Leonard Rubenstein

The cold-blooded and premeditated murder of 8 public health workers in Pakistan this week once again brings attention to an issue that is not being adequately addressed: the protection of health care practitioners and allied workers, of health systems’ infrastructure and services, and of health service beneficiaries. Attacks on health care workers, health facilities/services and beneficiaries violate international humanitarian and human rights law. The consequences of such attacks extend beyond the immediate victims: the beneficiaries of the health services, primarily children and their mothers, suffer the effects of the preventable illnesses that occur as a result of the interruption in much-needed health services.

When ambulance drivers in Gaza told Leonard Rubenstein about being delayed at checkpoints and blocked from hospitals, and when doctors in Kosovo described arrests and torture for providing care for rebels, they echoed the stories of multitudes in Mexico, Libya, Burma and beyond. "Health workers are trying to do their jobs, consistent with their ethical responsibilities, and are vulnerable because of it," says Rubenstein, JD, LLM, a senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health and Human Rights and associate faculty of the Berman Institute of Bioethics.

On May 11, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) hosted a panel discussion on The Protection of Health Care in Armed and Civil Conflict in Washington, DC. The panel featured Ambassador Jimmy Kolker, principal deputy director of the Office of Global Affairs, US Department of Health and Human Services; Leonard Rubenstein, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a member of the Safeguarding Health in Conflict coalition; and Dr. Mark Steinbeck, health delegate and detention doctor for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The panel was moderated by Stephen Morrison, Director of CSIS’s Global Health Policy Center.