UN Security Council demands hospitals in conflict zones must be protected

The UN Security Council on Tuesday adopted a resolution demanding the protection of hospitals and health workers in conflict zones.

“All too often, attacks on health facilities and medical workers are not just isolated or incidental battlefield fallout, but rather the intended objective of the combatants. This is shameful and inexcusable,” the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon told the Council.

The UN chief urged all Member States, parties to conflict and other relevant actors to heed the Council’s demands by:

He urged all member states to ensure:

- Facilitating humanitarian access
- Developing domestic legal frameworks that protect health facilities and medical workers
- Training armed forces so they understand their obligations
- Prosecuting those responsible for such attacks and other violations

The resolution came after a hospital in Aleppo, Syria was hit in an air strike by the Assad government, killing over 50 people.

See more here.

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.