Concern over erosion of medical neutrality in warzones

The Geneva Conventions protecting the safety of medics in warzones have become virtually impotent, a medical conference at the Mater Hospital in Dublin will hear on Friday.

Doctors are now considered legitimate targets in conflicts, said Prof Damian McCormack, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon who has spent the last three years travelling to organisations including the UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to raise the issue of medical neutrality.

Some 565 medical personnel have been killed in Syria in recent years and at least 14 during recent fighting in Gaza, the Irish Society of Military Medicine symposium will hear.

Irish medics routinely work with Medicines Sans Frontiers, the International Red Cross and the UN and their legislatively enforced neutrality is under increasing threat, Prof McCormack said.

“The impression out in the world is that medics are protected with this Red Cross emblem behind them. In reality there is no protection and medics are being killed left, right and centre,” Prof McCormack said.

The issue of protection has previously been outlined by Physicians for Human Rights, an organisation monitoring the situation for medics.

It said medics all over the world “face persecution resulting from adhering to their duty to provide non-discriminatory treatment of the injured and sick.”

It has described attacks on health workers as a “grave breach” of international law which “violates the principle of medical neutrality”.

Prof McCormack has sought support from the ICC, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the UN and the World Health Organisation on bolstering the rule of international law.

“I was trying to find a group or a body who is actually responsible for keeping an eye on medical neutrality breaches. And what I have found is that no one is responsible and the legislation is so full of holes,” he said.

“It’s clear to me that these aggressors do not respect medical neutrality and the super powers give impunity to those who breach it.”

Prof McCormack will also address the conference on the issue of a lack of international accountability.

He said, for instance, there appeared to be no mechanism and little appetite to call Israel to account for the death of medics in Gaza earlier this year. Last July, five people were killed and many more, mostly doctors, injured following a strike on the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.