Guidelines for your essay

The following guidelines are recommendations from our side. They are not absolutes, but might help you to write the requested home exam for gaining 10 ECTS-credits. The exam consists of two parts, the student paper (major part) and the answering of five questions (minor part). The grading is pass/fail. If the two examiners don’t agree on your essay, the answering of the questions will be decisive.

1. Title and topic of the student paper
The student paper (essay) is an individual student work and should be relevant to your own field of study. You will yourselves formulate the title, topic and problem of your paper. It should focus on the link between peace and health, on the role of health professionals (or of other sectors) in violence prevention/reduction and sustainable peace building, or it should critically reflect on (the theory or an example of) peace-health work. The list of teaching objectives can help you to find a relevant topic.

2. Number of pages and lay out
The essay and the answers to the five questions should be PC-written or typed. Please use MS Word format or a format readable by MS Word (e.g. rich text file). Write only on one side of each sheet. Left margin should be 4 cm, the others 2,5 cm. Please number your pages, and use font 12 and 1,5 line space.
The size of the essay should be 7-10 pages. This essay should be an opportunity for you to train scientific writing. We want to encourage you to write in English, but accept also papers in Norwegian. We appreciate if you write in an article style and try (afterwards) to get your paper published in a relevant scientific journal (e.g. Health and Human Rights; Medicine, Conflict & Survival; Tidskriftet for den Norske Lægeforeningen; Croatian Medical Journal; Transformator – Journal of Peace Research).

3. Literature
Literature and references form an important part of the essay and will demonstrate that you have read relevant literature. It should be possible to trace quotations, sources etc. in order to assess their relevance. You should definitely include several articles from the obligatory compendium, and in addition you should use relevant self-selected literature preferably from the optional reading list.
For the ways of presenting quotations and references see the recommendation “A guide to references and quotations in your exam papers” from Vidar Vambheim, Centre for Peace Studies.

4. Answering of five questions
Question A: Can you describe three major links between peace and health?
Question B: How does the use of violence violate medical values?
Question C: Are you able to link inaccessibility to health care or live-saving drugs to the term “structural violence”?
Question D: Can you elaborate why “prevention” of violence and war is considered more important than “therapy”?
Question E: Why are “good intentions” not enough in humanitarian and development work?

Please write about 1/3-1/2 page per question. We would like you to limit your writing to the mentioned size. It is not favourable for the evaluation of your exam to write more.

5. Front Page
On the front page you state the title of your essay, your exam number, course-code (HEL-3011) and course-name (Peace, Health and Medical Work). Don’t put your name on the paper you submit, only the exam number!

6. Submission and censoring
Deadline for submission of your essay: May 10th 2006 at 15:00. Please, deliver your paper to:
Ingvill Konradsen Ceïde
Centre for International Health (SIH at Forskningsparken)
The Faculty of Medicine, UiTø
9037 Tromsø
Tel: +47 77 64 46 41
Fax: +47 77 64 59 90
Cell: +47 45 63 18 27
e-mail: ingvill.k.ceide@sih.uit.no

Students not present in Tromsø may send their essay by email or by regular mail. The envelope has to be stamped in accordance with the date of submission.
The essay will be evaluated to pass/ fail within May 2006, and you will be offered an oral feedback from one of the examiners.

Good luck!