Ukraine

Coercion and Control: Ukraine’s Health Care System under Russian Occupation

Friday, December 15, 2023
This case study - a joint product of eyeWitness to Atrocities (eyeWitness), Insecurity Insight, the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR), and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) - expands on existing documentation of Russia’s widespread and systematic attacks on Ukraine’s health care system. It explores ways in which Russia has sought to systematically target health care as an apparent means of degrading resistance and, in Ukraine’s occupied territories, as a means of enforcing control over the civilian population, including by limiting and conditioning access to health care through a range of coercive practices. These practices include: (1) Russian forces misusing civilian health facilities for nonmedical purposes; (2) requiring forced changes of nationality as a precondition for gaining access to health care (otherwise known as “passportization”); and (3) threatening and harassing health care professionals as a way to further limit care and assert control over Ukraine’s health care system. Based on a joint dataset, the study details a range of reported incidents that collectively suggest an apparent pattern of illegal attacks on health by Russia that both limit and violate the right to health of Ukrainian civilians. These attacks are violations of both international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law. They also threaten the integrity of Ukraine’s health care system, which, while resilient, faces ongoing challenges following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

International Medical Corps Responds as Eastern Ukraine’s Health System Collapses in Midst of Conflict

Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Several health facilities were damaged by shelling in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, the region that has seen the fiercest fighting during the recent conflict between Ukrainian and separatist forces. A team of International Medical Corps experts in the region found that some health facilities have been looted and many facilities lack food and water for patients. The team also found medical professionals have left the area and supply chains are broken, leaving hospitals and health centers without lifesaving medicines or equipment.

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