An MSF worker surveys the destruction of the hospital in Kunduz, October 2015. Najim Rahim/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.In the year since an American gunship bombed and rocketed the Médecins Sans Frontières trauma hospital in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan, killing 42 staff, patients and visitors, front-line medical workers have been subjected to an unprecedented level of violence. It has culminated in this month’s orgy of death and destruction in Aleppo and represents the biggest threat to humanitarianism and its ideals since World War II.
The eight still-functioning hospitals in eastern Aleppo have been hit repeatedly in recent weeks. Three of them – the Al Bayan, the M2 and the M10 hospitals – have each been struck on at least three occasions. There were eight attacks on ambulances in the course of a month.
It is surely time to turn the clock back to the founding principle of modern humanitarianism. Because the wounded had to be cared for, the First Geneva Convention of 1864 laid down that ambulances, hospitals and their staff were to be formally recognised as neutral and “protected and respected by the belligerents.”
