War crimes targeting health workers, patients and health facilities should be a priority for international prosecution, senior nurses and health officials have urged.
Quantity Health workers die in conflict every year has jumped fivefold in less than a decade, and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and the British Medical Association (BMA) have called on the UK government to take action to fully support the prosecution of criminals at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
According to a new report from the International Academy of Nursing RCN, based on data from Insecurity Insights, there were 175 killings of health workers in the conflict in 2016, with the number rising to 932 in 2024. The data is subject to a lengthy cross-checking process and is likely to increase – for example, the original report for 2023 included 143 killings health workers in Palestine, and the figure had risen to 414 by the time the 2024 report was published.
Fatalities in PalestineUkraine and Lebanon have seen significant growth since 2023 and have seen corresponding growth arrests of medical workers and attacks on medical facilities. Insecurity Insight has already recorded more than 1,200 attacks on healthcare workers this year, with the number expected to rise due to reporting lags.
“Any killing of any medical staff, in any context and for any reason, is absolutely abhorrent,” said Professor Nicola Ranger, general secretary and chief executive of the RCN.
“The UK Government must do everything in its power to support compliance with international law, including supporting the ICC to investigate and bring those responsible to justice.”
Dr Andrew Green, chair of the British Medical Association's ethics committee, said: “When states and armed groups violate international humanitarian law by attacking the wounded and sick, health facilities and health workers, they must be held to account, and governments around the world, including our own, must play their part in this process.”
Ranger said attacks on health care systems had left deep and lasting scars on communities and placed them under enormous strain as they tried to cope with widespread civilian trauma and growing public health needs. She also visited the UK Foreign aid spending will be restored up to 0.7% of GDP “to support the recovery of broken health systems around the world.”
Report, Caring amid chaosincludes testimony from six nurses and a midwife working in Afghanistan, Gaza, Lebanon and Myanmar.
Asmaan, a nurse from Afghanistan, said she and her colleagues faced intimidation and were unable to offer high-quality care.
“Most villages do not have hospitals; patients are dying in ambulances because there are no ambulances, no oxygen, no nurses,” she said. “We are threatened by our guardians: “If something happens to my child, my husband is a Taliban and he will come for you.” How can we work so safely?”
Omar, a nurse in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 1,200 medical workers over the past two years, said his hospital staff worked around the clock to “care for large numbers of patients with complex and traumatic injuries, including amputations, diabetic complications and gunshot wounds, in an environment where resources and staff are increasingly scarce.”
He said scenes during hospital shifts, including the “lingering smell of blood,” would “continue to haunt my dreams,” calling for “a simple thing: life, then life, then life in peace.”
The 1949 Geneva Conventions outlawed attacks on medical facilities and workers in war zones, and later resolutions made them stricter. international humanitarian law.
In Myanmar, where medical personnel reported frequent attacks to the military, April, the head nurse asked, “What is the point of international law if they kill our colleagues and face no consequences?”
