Care in the Crosshairs: Violence Against Health Care in Conflict in 2025, released today by the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition (SHCC), documents 2,546 incidents of violence against or obstruction of health care across 33 countries in 2025, including 790 incidents where hospitals were damaged or destroyed and 455 health workers killed. International humanitarian law prohibits attacks on health care, a commitment that all 15 UN Security Council members reaffirmed when they unanimously adopted Resolution 2286 ten years ago. Yet perpetrators are rarely held to account, even as some hospitals and health workers continue to be strategically targeted.
“In 2025, reported violence on health care rose in 13 countries. Today, as we release our 2025 findings, at least 18 first responders have been killed in Lebanon in sequential strikes targeting rescue workers responding to an initial air strike, while health facilities treating Ebola patients in eastern Congo are being set on fire as conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus spread online,” said Christina Wille, Executive Director of SHCC member Insecurity Insight, which oversaw the data collection and analysis processes for the report.
“When health workers are kidnapped, tortured, or killed, societies lose irreplaceable expertise not only for conflict injuries, but for the full range of health emergencies and basic needs that follow. War is already devastating to health, but attacking hospitals makes it doubly so: health needs surge while services are destroyed. Outbreaks spread, trauma rises, and preventative care is all but lost in these situations. This lasts for years, if not for decades,” said Rohini Haar, Co-Chair of the SHCC and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Kidnappings, Arrests, and Funding Cuts
In 2025, health workers faced escalating danger on multiple fronts: in addition to the 455 health workers killed, kidnappings rose 58 percent to at least 218 cases, with sharp increases in eastern DRC, Mali, Haiti, Pakistan, and Syria, as violence against health care attributed to non-state actors rose. More than 260 health workers were arrested or detained across 17 countries. At least seven died in custody in Ethiopia, Gaza, Sudan, and Syria. Since 2021, state actors have consistently been reported as being responsible for more violence against health care than non-state armed groups, and 64% of all violence against health care was attributed to states in 2025.
Compounding the crisis, USAID funding cuts and a broader decline in official development assistance forced the immediate closures of health services across conflict-affected areas, reducing essential services by up to 70 percent in some settings. The cuts have also compromised the evidentiary record: in some countries, apparent drops in reported incidents likely reflect a collapse in reporting capacity driven by funding cuts, insecurity, and communication disruptions, rather than improved security on the ground.
Armed drones are not striking health facilities by accident
Armed drone strikes against health care surged 43% in 2025, accounting for 34% of all explosive weapons incidents affecting health facilities, up from 16% in 2024. Ukraine and Sudan drove much of that increase. In Sudan, incidents rose dramatically, from 3 to 24. In at least one case, first responders treating the wounded were hit in a deliberate follow-up drone strike. The civilian impacts of these drone strikes are large, as one doctor described: “Some days I see 20 patients; other days, after a missile or a drone hits, 200.”
In Ukraine, incidents rose 116%, from 137 in 2024 to 296 in 2025, with short-range drones predominating, including cheap-to-produce, easy-to-modify first-person view models that guide operators to targets via a live camera feed, and “kamikaze drones” that detonate on impact. “What makes the armed drone attacks so devastating is the precision of the weapons and the intentional nature of the targeting. Perpetrators use these drones to specifically kill health care workers, destroy health infrastructure, and drive patients away from care. Drones often target first responders responding to the previous attack,” said Uliana Poltavets of SHCC member Physicians for Human Rights.
A Decade of Unfulfilled Commitments
Care in the Crosshairs: Violence Against Health Care in Conflict in 2025 is released ten years after the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2286, which condemned attacks on medical facilities and personnel, demanded compliance with international humanitarian law, and called on member states to investigate violations, prosecute perpetrators, and reform military doctrine and training.
“Ten years of Resolution 2286 have produced ten years of largely unfulfilled commitments. Laws meant to protect the wounded and the workers caring for them are being deliberately reinterpreted to give states greater impunity. The people paying the price are patients and the health workers trying to care for them. Protecting health care in conflict is not only a matter of international humanitarian law, but also key to a healthy society post-conflict,” said Joseph Amon, Co-Chair of the SHCC and Professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health and Human Rights.
The SHCC calls on the UN Secretary-General and member states to finally honor the commitments made in Resolution 2286: reform military doctrine and training, incorporate robust protections into domestic law, conduct thorough investigations of violations, and bring perpetrators to justice.
NOTES TO THE EDITOR:
Care in the Crosshairs: Violence Against Health Care in Conflict includes, in addition to global reporting, recommendations and analysis, detailed profiles of 21 of the 33 countries and territories where state and non-state armed actors, including organized criminal groups, carried out acts of violence against health care. Data on these attacks is available on the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) and via Insecurity Insight’s global map on attacks on health care, which can be explored by thematic area: Outbreak, Political, Vaccination, Maternal Care, and Drone Attacks, globally or by country. The map shows data since January 2016 and is updated continuously. Numbers may change if new information is made publicly available.
To document the impact and failures of UNSCR 2286 and chart a path forward, Insecurity Insight, in partnership with Researching the Impacts on Healthcare (RIAH) and the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition (SHCC), will release Still Under Attack: A decade of monitoring attacks on health care after United Nations Security Council Resolution 2286 in early June 2026, on 10 years of data. There will be a dedicated webinar for a short briefing and discussion about the findings on June 3, 2026, at 11 am EST / 4 pm BST / 5 pm CET. Register here.
About the SHCC: The Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition is a coalition of humanitarian, human rights, and health professional organizations and academic centers working to protect health workers and services threatened by war and civil unrest. More information at safeguardinghealth.org.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a New York-based advocacy organization that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations. Learn more here.