Johns Hopkins–Lancet Commission Releases Report on Health, Conflict and Forced Displacement at World Health Assembly

A major Johns Hopkins-The Lancet commission on health in conflict and forced displacement is being published this week, with its global launch set for Tuesday in Geneva during the World Health Assembly, a timing that places the report directly before senior World Health Organization officials, diplomats, donors and humanitarian agencies.

The report, titled “Health in a World of Crises and Impunity,” comes from the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health-Lancet Commission on health, conflict, and forced displacement, according to the commission’s website and event listings. Its release lands as forced displacement remains at record levels and attacks on health care continue across conflicts, underscoring why the commission has framed its work around both crisis and impunity.

The Geneva launch is scheduled for May 20 in a hybrid event at Campus Biotech hosted by the Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies at the University of Geneva, according to the university’s event listing. The event falls during the 79th World Health Assembly, which runs May 18-23, and was listed in the assembly’s broader side-event period.

The commission itself was launched in early 2024 as a collaboration between the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health and The Lancet, according to its “About us” page. It is chaired by Paul B. Spiegel, with Karl Blanchet, Esperanza Martínez and Chi-Chi Undie serving as co-chairs. The commission includes 21 commissioners and 21 “NextGen” scholars, according to its website.

Its stated mission is broader than a single academic publication. The commission says it aims to “rethink and reimagine the strategies, governance, and delivery modes of humanitarian aid,” challenge power structures in humanitarian health, amplify the voices of people affected by conflict and displacement, and produce policy recommendations for global health and humanitarian institutions.

The backdrop is a crisis measured both in scale and in the erosion of protections for care. By the end of 2024, about 123 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced, according to UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency. That total included 42.7 million refugees and 73.5 million internally displaced people, or people uprooted within their own countries. Separately, the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition and Insecurity Insight documented roughly 3,600 incidents of violence against or obstruction of health care in 2024.

That accountability gap is part of the significance of the report’s title. In 2016, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 2286, which condemned attacks on medical personnel and facilities in armed conflict. This year marks the resolution’s 10th anniversary, a milestone that has prompted renewed scrutiny of weak enforcement. In a joint statement issued May 4, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the WHO director-general and the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières said: “Ten years ago, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2286 on health care in armed conflicts. The situation is even worse compared to 10 years ago. Today, we mark not an achievement — we mark a failure.”

The Geneva launch is also part of a broader rollout aimed at policy and public audiences beyond the assembly itself. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is scheduled to host a North America launch on June 2, also as a hybrid event. In that event description, the school said: “At a time of escalating conflicts, growing displacement, shrinking resources, and increasing impunity, the report calls for a new paradigm for the humanitarian sector.”

Together, the two launches suggest the commission is seeking to shape debate not just in academic and humanitarian circles, but among the global health and diplomatic officials meeting in Geneva as conflict, displacement and attacks on care remain defining international health challenges.