A recent report revealed a disturbing rise in violence against health workers in war zones. There was a 25% increase in attacks on hospitals, clinics, and medical workers last year, the highest number ever recorded. This spike was driven by new conflicts but also by ongoing ones where such attacks keep happening.
The Safeguarding Health in Conflict coalition demanded national and international prosecution. Prosecution of those responsible for “war crimes and crimes against humanity involving attacks on the wounded and sick, health facilities and health workers.”
Its report highlighted cases of attacks on children’s hospitals and sites running immunisation campaigns, leaving people vulnerable to infectious diseases. It also warned of a new trend in which drones armed with explosive weapons are used to target health facilities.
Leonard Rubenstein, of the Johns Hopkins school of public health, who chairs the coalition, said violence inflicted on healthcare workers and facilities had “reached appalling levels”. The report included examples . It is where health workers had been deliberately targeted. Others where combatants were reckless or indifferent to the harm caused, he said.
Impunity for these crimes.
“The one consistent feature of the attacks was continued impunity for these crimes. For more than a decadegovernments have failed to follow through on these commitments and reform their military practices, cease arms transfers to perpetrators.
The coalition, a group of more than 40 non-governmental organizations that has been producing annual reports for the past 11 years, identified a shocking number of attacks. Specifically, they documented 2,562 incidents of violence against or obstruction of health care in conflicts in 2023.
These incidents included a disturbing rise in violence against healthcare workers themselves. There were 685 cases where health workers – including doctors, nurses, and ambulance drivers – were arrested or kidnapped. Even more alarmingly, there were 487 instances where they had been killed, almost double the number in 2022.