Educating Future Leaders to Engage with their Communities

At the 78th World Health Assembly in Geneva (held under the theme One World for Health), Qatar’s Minister of Public Health, His Excellency Mansoor bin Ebrahim Al Mahmoud, reaffirmed his country’s commitment to global public health - as both an end in itself and a means to achieving a more just, secure, and humane world. In today’s fractured international landscape, this can be seen as a symbolic statement of solidarity with the World Health Organization (WHO), which has come under attack by U.S. President Donald Trump, who decided to withdraw U.S. funding - $1.28 billion, or 12% of the overall budget, for 2022-2023. But this commitment was more than symbolic. It signaled Qatar’s evolving role as a practitioner of what might best be called humanitarian diplomacy - the use of diplomatic tools to protect civilians, safeguard essential services, and open pathways to peace through principled engagement. Nowhere is this more urgently needed than in the realm of global health today.

Around the world, health systems are not only stretched by efforts to recover from the impact of COVID-19, they are also being systematically destroyed. From Sudan to Gaza, Syria to Ukraine, hospitals are bombed, ambulances are blocked, and health workers killed - acts that directly violate international humanitarian law. The WHO has verified more than 2,500 attacks on healthcare between 2022 and 2024. Attacks are defined as “any act of verbal or physical violence or obstruction or threat of violence that interferes with the availability, access, and delivery of curative and/or preventive health services during emergencies.” But troubling as these numbers are, they mask a deeper problem. There is a profound moral difference between a nurse being verbally harassed and the deliberate targeting and bombing of a hospital. Lumping such disparate acts into a single category risks dulling public outrage, weakening institutional accountability, and ultimately undermining the very foundations of the laws of war.

Few examples illustrate this more starkly than Israel’s systematic destruction of health infrastructure in Gaza, including the sadistic killing of the children of Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar, a Palestinian pediatrician at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Nine of her ten children were killed on May 24 in an Israeli airstrike while she was working to save the lives of others. Her husband, also a doctor at the same hospital, was severely injured, as was her only surviving child. That the family of a doctor - someone whose life is devoted to care - could be targeted so mercilessly underscores the extent to which humanitarian norms are being abandoned. And yet, such atrocities are increasingly met with bureaucratic language and data dashboards. This is not enough.

This is where Qatar’s approach to humanitarian diplomacy matters.

Unlike larger Western powers constrained by strategic entanglements and alliances, Qatar has carved out a distinctive niche: leveraging its impartiality, convening power, and financial resources to advance humanitarian protection, even in some of the world’s most politically volatile regions. From directly funding WHO emergency operations to responding rapidly to natural disasters and mediating humanitarian access - including in Gaza - Qatar is not merely reacting to global health crises. It is actively reshaping the practice of diplomacy in an era marked by the rule of might and the collapse of shared reference points, predictable norms, and institutions.

Humanitarian diplomacy is about more than delivering aid; it is about making care a political priority. It means restoring trust in multilateral systems like WHO, which have saved millions of lives over the years. It means pressing for ceasefires in the midst of war to protect civilians and enable life-saving interventions. It means negotiating the flow of water, medicine, fuel, and food when normal channels are obstructed. And it means using diplomatic credibility to defend health workers—not as collateral to be managed, but as frontline defenders of human dignity.

Uniquely, Qatar’s humanitarian diplomacy points to a larger possibility: using health as a bridge to peace. Throughout history, health has often been a rare domain where adversaries find common ground. Vaccination campaigns, disease surveillance, and epidemic responses have created opportunities for cross-border cooperation even amid conflict. Approached with care, health diplomacy can open back channels, build trust, and humanize negotiations that might otherwise be politically impossible.

In this regard, Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s College of Public Policy is launching the Humanitarian Diplomacy Initiative in collaboration with the Geneva Center for Humanitarian Studies at the University of Geneva to explore how Qatar’s dual role - both as a donor and a facilitator of dialogue - can be combined into a powerful instrument for transformative engagement. By championing this model, Qatar can help lead the way in shaping a new generation of norms that center the protection of health not only as a humanitarian imperative but as a cornerstone of peacebuilding. This demonstrates that even in a world of division, there is still space for small states to lead - with compassion, courage, and clarity.

Dr. Sultan Barakat is a professor at the College of Public Policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. He is a renowned scholar in the study of war-torn societies and their recovery.

This piece has been submitted by HBKU’s Communications Directorate on behalf of its author. The thoughts and views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect an official University stance.