Medical Personnel

Torture and inhuman treatment of detainees are war crimes. They also put medical staff in a severely compromised ethical position.

The tactic adds to evidence of intent to kill civilians through targeted or indiscriminate attacks, including on aid workers and institutions.

Culturally competent medical care, including to the extent possible care provided by independent medical experts of the detainees’ nationalities, is needed at Guantanamo now.

Airstrikes on hospitals. Targeting medical personnel. Cutting off water supplies. Respect for IHL rules is as essential as ever during a pandemic. How do principles of distinction,…

"To witness military physicians bending or burying the truth does long-lasting damage to the confidence required for the system to work."

In advance of Friday, May 22 Arria-Formula meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

Management must support high-risk providers, encourage accommodation requests, and help reduce the guilt and shame that discourages disclosure.

Times of crisis generate extreme moral dilemmas: situations we can’t begin to imagine, unthinkable choices emerging between options that all seem bad, each with harms and negative…

No warfighter should attack a facility that houses the infirm and those who care for them.  Likewise, no able-bodied warfighter should seek protection in a medical facility, and…

In “Military Attacks on ‘Hospital Shield: The Law Itself is Partly to Blame,” the authors address the dangers of analogizing between human shields and hospitals,…

The MSF Trauma Center in Kunduz, Afghanistan, following the US airstrike on the facility in October 2015. Image by Andrew Quilty.  From the war in Afghanistan and the US-backed…

Thanks very much to John Merriam for his very thoughtful and insightful post responding to my concerns about the Law of War Manual‘s treatment of how the principle of proportionality…