Attacks on Hospitals Are War Crimes
Overnight the terrorist state attacked a hospital in Dnipro, Ukraine with missiles. There are killed and wounded, including reports of two children injured.
The message from our canine volunteers is really simple.
This of course is not the first time the terrorist state has attacked a hospital. Among the earliest images in March 2022 after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began was the picture of a pregnant woman being transported out of a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol. This woman later died from her wounds, and her baby was stillborn. The hospital was the Maternity Hospital No. 3 in Mariupol, which also served as a healthcare facility serving children.
At the time, that incident stood out as a particularly heinous crime. However, in the subsequent weeks and months it would become clear that the armed forces of the terrorist state were deliberately targeting healthcare facilities, in addition to civilian infrastructure in general. We will never forget the cowardly attack in July 2022 on the medical clinic in Vynnitsia, which claimed the lives of two of our neurology colleagues.
These attacks violate international law, as patients and healthcare workers and the facilities in which they are located are by definition outside combat, and protected under the Geneva Conventions. These attacks on Ukrainian healthcare facilities are being tracked and documented by a number of organizations, with the important goal of providing evidence for future charges through the International Criminal Court.
The World Health Organization maintains the Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care, a public website which displays basic information about attacks around the world, including in Ukraine. The publicly available data include date and time of the attack, level of certainty that the attack occurred, type of attack, and whether any healthcare personnel or patients were killed or wounded. The full public data set can be downloaded. Much detail is withheld from the public data set, however, such as the exact location and name of facility attacked.
A number of professional medical journals have published articles on the scope of attacks on Ukrainian healthcare facilities. These include the Lancet and the British Medical Journal. At the time of publication in February 2023, over 700 attacks had been documented by the terrorist state on Ukrainian healthcare facilities.
More detailed information yet is available through the collaborative work of eyeWitness to Atrocities, Insecurity Insight, the Media Initiative for Human Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, and the Ukrainian Healthcare Center. Their comprehensive report, Destruction and Devastation is available for download, and contains numerous maps, including one showing locations and scope of attacks on Ukrainian healthcare facilities. The latest numbers, as of today, record a total of 889 attacks on the Ukrainian healthcare system since February 24, 2022, with 333 of these attacks damaging or destroying hospitals and clinics, and killing 127 healthcare workers.
Attacks on Ukrainian healthcare facilities as of December 2022. Source: https://sind-storage.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media/attacksonhealthukraine/REPORT-Destruction-and-Devastation-Ukraine-Feb-21-2023-ENG-WebOptimized.pdf
The report contains many detailed examples of hospital attacks in places like Izium, Makariv, Chernihiv, Bashtanka, Trostianets, as well as details about deliberate attacks on ambulances in Lyman. Information is also provided about attacks on a hospital in Balakliya, where we have provided some aid. And the report from eyewitnesses as to what went on in the Mariupol Regional Intensive Care Hospital is particularly harrowing.
At the end of the publication is an important discussion of the protections afforded to healthcare workers and facilities under international law, and how the attacks documented cross the threshold of the following war crimes:
• Attacking Protected Objects (Article 8(2)(b)(ix))
• Attacking Objects Using the Emblems of the Geneva Conventions (Article 8(2)(b)(xxiv))
• Pillaging (Article 8(2)(b)(xvi))
• Using Protected Persons as Shields (Article 8(2)(b)(xxiii))
• Unlawful Confinement (Article 8(2)(a)(vii)-2))
• Torture (Article 8(2)(a)(ii)-1))
• Inhuman Treatment (Article 8(2)(a)(ii)-2))
• Willful Killing (Article 8(s)(a)(i))
These are serious crimes, and after Ukraine has secured its victory the international community will hunt down, arrest, and put on trial those responsible. We anticipate the evidence collected in the reports compiled here will serve as the groundwork for future charges against the leadership of the terrorist state by the International Criminal Court.
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