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Interlinkages between armed conflicts, health, and peace are well known. Violence and armed conflicts have devastating implications for health. Health is always under attack. A recent report found that there were 1,335 incidents affecting healthcare facilities reported across 49 countries and territories in 2021; these conflicts not only constrained access to care but directly affected nearly 1,500 health workers, with at least 94 assaulted, 161 killed, 170 kidnapped, 320 injured and 713 arrested [Safeguarding Health in Conflict, 2021]. These attacks on health and healthcare workers are unacceptable under international human rights and humanitarian laws. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2022) constitution recognizes health as fundamental to the “attainment of peace and security”. It is dependent upon the fullest cooperation of individuals and States. Health can be a bridge to peace, especially in settings where conflict torments people’s lives. It may be both, a contributor to and a beneficiary of peace. While there cannot be health without peace, there cannot be peace without health either: lack of access to basic social services, such as healthcare, for specific population groups, often on ethnic or religious grounds, leads to feelings of exclusion, sentiments of unfair treatment by the government and perceptions of unequal treatment vis-à-vis other groups. These inequities lead to grievances, which often boil over into protests and later violence (Coninx et al. 2022).

A study shows that there are three possible avenues of interventions that health as a bridge for peace programs can adopt. First is delivering health services in underserved places of conflict zones and promoting trust. This option is the traditional role of the health community. The second is providing a neutral platform and bridge for conflicting sides to work on health, convening actors and building confidence. This option is perhaps the most challenging as it requires actors to leave their comfort zones and create win-win solutions. Third is providing mental health, psychosocial support, and rehabilitation services to foster healing in conflict affected communities. This can facilitate reconciliation and sustain peace. These three avenues, fostering trust, facilitating health cooperation, and enhancing social cohesion can provide pathways to reconciliation (Khan et al., 2022). Experts argue that health policymakers can do more to operationalize health as a bridge to peace through conflict analysis, advocacy, and improved capacity building of the health workforce for peace skills and partnerships. Others find that having diverse gender leadership in health systems during conflicts offers greater prospects for sustainable peace and more equitable social economic recovery in the post-conflict period. They argue that focusing on gender diversity of leadership and governance in health systems improves the link between peace and health, particularly in active conflict settings.