Humanitarian Debate: Law, policy, Action. Violence against healthcare. Part I: The problem and the law

In 2013, new data collected by the ICRC7 showed that the vast majority of violent incidents against health services that took place during 2012 – more than 80 per cent of the 900 or so incidents recorded in twenty-two countries – affected local health-care professionals. A quarter of the people affected by these incidents were killed or wounded, while the remainder of the incidents consisted of beatings, threats, arrests, kidnapping, and other violent occurrences. The data collected do not allow a single class of perpetrator to be identified as predominant but, conversely, indicate that those responsible include not only state armed forces and security forces but also non-state armed actors. In this issue of the Review, Fiona Terry analyses violence against health-care providers and facilities across three contexts in which access to health care is particularly difficult: Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia. Similarly, based on six contemporary case studies, Enrico Pavignani, Markus Michael, Maurizio Murru, Mark Beesley, and Peter Hill analyse the consequences of state failure on health-care provision.