Month: August 2025

It has been almost a decade since the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution condemning attacks on medical personnel and facilities during conflict and demanding compliance with international humanitarian law intended to protect them. Instead, attacks on health facilities, personnel, and patients have become calculated elements of war strategy.

Security Council Resolution 2286, adopted in May 2016, was supported by the United States, Russia, China and other member States. And yet, according to the annual report of the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition (SHCC), 2024 marked another rise in attacks against health care worldwide — a 15 percent increase over the previous year. Never before had such a high number of attacks on health care — 3,623 identified incidents — been recorded as in 2024. This continues a shocking escalation. These attacks include strikes on hospitals and ambulances, as well as abductions and killings of health-care workers. Behind each statistic are families shattered, communities losing vital care, and health workers killed or injured for simply doing their jobs.

Globally, the hybrid nature of these attacks reflects the shift in modern warfare. In settings ranging from Gaza to Sudan to Ukraine, perpetrators increasingly are not only bombing hospitals or threatening medical staff, as if that weren’t horrific enough. Attackers are taking advantage of how interconnected health-care systems are with other critical infrastructure to inflict maximum harm, deliberately severing humanitarian aid, power, heating, water, and supply routes to disrupt the delivery of health care. These tactics show that attacks on health are not isolated events; they are part of a deliberate war strategy.

Ukraine as a Stark Example

Ukraine is one stark example of this shift. Since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion, the organization where I work, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), has helped document 2,000 incidents of attacks on health care. Over the course of the war, assaults on health care also have become more systemic and multidimensional. In the Russian-occupied areas, for example, hospitals are militarized and care is conditioned on whether the patient has Russian nationality (another way to coerce Ukrainians under occupation to accept Russian citizenship that is being forced on the population).

Other tactics include double-tap strikes, the term for rushing to the scene of a military strike to help, and more indirect maneuvers, such as targeting energy infrastructure vital to the functioning of the health care system. PHR and the Ukrainian human rights organization Truth Hounds have detailed how Russia’s targeting of energy systems led to blackouts in intensive care units, disruptions of medical services, increased burden on staff, and reverberating impacts on health.

The situation has been further exacerbated by the suspension of U.S. government foreign aid funding in Ukraine in early 2025, which by disrupting services for HIV and tuberculosis patients, impeding hospital modernization and rehabilitation efforts, and limiting access to care. Russia’s ongoing attacks combined with these resource constraints are putting additional pressure on an already weakened system.

The dynamics of deliberate obstruction are evident in Gaza, where PHR and partners documented how Israel’s blockade and restrictions on medical supplies have compounded the devastation of the health care system. “We Could Have Saved So Many More,” a recent report from PHR (a separate entity from Physicians for Human Rights –Israel), details how months of denied entry of essential medical supplies, including anesthesia, insulin, and oxygen cylinders, left health-care workers unable to treat the wounded and critically ill.

Fragmented and Weak Enforcement

Despite the existence of robust international legal frameworks, including the Geneva Conventions, enforcement measures for attacks on health care remain fragmented and weak. The continuous and persistent impunity for these attacks has rendered the norms established under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2286 ineffective. The resolution was innovative at the time, marking the first instance when the U.N. Security Council addressed violence against health in armed conflict, with States making commitments to seek accountability among perpetrators. But the measure falls short on specific mandates and mechanisms for oversight, investigation, or follow-up. The responsibility of addressing attacks is placed on States that often are the perpetrators of these tactics, and there is no single body or mechanism focused on health care in conflict at the global level.

As a result, responses have been uneven: occasional condemnations, under-resourced documentation efforts, and a reliance on humanitarian actors with limited capacity and mandate to fill the gap left by political inaction. This leaves victims and health-care workers with no clear avenues for redress and puts them at risk, as perpetrators are emboldened to carry out additional attacks unchecked. The international community has been regrettably slow in moving beyond reaffirmation towards accountability.

That goes some way toward explaining why there still have been no prosecutions for attacks on health. Aside from legal, institutional, and political obstacles, investigators also encounter difficulties with evidence collection and the distinction between legitimate targets and protected objects. Investigative authorities may lack technical expertise or a mandate to focus on health-specific violations. And above all, there is a lack of political will: States are reluctant to challenge perpetrators when doing so could strain relations or implicate allies. Until these systemic barriers are addressed, the cycle of impunity will continue.

Four Critical Lines of Effort

In this year leading up to next May’s 10th anniversary of Resolution 2286, States and international community must take four critical sets of actions to turn the tide on attacks against health and ensure justice for those affected by these serious violations of international law.

1. Invest Political Will in Enforcing Protections for Health Care

Efforts to stop violence against health care will not succeed through international norms alone. The core issue is not a lack of frameworks or actors — it is a lack of political will. While coalitions such as the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, of which PHR is a member, have made critical contributions to documentation and advocacy, meaningful State action must follow. What is needed is a coordinated commitment by States — that goes beyond a U.N. resolution — willing to use their political, diplomatic, economic, and legal leverage, including through the ICC, arms control, and bilateral pressure to hold perpetrators accountable and deter future violations.

This moment also offers an opportunity to link enforcement with broader modernization of international humanitarian law, recognizing the challenges of current legal frameworks in the face of the ever-changing nature of violent conflict. Given the close connection between the attacks on health and the rights to life and health, the U.N. Human Rights Council and other rights-based mechanisms have a critical role to play by grounding attacks on health more firmly within international human rights law.

2. Heed the Needs of Affected Health Care Workers

Any efforts to address the growing scale of attacks must also prioritize the voices and needs of health-care workers. Specific steps could involve enhanced security and preparedness protocols, institutional support for documentation efforts, and access to redress, psychosocial, and legal support. In Ukraine, dozens of health-care workers have been detained, tortured, and forcibly disappeared by Russian forces. Others have risked their lives to continue providing care in bombed-out hospitals or during blackouts. Health-care workers are not only victims and survivors of these attacks but also first responders, witnesses, and documenters — roles that require recognition, protection, and support.

3. Deliver Reparations and Mechanisms to Prevent Future Attacks

Third, for victims and survivors of attacks on health in Ukraine, accountability must extend beyond criminal justice. Full recovery will require a better understanding of the reverberating harms that attacks on health care cause for communities and for countries in general.

In Ukraine, clear principles for reparations in the health sector should be a key element of the ongoing peace negotiations and transitional justice efforts. Survivors and victims, including health-care workers, must be meaningfully involved in shaping these frameworks.

Reparations for attacks on health — through compensation, restitution, and forward-looking measures to prevent violations — should be embedded into Ukraine’s broader post-war recovery. These measures could include legal and institutional reforms to strengthen protection of health care and improve compliance with international law through targeted pressure. Comprehensive justice also means rebuilding hospitals, compensating families of health-care workers killed or injured, and rebuilding the capacity of the health sector.

4. Treat Accountability as Non-Negotiable

With accountability for attacks on health historically neglected, the fast erosion of international humanitarian law should be a turning point. Justice should be prioritized not just as an obligation and moral imperative but also as a necessary deterrent. Thousands of survivors and victims of these attacks deserve to have perpetrators held to account.

In Ukraine, this urgency is amplified by a volatile geopolitical climate in which such violations risk being sidelined — or even denied — at the international level. As the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe affirmed in April, any peace process in Ukraine must not compromise accountability. To ensure that justice processes are effective and grounded in the national context, the capacity of local investigators and prosecutors should be strengthened, with particular attention to identifying, prioritizing, and building cases related to attacks on health.

Next year’s 10th anniversary of Resolution 2286 must be more than a commemorative moment. It presents a chance to build something concrete to ensure full implementation of the resolution and to pave the way towards sustained and meaningful accountability.

The post Protecting Health Care in Conflict: Lessons from Ukraine for a Global Roadmap appeared first on Just Security.

The Trump administration’s latest purge of career civil servants in the State Department will leave gaping holes in U.S. foreign policy expertise that could take decades to rebuild. In February, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order (E.O.) 14217, “Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Government,” directing the elimination of the Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) program. For nearly fifty years, this flagship professional development program has recruited the best and brightest graduate students to serve across the U.S. government on behalf of the American people. It has played a particularly vital role in supporting national security departments and agencies, which depend on trustworthy, high-performing public servants to manage the country’s most sensitive information.

But the PMF program is more than just a hiring mechanism for federal workers. It is a leadership initiative designed to equip future civil servants with management training, interagency exposure, and an understanding of how the U.S. government operates—from embassies overseas and combatant commands to Washington headquarters. The combination of top-tier talent and structured development has helped produce alumni who went on to become U.S. Senators, members of Congress, and Cabinet officials.

We write from personal experience. As students who did not attend Ivy League schools but worked hard and graduated near the top of our class, we were nominated by our universities and, after a rigorous assessment and interview process, selected for coveted PMF positions at the State Department. Over the years, we have proudly served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Every PMF has a unique story. For us, growing up in Illinois and Western Pennsylvania, public service was not the default path. While many of our peers chose big law firms or other lucrative private sector jobs, we were driven by a desire to give back to the country that had given so much to our families. We wanted to use our degrees to take on some of the toughest foreign policy challenges. We knew the pay would be lower, but the purpose was greater. Serving our country, with pride and patriotism, felt far more gratifying than any paycheck.

Without the PMF program, we may never have entered public service. The program was founded with the goal of reaching into all corners of America to promote greater representation in the federal civil service. It has been especially important in opening the historically elite world of foreign policy to people from the Midwest, the Deep South, the Sunbelt, and the Great Plains. Based on our own experiences, we know America is stronger—and our foreign policy is more effective—when public servants truly understand and reflect the full breadth of the country: the farmers, the teachers, and the small business owners.

The PMF program meant that the daughter of immigrants—who was the first person in her family to be born in the United States—could grow up to serve as a Special Assistant to the President at the White House National Security Council. And that the grandson of a Pittsburgh steelworker and a Brooklynite, who as a young boy followed World War I through newspaper clippings, could become a U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. We also both worked for the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations where, sitting behind the U.S. nameplate, we represented a version of the American dream.

When Trump issued E.O. 14217, he left hundreds of young people from across the United States—who were expecting to be a part of an incoming PMF class—scrambling to find alternative employment. Beyond impacting those individuals, the elimination of the program will have long-term consequences for the future of America’s diplomatic corps and an entire generation of policymakers.

If government service can no longer be considered reliable employment, the best people will stop pursuing careers in public service. This isn’t good for Republicans or Democrats—and it’s not good for our country. These young people bring many of the bold, fresh ideas that have fueled American growth since the founding of the Republic.

Recent public discourse has placed emphasis on the importance of merit-based hiring, which makes it all the more perplexing that—with a few strokes of a pen—a program rooted in meritocracy and geographic diversity has been eliminated. The American public and the U.S. government need a functioning recruitment pipeline, and that means continuing the stream of young PMF talent.

Call it by another name or amend the recruitment process, but don’t eliminate the PMF program entirely. We should be lifting up the next generation of public servants and encouraging students who reflect the richness of America’s diversity to serve their country—not closing off the paths that lead them there. They are inspired to help this country reach new heights. The very least we can do is not stand in their way.

The post Save the PMF Program or Risk Losing a Generation of Public Servants appeared first on Just Security.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers added 73,000 jobs last month and Labor Department revisions showed that hiring was much weaker than previously reported in May and June. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2%.

The deterioration in the job market is taking place with companies paralyzed by uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s trade policies.

The Labor Department reported Friday that revisions shaved a stunning 258,000 jobs off May and June payrolls.

The stock market tumbled on the news.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

WASHINGTON (AP) —

The American job market is deteriorating — ever so slowly.

It’s not showing up as widespread layoffs. The unemployment rate is still low.

It’s subtler than that: New college graduates are struggling to break into the job market. The unemployment rate for college graduates 22 to 27 years old, reached 5.8% in March, the highest, excluding the pandemic, since 2012, and far above the nationwide unemployment rate.

Many Americans are staying in their jobs, unwilling to start the job hunt, because they believe this is as good as it gets, and there is growing evidence that they’re right: Few industries are actually hiring aggressively.

The current situation is a sharp reversal from the hiring boom of just three years ago when desperate employers were handing out signing bonuses and introducing perks such as Fridays off, fertility benefits and even pet insurance to recruit and keep workers.

When the Labor Department puts out its July employment report Friday, it’s expected to show that companies, government agencies and nonprofits collectively added 115,000 jobs last month, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.

That is not a bad number but its worse than last year, and even last month, when employers added 147,000 jobs. Employers added an average 130,000 jobs a month through June, down 23% from last year’s hiring and a whopping 68% below the 2021-2023 average when the economy was bounding back from COVID-19 lockdowns.

Weighing on the job market are the lingering effects of higher interest rates that were used by the Federal Reserve to fight inflation; President Donald Trump’s massive import taxes and the costs and uncertainty they are imposing on businesses; and an anticipated drop in foreign workers as the president’s massive deportation plans move forward.

“The labor market is poised for a summer slowdown as businesses put hiring plans on hold but refrain from broad-based layoffs,” Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon wrote in a commentary this week. “We see job growth slowing well below trend in the coming months.’’

Still, most American workers enjoy an unusual level of job security. The unemployment rate is low at 4.1%. The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits — a proxy for layoffs — remains at healthy levels.

But Adam Schickling, senior economist at Vanguard, cautions that “a low unemployment rate and a muted pace of layoffs mask underlying weakness.’’

In a commentary Tuesday, Schickling wrote that the health of the job market “can be a matter of individual perspective…If you’re a registered nurse, you may believe the job market’s health to be excellent. The unemployment rate for experienced health care practitioners is currently below 2%. If you’re young and just entering the labor force or you’re older and seeking to reenter it, prospects may seem bleak.’’

The rate of people quitting their jobs — a sign they’re confident they can land something better — has fallen from the record heights of 2021 and 2022 and is now below where it stood before the pandemic.

For one thing, hiring has become concentrated in a handful of industries. So far this year, for example, private U.S. employers have added 644,000 jobs. Of those, nearly 405,000 — or 63% — were in just one of the Labor Department’s industry categories: healthcare and social assistance, which spans everything from hospitals to daycare centers.

As hiring has cooled over the past couple of years it’s become harder for young people or those re-entering the workforce to find jobs, leading to longer job searches or spells of unemployment. The Labor Department said the number of discouraged workers, who believe no jobs are available for them, rose by 256,000 in June to 637,000.

“Historically, a decline in hiring has been accompanied by a swift rise in layoffs, a one-two punch that drives up the unemployment rate,” Schickling wrote in a commentary. “Today’s labor market is defying that pattern.’’

One reason is that manufacturing companies, which tend to pull the trigger on layoffs quickly when economic conditions weaken, account for an ever-smaller share of American jobs. “So there is simply less headcount to cut,’’ he said.

The bottom line: “Firms are pulling back on hiring without shedding existing workers in significant numbers,’’ Schickling said. “The result is a labor market that is softening gradually, not collapsing.’’