The Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition (SHCC) calls on the United Nations Secretary-General and Member States to take urgent, concrete action to end violence against healthcare in conflict settings. Attacks on health workers, facilities, and patients continue to rise, demanding immediate global accountability and response.
Read the full statement here.
Call to Action
The UN Secretary-General must use their platform to highlight the extent and nature of the violence.
The Secretary General has the authority to compel the world’s attention to the relentless attacks on health care in conflict and put pressure on perpetrators of those attacks. Resolution 2286 requested that the Secretary General address violence inflicted on health care in country-specific situation reports to the Council. While 2024 and 2025 have seen the highest numbers of attacks on health ever, the annual report on Protection of Civilians only devotes a few paragraphs to the problem.
The UN Secretary General and Member States must forcefully speak out and reject interpretations of international humanitarian law that defeat its purpose.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that reinterpretations of IHL are undermining protections for civilians and healthcare. These include expansive justifications for attacks on hospitals while disregarding obligations to protect medical personnel, facilities, and patients, as well as principles of proportionality and military necessity.
Member States should join forces in a ‘coalition of the willing’ to harness all political, economic, legal, and diplomatic levers to demand adherence to the law and end impunity for attacks.
A new alliance among states, UN agencies, and civil society groups committed to protecting healthcare in armed conflict is needed to promote coordinated action to protect health facilities, workers, and transport.
All Member States should be accountable to commitments they made in resolution 2286.
Resolution 2286 called for specific actions by states to strengthen their adherence, such as reforming military doctrine and training in circumstances where health care is at risk in military operations, incorporating robust protections and expanding accountability mechanisms into domestic law, conducting thorough investigations of violations, and bringing perpetrators to justice. One of the Secretary General’s recommendations following adoption of the resolution was for states to report on actions they have taken to comply with those obligations. Doing so would provide both an incentive to act and contribute to models for other states. States, however, have not reported on actions taken.
Key Actions for the UNSG and Member States
UN Secretary General
- Provide detailed, country-specific reporting on violence against healthcare, particularly in high-incidence settings.
- Create an annual “List of Shame” identifying perpetrators of attacks on health, citing evidence, naming perpetrators, and showing the impact of the attacks.
- Offer special briefings after particularly horrific incidents.
- Include in the annual Protection of Civilians report detailed monitoring of attacks on health.
Member States
- Establish the ‘coalition of the willing’ alliance without delay, with regular meetings and coordination of activities.
- Convene a commission of experts to address the crisis of attacks on health in conflict and to produce a report with recommendations towards strengthening IHL and accountability.
- Use diplomatic, economic, and political leverage on countries conducting or supporting attacks on health, including targeted sanctions, restrictions on arms sales, expelling diplomats, suspending bilateral agreements, and public condemnation.
- Urge the WHO to move forward with refining its methodologies for collecting data on attacks on health care, and/or support actors that are currently monitoring attacks on health. Ensure that data is systematically collected, publicly reported, and shared with civil society organizations and UN agencies, providing transparency in reporting.
- Promote robust protections for healthcare and ensure that military doctrine recognizes the reverberating impact of attacks on health.
- Urge the International Criminal Court, tribunals and other mechanisms to investigate and prosecute crimes involving violence inflicted on health care.
- Support and promote universal jurisdiction cases wherever possible and share expertise and resources to support such efforts internationally. Consider establishing or supporting an expert mechanism to produce recommendations on strengthening compliance with international law and ensuring accountability for attacks on health.
- Provide funding and other resources to courts, civil society organizations and humanitarian organizations working to end attacks on health in conflict and restore essential health services and emergency care following attacks on health.
- Report on actions they have taken to implement the requirements of resolution 2286.
- Use diplomatic demarches and other tools to demand adherence to IHL and call out states
and non-state armed groups that undermine protections for health care in conflict.
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