There have been more than separate attacks on hospitals, ambulances and doctors in Ukraine and the number “increases daily”, says the World Health Organization (WHO).
The body ensures that targeting medical care facilities it has become part of the strategy and tactics of modern warfare.
A recent attack on March 8 was against the central hospital, which had just been renovated, in Izium, south of Kharkiv.
He was hit by what the Ukrainian authorities said were Russian shells.
The deputy mayor of the city posted videos and photos showing extensive damage to the main hospital building. A new reception area built last year was completely destroyed.
The images have been verified by the BBC and other media, although the exact circumstances of the attack are impossible to establish at this time.
“After the first bombing, the windows of the hospital exploded”, deputy mayor Volodymyr Matsokin told the BBC.
A second attack destroyed the hospital’s operating rooms, he added.
That day, hospital staff were treating children, pregnant women and three newborn babies, as well as soldiers and civilians wounded in fierce fighting in the region, according to the Ukrainian authorities.
They were sheltering in the basement at the time of the attack and no one died.
“The government has invested millions to provide good facilities with modern equipment,” Matsokin said.
“Patients had to climb out of the rubble because of their even account to be able to escape”.
The BBC contacted the Russian embassy in London to find out more about the attack, but nothing was received. response, although in the past Moscow has denied deliberately targeting civilians.
Since 24 of February, the WHO has reviewed and verified 72 separate attacks on medical care facilities in Ukraine that caused the minus 71 dead and 37 wounded.
Most of the attacks have damaged hospitals, medical vehicles and supply stores, but the WHO has also recorded the “likely” kidnapping or detention of health personnel and patients.
“We are concerned that this number is increasing daily”, the WHO representative in Ukraine, Jarno Habicht, told the BBC.
“Health facilities must n be safe places for both doctors and nurses, but also for patients who come for treatment. This should not happen”.
Because the war in Ukraine is an international armed conflict between two States, the Geneva Conventions apply.
The Conventions, which were expanded after the Second World War, establish the basic rights of civilians and military personnel and the protection of the wounded and the sick.
These were ratified in 1954 for what was then the Soviet Union.
According to the article 18 of the Conventions, civilian hospitals “in no case may be the object of attack, and shall be respected and protected at all times.”
Violation of that rule may be investigated by the International Criminal Court in The Hague and, if determined to be a war crime, individual perpetrators can be prosecuted and punished.
However, there are exceptions to the Conventions.
Protection against attack is lost if the medical facility is placed near a legitimate military objective or is believed to be committing an act “detrimental to the enemy”.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), this may include the use of a hospital as a shield for healthy combatants or the mo Placing a medical unit in a position that prevents an enemy attack.
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Neve Gordon, professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London, points out: “What we have today, in effect, is a situation in which hospitals and medical units have become a target”.
“If there are soldiers outside the hospital or it is just next to a train station, it can be attacked. Or it could be that a wounded soldier has a cell phone and is calling other soldiers and telling them that someone is nearby”.
“All these technicalities allow us to affirm that the attack was legitimate”.
The ICRC says that, in theory, before targeting a hospital that could be breaking those rules, the attacking side must always give a warning, with a time limit, and the other side must have ignored that warning.
There is no evidence that this has happened in the Ukraine conflict.
Professor Gordon would like to see a much stricter blanket ban on any attack on medical facilities under international law, similar to the prohibition of torture adopted by the United Nations that came into force in 1987 .
From Vietnam to Syria
Exemptions to the Geneva Conventions have been used to justify attacks on hospitals and medical units in post-World War II conflicts, from Korea and Vietnam onwards.
However, the trend appears to be accelerating rapidly, driven in part by the use of missiles ballistic missiles, drones, and other longer-range weapons.
The US group Physicians for Human Rights claims that Russian or local forces have been linked to at least 71 separate attacks on health care facilities in Syria since 1987.
At one point, the Doctors Without Borders even made the decision to stop sharing the GPS coordinates of some health clinics it operated with the Syrian government or its Russian allies, amid concerns that they were more likely to become direct targets. .
Russian officials denied deliberately attacking hospitals in S Iria and suggested that “jihadists” in the country habitually took refuge in protected civilian buildings.
The WHO is concerned that all this means that attacks on medical facilities are rapidly becoming part of the broader “strategy and tactics” of modern warfare, regardless of the rules of the Geneva Conventions.
Destroying health facilities, he warned, is “the destruction of hope” and the denial of basic human rights.
“We have never seen this rate of attacks on health care globally,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said at a press conference this week.
“This crisis is reaching a point where the system of The health of Ukraine is on the brink of the abyss”.
“It needs support… but how can you do that if the very infrastructure that these people go to looking for support is under direct attack?
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