What are the Geneva Conventions for?

On Oct 3, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan, was bombed by a Coalition airstrike, killing ten patients including three children, and 12 MSF staff. This is not only the worst casualty for years for MSF in the field, but also a violation of the Geneva Conventions—international humanitarian law that regulates armed conflict and provides protection for non-combatants, the wounded, and medical personnel and units. For Joanne Liu, MSF International President, “This was not just an attack on our hospital—it was an attack on the Geneva Conventions…Even war has rules.”

The MSF trauma centre in Kunduz had created, over the past 4 years, a unique space to provide free surgical care, and general, orthopaedic, vascular, plastic, and neurosurgery to all sides of the conflict—including those with conflict-related injuries, for which the numbers have been increasing steadily since 2013. Staff undertook more than 3000 surgical procedures in 2015. Nearly 400 wounded people had been treated the week of the airstrike.

Bart Janssens, MSF Director of Operations told The Lancet, “As a doctor I believe it is a crime when an attack occurs on unarmed medical actors who have zero other objective than to save lives. Either we maintain the idea of the Geneva Conventions and the many medical protections therein or (like in Kunduz) we publicly destroy it.”

Despite US President Barack Obama's apology for the bombing and promise of a full investigation, MSF demands a full transparent and independent international investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission—a Commission established in the Additional Protocols of the Geneva Conventions specifically to investigate violations of international humanitarian law. The Lancet supports MSF's call. The Geneva Conventions have been ratified by 196 countries. Yet in reality, in Afghanistan, or Syria, or Gaza, it is too often disrespected. This tragedy in Kunduz is our wake-up call to examine what immunity granted under international law to medical units, personnel on the front line, and patients, really means.