Global Health and Peace: The Elusive Path with a Focus on Palestine, Ukraine, and Venezuela

The interrelationality of health and peace is complex, multifactorial, and imbued with political and economic challenges. Peace and health outcomes reflect shared fundamental values related to the achievement of a balanced holistic condition on the individual and collective level. This causal relationship between social inequity and health requires special attention be paid to the impact of political instability and structural violence on undermining health systems in conflict zones. The mutual dependency between peace and health means that peace cannot be achieved without the existence of physical, mental, social, and spiritual health, and holistic health cannot be sustained under violent conditions. The interrelationality of peace and health as mutual conditions shapes our understanding of global solidarity and advocacy in relation to health diplomacy and peace promotion if addressed equally across all conflict zones. This commentary analyzes the unique interdisciplinary contextual factors that contribute to, or undermine the realization of global health and peace in three active conflict zones: Palestine, Ukraine, and Venezuela. Contextual analysis, review of the evidence, and synthesis of the authors' perspectives were used. The health-peace nexus remains a theoretical approach and lacks real application in most settings under crisis. Peace is a multifaceted phenomenon that necessitates the participation, dedication, and action of all sectors and stakeholders in global societies, including health policymakers, scientists, professionals, and people. Both the "right to health" and the "right to peace" even at the minimum remains unfulfilled, particularly in Palestine, and can be realized through two trajectories: (1) honest, responsible, and fair accountability, transparency, and political commitment empowered by reliable global health diplomacy for maintaining peace, eliminating the roots of injustice, and protecting health systems, and (2) equitable and real implementation of peace-health approaches, policies and actions driven by monitoring mechanisms that promote health, well-being, health security and equity for all nations under conflicts.