Context

The acts of violence carried out by the Syrian regime followed patterns - intentional and systematic - which clearly aimed at breaking the people’s resistance: residential areas, along with places and services key to human survival such as bakeries and schools, were not spared but they were consistently targeted, leaving whole cities in ruin. The overwhelming rising of needs concerning emergency treatments, along with chronic patients, the difficulty in supplying equipment, medications, and human resources, would have been enough to crush the healthcare system in areas outside of the State’s control. However, the strategy of annihilation went further as healthcare personnel and facilities have been direct targets themselves.

Under International Humanitarian Law, any attack that deliberately targets healthcare facilities, or that fails to take all the necessary precautions to prevent their destruction, constitutes a war crime. And yet, the widespread assault on healthcare has been one of the distinctive features of the violence perpetrated by the Syrian regime and its allies since the earliest days of the Syrian uprising: medical workers have been detained, tortured and killed; medical facilities throughout the country deliberately targeted and destroyed.