Last month, the United Nations Security Council adopted a new resolution, Resolution 1998, which extends monitoring oversight to recurrent attacks on schools and hospitals and expands the monitoring and reporting mechanism that protects children in armed conflict. Prior to the adoption of the resolution, IntraHealth International and 13 other organizations sent a letter to 15 members of the Security Council urging the adoption of the new resolution.

Resolution 1998, which was supported by Germany, requests that the Secretary-General include reports—of recurrent attacks or threats of attacks against schools, hospitals, and protected persons in schools and hospitals in armed conflict settings—in the report on children and armed conflict. Under international humanitarian law, these “protected persons” include civilians not taking part in hostilities and medical personnel. Thus, those who commit these specific violations of international humanitarian law are now subject to the listing and “naming and shaming” requirements of the mechanism.

This new resolution builds on the groundbreaking findings of the 1996 Machel Report, which captured, among other things, the destructive effects of armed conflict on health services, health facilities, health workers, and the health system. The new resolution also adds to existing protections offered under resolutions passed in 2005 and 2009, which focused on protecting children in conflict areas and condemned attacks against schools and hospitals and condemned the denial of humanitarian care.

IntraHealth’s support for this resolution is part of a wider initiative to increase accountability surrounding violations of international law, specifically attacks and threats against health facilities, personnel, and transportation that prevent the delivery of critical care in situations of armed conflict. In May, a consortium of 18 health and nongovernmental organizations, including IntraHealth, sent a joint letter to the World Health Organization (WHO) urging immediate action on the growing number of assaults on health personnel and facilities in areas of conflict and civil unrest. The executive authors from IntraHealth International, the World Medical Association, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health called for the WHO to convene a group of experts to devise a system for collecting and monitoring evidence of assaults on health workers in conflict zones and to identify research needed to enhance the protection of health systems worldwide. IntraHealth Vice President for Global Policy Maurice Middleberg also moderated a panel at the World Health Assembly in May where panelists urged the WHO to take action on the protection of health workers and facilities in situations of armed conflict to ensure that civilians, including children, have access to essential health care.