A Global Health Perspective on Mass Atrocities in Syria: How the R2P paradigm may strengthen protections for health workers and facilities

Abstract

This study will make a case for the applicability of the responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine to targeted attacks on health workers and facilities before proceeding to outline a series of recommendations on how to enhance protections for health care providers and patients, especially in health systems at risk of human rights abuses. R2P refers to the responsibility of individual states and the international community to protect populations from four categories of atrocity crime: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We will take Syria as a case study, where, over the past nine years, a catalogue of R2P crimes have been perpetrated, principally by the state. Attacks on health workers and facilities have constituted some of the most egregious of those crimes, amounting to war crimes and arguably crimes against humanity. We will take a closer look at the role played by international and local actors in preventing, curbing or mitigating these atrocities. I will show that in most cases the factors determining the success or failure of efforts to provide protection hold across different contexts. This is the basis upon which I submit a series of general recommendations on how to advance the implementation of R2P in the health sector.