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STORY: UN / HEALTHCARE CONFLICT
TRT: 03:18
SOURCE: UNIFEED-UNTV
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 3 MAY 2016, NEW YORK CITY / RECENT
RECENT / NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, UNHQ
3 MAY 2016, NEW YORK CITY
2. Various shots, Security Council vote
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General, United Nations:
“Intentional and direct attacks on hospitals are war crimes. Denying people access to essential health care is a serious violation of international humanitarian law. All State and non-State parties to conflict are bound by a strict obligation to respect and protect medical personnel, facilities and vehicles, as well as the wounded and sick. Parties to conflict must allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of impartial humanitarian relief, including medical missions. These obligations are at the very heart of international humanitarian law.”
4. Med shot, ICRC representative
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General, United Nations:
“Even wars have rules; it is time to uphold and enforce them. No Government should stand by and watch the erosion of safeguards for the protection of civilians in conflict. The international community must never become numb to flagrant abuses.”
6. Med shot, delegates
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Joanne Liu, International President, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF):
“Until October 3rd, I truly believed that the hospital was a safe place. I cannot say that anymore about any medical facilities on the frontlines today. In Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen, hospitals are routinely bombed, raided, looted or burned to the ground. Medical personnel are threatened. Patients are shot in their beds. Broad attacks on communities and precise attacks on health facilities are described as mistakes, are denied outright, or are simply met with silence. In reality, they amount to massive, indiscriminate and disproportionate civilian targeting in urban settings, and, in the worst cases, to acts of terror.”
8. Med shot, delegates
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Joanne Liu, International President, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF):
“Stop these attacks. The discussion here today cannot amount to empty rhetoric. This resolution cannot end up like so many others, including those passed on Syria over the past five years: routinely violated with impunity.”
10. Wide shot, Council
The Security Council today (3 May) adopted a resolution condemning attacks on health care workers and facilities and demanding compliance with relevant international humanitarian law. After the vote, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Council that “intentional and direct attacks on hospitals are war crimes.”
The Secretary-General said “denying people access to essential health care is a serious violation of international humanitarian law” and “all State and non-State parties to conflict are bound by a strict obligation to respect and protect medical personnel, facilities and vehicles, as well as the wounded and sick.”
Ban stressed that “even wars have rules” adding that “it is time to uphold and enforce them.” The international community, he said, “must never become numb to flagrant abuses.”
Ban told the Council that since the beginning of the Syrian conflict, more than 360 attacks on some 250 medical facilities have been documented and more than 730 medical personnel have been killed. A similar pattern, he told the Council, can be seen in Yemen. More than 600 medical facilities have closed because of damage sustained in the conflict and shortages of supplies and medical workers.
Referring to the bombing of a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital by United States military last October in Kunduz, Afghanistan, MSF President, Joanne Liu, said “until October 3rd, I truly believed that the hospital was a safe place. I cannot say that anymore about any medical facilities on the frontlines today.”
Liu told the Council that “in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen, hospitals are routinely bombed, raided, looted or burned to the ground. Medical personnel are threatened. Patients are shot in their beds. Broad attacks on communities and precise attacks on health facilities are described as mistakes, are denied outright, or are simply met with silence.”
In reality, she said, these “amount to massive, indiscriminate and disproportionate civilian targeting in urban settings, and, in the worst cases, to acts of terror.”
She called on member states to “stop these attacks.”
Today’s discussion, she said, “cannot amount to empty rhetoric. This resolution cannot end up like so many others, including those passed on Syria over the past five years: routinely violated with impunity.”
The resolution adopted today recalls that intentional attacks on hospitals and other places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided that they are not military objectives, as well as attacks intentionally directed at buildings, material, medical units, and transport and personnel using the emblems of the Geneva conventions constitute violations of international law.
