TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
“The delivery of food, water, medicine, essential health services, and shelter to civilians in
need demands the highest respect and protection from the effects of hostilities. All too
frequently, health care workers, facilities, transports, and patients are attacked, often
with deadly consequences. We must do much more to reverse that deplorable trend.”
–Secretary-General’s Report to the World Humanitarian Summit, 2015
“The fact that these attacks have become so widespread must not be tolerated as the
new normal.”
–Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO Director, September 2014
This is the third annual report by the Safeguarding
Health in Conflict Coalition, documenting attacks on and
interference with health workers, patients, facilities, and
transports during periods of armed conflict and political
violence. In recent years, attacks on health care services
have escalated, usually with impunity, exacerbating the
suffering that civilians experience during conflicts. The
events of 2015 and early 2016 are especially alarming:
parties to conflict bombed hospitals in five countries,
killed health workers for seeking to provide impartial care,
committed assaults in hospitals and against patients and
staff, and violently obstructed access to health care. These
attacks have had severe consequences on the lives and
security of health workers, and on the health and wellbeing
of people, families, and communities in need of care.
This report does not quantify the global number of
attacks on or interference with health care services, or
the numbers of health workers and patients killed or
injured by violence. Only a handful of countries collect
data on these attacks. And when data are collected,
definitions, time periods for reporting, and methods vary.
Thousands of incidents have likely gone undocumented
or underreported. For these reasons, one of our key
recommendations is for the international community to
commit to more thorough and systematic data collection
and reporting that would facilitate a more accurate picture
of national and global trends. This report chronicles
documented attacks and interferences by country, stating
the responsible parties and outcomes whenever possible.
This report provides an overview of attacks on health care
that took place in 2015 and during the first three months
of 2016 in 19 countries. The information on which the
report is based comes from United Nations agencies,
research by independent NGOs, and the media. These
sources provide insights into the scope, frequency, and
variety of attacks, and the harms they inflict on people in
need of essential health care and the health workers who
seek to treat and assist them. In some cases, they identify
the parties responsible for specific acts. Cumulatively,
they reveal a shocking picture of rocket attacks, aerial
assaults, lootings, burnings, executions, sexual violence,
persecution, and wanton destruction of health facilities.
They weaken health systems and can affect access to care
for years to come. Millions of people have been deprived
of health care as a result of these assaults.
14 SAFEGUARDING HEALTH IN CONFLICT