. doi:10.1016/j.outlook.2026.102691 
10. 8 Years On: Accountability needed for Myanmar atrocities against Rohingya. Amnesty International. Published August 22, 2025. Accessed July 16, 2026. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/08/8-years-on-accountability-needed-for-myanmar-atrocities-against-rohingya/ 
11. Destruction, Obstruction, and Inaction: The Makings of a Health Crisis in Northern Syria. Physicians for Human Rights; 2021. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://phr.org/our-work/resources/syria-health-disparities/