Hospitals and war crimes: a patchy record

L’hôpital de MSF à Kunduz avant le bombardement ()




How common are they during war time?







Are hospitals offered specific protection under international humanitarian law?


So what happens when a war crime like this is suspected?







"Whatever the intentions behind IHL the reality is in practice it is rarely enforced."

The Kosevo hospital attacks in Sarajevo also formed part of proceedings against Bosnian Serb Stanislav Galic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Here again, things got complicated. Initially, trial court judges found that the firing on Kosevo hospital buildings was not aimed at any possible military target. Yet the appeals chamber held that the trial chamber’s finding was partially incorrect because the hospital may have been used as a base from which to fire at Galic’s forces, in which case the hospital was, at least temporarily, a military target. 

Are the national level approaches any better?

Not really. National level investigations tend to drag on for years and be inconclusive. In the case of Mulliavaikal in Sri Lanka, for example, a panel of experts set up by the UN Secretary General to examine accountability in the war there found that the hospital was indeed shelled by the military, despite being clearly marked as a medical facility. In May 2010 president Mahinda Rajapaksa appointed a national Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, which didn’t look at specific incidents but concluded in general that while civilians had died, they had not been specifically targeted. In 2012, the US government’s Office of Global Criminal Justice disagreed, and asked the Sri Lankan government for yet another investigation into what they regard as credible allegations that serious breaches of IHL, including the hospital attacks, were committed. To date, no criminal proceedings have been instigated.

In short, most allegations of attacks on hospitals don’t advance much beyond a flurry of media interest, furious condemnation and carefully worded PR from the alleged perpetrators.

Is anyone trying to fix this?

Yes, they are. ICRC, the agency most closely associated with IHL, are so worried they have a particular project focussing on the protection of medical care in conflict, called Health Care In Danger.

The issue of international humanitarian law has been a key preoccupation of the World Humanitarian Summit. The Synthesis Report which summarises consultations to date states that perpetrators need to be held to account, and reflects calls for states to “reaffirm their commitment to better respect, and ensure greater respect for, international humanitarian law.” So far, though, the Summit seems short on ideas as to how this actually might be achieved, or what it might mean in practice, beyond references to providing training and asking for voluntary commitments from states.

Does that mean there’s no way forward?

Not necessarily. Prosecution for serious violations of IHL is not the only way to approach this question. Some lawyers argue that the victims of war crimes are more likely to get justice if they sue the perpetrators rather than relying on war crimes tribunals. London based human rights lawyer Louise Hooper points out that many victims have successfully brought actions against governments across Europe and American – and been compensated.

A group of Iraqis whose relatives had been detained, raped or killed by British forces, for example, won their case in 2011 and were awarded damages of $23,000 each. “Whatever the intention behind IHL the reality is that in practice it is rarely enforced, particularly if the perpetrators of abuse are from the 'powerful' western states some of whom are not signed up to various convention and courts in any event,” said Hooper.

“An alternative and perhaps ultimately more successful course of action may be to bring a class action for compensation by the victims. This would mean that even if the international community was rendered powerless owing to the operation of politics the individuals would at least obtain some form of redress," she added.


 *These will be led by US Department of Justice, the Pentagon, NATO and an American-Afghan team

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