Funferal

Targeting medical facilities in wartime

I should be asleep at the moment, but I just turned on CBS news by chance and they’re announcing that the Americans have ‘captured’ the hospital in Fallujah because they were – I kid you not – worried it would be used to treat injured insurgents. Now I am by no means an expert in international law, but I thought that medical facilities had, if not an immunity, at least increased protections. Just as targeting/killing civilians if illegal, I thought that purposefully impeding the provision of medical care – as this seems to be – was out of bounds. Of course, this is not surprising, and jibes with the reports on ZNet and elsewhere about what has happened so far, but I sense of outrage must still be appropriate – mustn’t it?
Having said I’m not an expert, I realised this is the era of the internet, when information of this sort should be easily available. So I checked for the Fourth Geneva Convention. The meaning is sometimes difficult to follow, but some things are clear.

Article 18: Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.
[snip]
Art. 19. The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit and after such warning has remained unheeded.
The fact that sick or wounded members of the armed forces are nursed in these hospitals, or the presence of small arms and ammunition taken from such combatants which have not yet been handed to the proper service, shall not be considered to be acts harmful to the enemy.

So, treating wounded soldiers is a protected activity in a hospital and until a hospital has already been used for hostile activities and proper warning given by the United States it cannot be attacked. Of course, the US government – or I suppose [sarcasm alert] the sovereign government of Iraq who are inviting the ‘coalition’ forces to take action – may claim that the convention doesn’t apply, because they are dealing with non-state forces, and I’ve found conflicting sections in the conventions, so am unsure on this point. But if it comes down to “yes, this would generally be illegal, but there’s a loophole here” then what moral character can the United States claim to have? Don’t worry, I think I know the answer….