Attacks Against Medical Facilities
The right to health is a fundamental human right. Medical units, medical personnel, and the wounded or sick are all specifically protected under the international laws of armed conflict. When medical infrastructure becomes unsafe or is otherwise critically damaged, the health, safety, and livelihoods of people who rely on these facilities for essential care are seriously compromised. Without secure, reliable access to healthcare, people suffer. This is severely exacerbated in circumstances of conflict characterised by widespread, indiscriminate, disproportionate, and violent destruction―as in Syria.
Syrian Archive’s casebuilding database of visual documentation explores the intentionality, impact, and strategy of attacks against medical facilities in Syria since 2011. It documents attacks that are widespread and systematic, that are linked to the ongoing conflict, and that consistently exacerbate harm to civilians―especially to those in opposition-held areas―with the destruction of essential medical infrastructure. Many attacks against medical facilities in Syria amount to well-documented war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Since the first footage of an attack on a Syrian hospital was uploaded to YouTube on 15 August 2011, we have preserved documentation of 410 separate, verified attacks between 2011 and 2020 against a total of 270 medical facilities in Syria.
