SIPRI Global Health and Security Programme

While the benefits of health appear to be self-evident, there are many connections between health and security—at the global, regional and national levels—that often go unrecognized. Most simply put, wide-spread threats to health can threaten security. However, while health is essential for establishing security for individuals and communities, it is one of the most unevenly distributed human rights and combating health inequalities is one of the major challenges facing the international community in reaching the UN Millennium Development Goals.

Since the mid-1990s, much effort has been invested in elevating global health on foreign policy and security agendas. But more can be done to raise the profile of global health and to counter the effects of the financial crisis and donor fatigue, while avoiding the pitfalls of turning a global public good such as health into a matter of national security. Pointing out the relationships between health and security to policymakers will provide added incentives for them to promote sustainable development, which will benefit global health as well as global security and individual human rights.

The objective of the SIPRI Global Health and Security Programme is to highlight global health policy as an integral part of foreign and security policy through research and outreach work. The programme combines SIPRI’s long-standing experience in international security policy with expertise in global health policy and governance, life sciences, sustainable development and foreign aid. The objectives of the programme are to:

• establish and sustain a network of international experts across relevant disciplines to help make visible the relationships between health and security
• commission specific research into these relationships by the network in order to develop evidence-based policy recommendations that highlight global health as an important pillar of foreign and security policy
• present policy recommendations to European leaders and stakeholders