Health Effects on Women from Systematic and Organized Violence in the Middle East: How Humanitarian Organizations ca

Altruism, service and giving back are emphasized frequently in the United States today. One such way to participate is to donate money, resources or time to humanitarian aid organizations who can effectively utilize those resources to help those in need. However, humanitarian aid organizations and the general public are often only aware of general medical needs of the targeted population without much knowledge on gender specific health problems that arose from pre-existing patriarchal social structures (Mazurana, 2013). Systematic and intimate violence targeting women is one way patriarchal structures are maintained, particularly in the Middle East. These forms of violence often cause many health complications in women that are unaddressed by both healthcare institutions of those countries and by humanitarian aid organizations. The purpose of my thesis project is to bring awareness of these unaddressed health complications women face in the Middle East as well as propose some ideas of how to address them to both humanitarian aid organizations and to the general public, who donate to these organizations. I will accomplish this by composing a scholarly literature review of how violence effects women’s health and what humanitarian aid organizations can do to treat these complications with the resources they have