In framework of permanent cooperation with United Nations’ bodies and agencies, our Association informed this year UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Professor Tlaleng Mofokeng, about the negative impact of Russian aggression on the right to health for her next Report A/HRC/59/48 “Health and care workers as defenders of the right to health,” presented now at the 59th Session of the Human Rights Council.
ARC’s submission, published now at UN official web-sources, described the negative situation with medical infrastructure and personnel in the Russia-occupied Crimea, also as Russian genocidal acts, committed against Ukrainian people during drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian hospitals from Russia and occupied Crimea.
ARC’s submission reminded the UN about the Russian missile attack on July 8, 2024, committed against “Okhmatdyt,” a multidisciplinary diagnostic and treatment facility in Kyiv, Ukraine, which provides specialized, highly qualified medical care to the children’s population of Ukraine. We stressed that some medical staff were killed by that strike and hundreds of patients got traumas or were urgently challenged to be evacuated as the hospital’s blocks and constructions were destroyed.
ARC’s submission pointed out that the destruction of “Okhmatdyt” was the direct goal of Russia’s missile attack, and, besides the direct victims of the strike, such destruction created the strongest challenges to effective medical aid to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children in the next decade, as such a unique complex was constructed and modernized during the last forty years, that was the absolutely clear genocidal goal of Russia’s missile strike: to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about Ukrainians’ physical destruction in whole or in part and impose measures intended to prevent births within the Ukrainians as a group.
ARC’s submission also gave an example of another Russian missile attack made on July 8, 2024, a targeted strike on “Isida,” the largest private women’s health and family planning center in Kyiv, which served more than 130,000 patients in the last decade and where more than 11,000 babies were born. This attack was committed with the same genocidal goal. Those Russian missile strikes were demonstratively done on Russia’s “Day of family, love and fidelity”, to demonstrate the will of Russia to destroy all families and children that are Ukrainian ones like a “holiday gift” to higher Russian authorities, submission added, reminding theUN of relevant norms of Article 6, “Genocide,” of the Rome Statute.
ARC’s submission also stressed that medical infrastructure and medical staff in Crimea are used by Russian aggressors for political provocations against third states and militaristic propaganda, as well as for illegal “conscription” of Ukrainian citizens into Russian army forces, at the same time when there are no basic medical drugs and equipment on the peninsula.
Report A/HRC/59/48, mentioned by us earlier, stressed on those issues in point 83 that “a pattern of attacks on medical infrastructure and health and care workers has been observed in conflicts in recent years,” including Ukraine, and that “after such attacks, health services often remain disrupted and access to healthcare further limited during a crisis.”
Report A/HRC/59/48, where the Special Rapporteur expressed her appreciation for submissions received (point 9), demanded international community on that ground to “strengthen legal frameworks that protect, promote and respect international legal protections under international human rights law and international humanitarian law for health and care workers in situations of conflict, genocide and violence”. Our communication with UN bodies, describing Russia’s genocidal policies against Ukraine and highlighting issues of right to health violation by the aggressor, will be continued.
