When hospitals and schools become military targets during any ongoing war, the destruction and loss are far greater. It’s the loss of a safe space during a conflict. Despite legal protection given to these safe spaces during armed conflicts, they become key military targets as people flock there seeking protection. In 2019, the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition documented more than 1,203 incidents of violence against medical facilities, transports, personnel and patients in twenty countries.
Hospitals and schools are protected under the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) during armed conflict. Under the Geneva Convention of 1864, a fundamental principle of IHL has been that the “wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for”. According to this principle, all wounded and sick persons, including civilians and wounded combatants who are considered hors de combat, are given a general protection”. A violation of this qualifies as a war crime.
In terms of schools, although there is no provision in the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Additional Protocols or in customary international law that explicitly and exclusively deals with the protection of schools, according to the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC), IHL requires warring parties to refrain from attacking students, teachers, and their schools. The Safe Schools Guidelines, launched in Oslo in May 2015, are built on the guidelines to safeguard educational institutions by IHL.
However, despite this legal framework, attacks on schools and hospitals during armed conflicts are met with impunity.
As of May 2022, Russia shelled more than 1,000 schools, destroying 95. On May 7, a bomb flattened a school in the eastern village of Bilohorivka, which, like School No. 21 in Chernihiv, was being used as a shelter. As many as 60 people were feared dead.