SAMS is organising a side event to promote the notion of accountability for attacks on healthcare and push for more support to health workers and their community in Syria.

The panel discussion will focus on two main issues: 1) Discussing ways to achieve accountability for attacks on healthcare facilities in Syria, and 2) Ensuring that the healthcare workers and their community receive adequate and sustainable support.

1) Achieving Accountability for Attacks on Healthcare facilities in Syria: The first point will focus on the need for states that have universal legal jurisdiction to hold the perpetrators of attacks against healthcare facilities accountable. Normalising such attacks comes at great risks to humanity and the need for action on this issue is of paramount importance. The aim of bringing this issue to the fore is to end the impunity with which parties to the conflict in Syria and beyond have targeted medical facilities, and ensure that the norms of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) are observed. 

2) Ensuring that the health workers receive adequate and sustainable support: In Syria, as elsewhere, the healthcare workers are often the ones most deeply impacted by the violence against the health system while they provide medical services to others. Those heroes were fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters in addition, many of whom were the main breadwinners for their families. Focusing on this issue aims to ensure that the healthcare workers and their communities receive adequate and sustainable support, including financial, psychological and medical education opportunities and call on the international community to foster investment in health projects, such as the education of medical staff and the localisation of specialised health services.