In the first instalment of episode 2 in this multi-blog series on the updated Commentaries, Heather Brandon discusses the protective status of medical facilities and personnel and the appropriate responses to attacks as guided by GCI. 

Heather Brandon serves as Advocacy Counsel, National Security for Human Rights First. In this role, she develops recommendations and advocates for U.S. national security policies that accord with human rights and the rule of law.  She specializes in the domestic and international legal frameworks governing the use of force and has worked to reform key post-9/11 counter-terrorism policies, including indefinite detention and military commissions at Guantanamo and U.S. war authorities, including the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).

Joint Series Episode II, Part I

The recent mistaken and deliberate attacks on civilian medical facilities and personnel have rightly inspired substantial analysis on the protective status of these facilities and personnel and the appropriate responses to such attacks. While the ICRC’s 2016 updated Commentary on the First Geneva Convention (GC I), being concerned with the wounded and sick in the armed forces, does not broach such civilian objects and persons, it does provide significant additional guidance on a related category of protected persons and objects: military medical personnel, units and transports.

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