The Orthodox We Overlook

In war, we lose our humanity, and killing health workers is an act of war against humanity itself.  

In light of the impotency of the laws protecting medical and health workers, and the continued silence of the world on the sterile reality of them, humanity loses its strongest soldiers to the politics of war. 

The dream to conserve the bits of bruised compassion and amputated will to move forward as a people, during and after wars, led to the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863 in Geneva. After the losses of the Great War, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) was founded in 1919. 

During its 106 years of unbiased and difficult humanitarian interferences, the IFRC and other health aid societies have faced continual persecution and fatal pawning by governments of different countries, without regard for the protection acts of Medical Neutrality. 

Medical Neutrality Protection Act of 2011 

The Medical Neutrality Protection Act of 2011 is a bill that intends to make the protection of medical professionals and access to medical services a global policy priority for the U.S. government.

• The bill calls for the creation of the position of a United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Protection and Promotion of Medical Neutrality and calls for investigations of violations of medical neutrality. It also limits military aid from the US to countries that have violated medical neutrality and bans their government officials from obtaining visas to the United States. 

• As codified in the Medical Neutrality Protection Act of 2011, violations of medical neutrality include:

A) Militarized attacks on health care facilities, health care service providers, or individuals receiving medical treatment.

B) Wanton destruction of medical supplies, facilities, records, or transportation services.

C) Willful obstruction of medical ethics as specified in the World Medical Association's International Code of Medical Ethics, including preventing medical professionals from administering ethical care.

D) Coercion of medical personnel to commit acts in violation of their ethical responsibilities.

Deliberate misuse of health care facilities, transportation services, uniforms, or other insignia.

E) Deliberate blocking of access to health care facilities and professionals.

F) Arbitrary arrest or detention of health care service providers or individuals seeking medical care.

Throughout history, we have seen countries show total disregard for this protection act. Medical aid workers, an army of fighters that take no sides and are fully invested in saving lives, find themselves targets of missiles, drones, firing squads, and extrajudicial persecution.

From Pakistan's execution of healthcare professionals in 1971 to the Salvadorian health blockade during the 1980's civil war. From the 1996 Chechen invasion of a hospital facility to the destruction of a hospital by the Sri Lankan Air Force in 2009. 

The 2008 unlawful Iranian trial of physicians, the misuse of hospitals, detention, and torture of hundreds of doctors in Syria in 2011. The attacks on ambulances, and the kidnapping of health workers to be used as human siege in Libya in 2011. 

The confiscation of medical supplies and impersonation of a doctor's role by an Egyptian State Security Officer to administer fatal shots to patients in a field clinic in 2011. The destruction of a 'Doctors Without Borders' trauma clinic and the immolation of patients on the hospital beds by the US military in Afghanistan in 2015. The Israeli bombing of a 'Doctors Without Borders' trauma and burns care clinic in an airstrike campaign in Occupied Gaza in 2023.

And the many other documented cases and forever buried cases of injustice and inhumanity towards humanitarian aid workers. 

The ones we overlook now in Ukraine. We saw and we knew: between February 2022 and December 2022, nearly 10% of Ukrainian hospitals were destroyed by Russian forces. We watched as a Russian ballistic missile fell just outside a hospital, killing four and injuring ten. And we looked on when a missile destroyed a maternity ward in Mariupol Maternity Hospital, Ukraine, killing a newborn baby. 

And on the headlines of CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, Middle East Eye, and various other news outlets and broadcasting corporations, we were confronted with a hope-shattering video—footage of the final moments of fifteen Palestinian aid workers, massacred in cold blood and dumped into shallow pits of death and deceit. 

Did you watch the news on Sunday, 6th April 2025? Did you see the comment by the perpetrators?

A mistake! 

Opening fire on emergency ambulances and fire trucks, targeting health aid workers and civil defence teams—this was called a mistake. 

These mistakes have become the orthodox we've seen, watched, and overlooked. Because killing the only fair participants in war is now considered fairness. The abnormal has become the norm. 

Abdulrahmon Quareeb