World: “Attacks on healthcare are today a standard feature of war”

Countries: World, South Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic Source: Médecins Sans Frontières Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Intersectional Legal Director Claude Maon delivered the following speech to members of the UN Security Council at an Arria formula meeting on the protection of medical care in armed conflict. Excellencies, colleagues, I would like to thank Denmark, Spain, and New Zealand for convening this meeting. Ten years ago, this Council unanimously adopted resolution 2286 in response to an intolerable reality: hospitals bombed , ambulances attacked, patients killed in their beds, medical workers hunted for carrying out their duty. That resolution was born of outrage – at the systematic targeting of healthcare in Syria , and at the bombing and destruction of MSF’s trauma centre in Kunduz . It carried a promise to match that outrage: That such attacks would never be accepted as a normal feature of war – and that when they did occur, states would take responsibility for stopping them and ensuring there were consequences. Ten years on, that promise lies in ruins. What shocked the conscience in 2016 now too often passes without the bare minimum of condemnation – let alone consequence. It has become routine - as if attacking healthcare were an acceptable cost of war, and the principles meant to prevent it something to be set aside when inconvenient. In conflict after conflict, we are observing the unmaking of protections you once pledged to defend. In Gaza , the scale and intensity of attacks on healthcare over the past two and a half years have been staggering. In conflict after conflict, we are observing the unmaking of protections you once pledged to defend.Claude Maon, MSF Intersectional Legal Director As part of a broader assault on Gaza’s civilian population, the Israeli armed forces have besi...

Original source: Relief Web