Join us on Thursday, 22 January, for a webinar organized by PSI as part of the G2H2 Policy Debates. 

📅 Thursday 22nd January 2026

🕟 13.00 -14.30 CET

 🔗 Register HERE

  🔗 Check out the G2H2 webpage for more details and for the full programme of the week

In her 2025 “Health and care workers as defenders of the right to health” report to the fifty-ninth session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, underscored the fact that:  “Health and care workers are crucial to realise and defend the right to health”.

Despite this, they have consistently faced attacks and been made targets in violent conflict zones, undermining their ability to adequately provide healthcare to the populace as well as perennially putting them in mortal danger. And this is done without regards to subsisting international humanitarian law by invading states as in Ukraine and Palestine. Armed non-state actors are also culpable as we see in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria.

The cost in human lives has been soaring in recent years. At least 927 health workers were verified to have been killed in 2024 alone. This was almost double the 480 killed in 2023 which itself was double the numbers of 2022. Then there is the trauma faced by those that are not killed. Even after the conflict is over, they are faced with PTSD.

This terrible reality is not acceptable. Yet it continues. To stop this relentless targeting of health and care workers, we need to stand up for health and care workers. We must collectively and consistently say Enough Is Enough! Health Workers Are Not Targets! That starts with listening to the voices of the affected health and care workers from across the world.

This session will bring the UN Special Rapporteur, Dr Mofokeng, and representative voices of health workers on the frontlines of some of the most debilitating conflict zones in the world to the discussion. They will tell the lived stories of what they are going through and how we could all help to make a difference in driving home the message that health and care workers must not be targets in conflict zones.

Speakers

• Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng; UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health

• Dr Jihad Attal; General Union of Health Services Workers (GUHSW), Gaza

• Dr Sara Abdelgalil; Sudanese Doctors Union, UK (SDU-UK, President: 2017-2020)

• Mr Oleh Panasenko; President Free Trade Union of Medical Workers of Ukraine (FTUMWU)

• Comrade (Dr) Kabiru Ado Sani Minjibir; President, Medical and Health Workers’ Union of Nigeria (MHWUN)

• Moderator Bàbá Ayé; Health and Social Services Sector Officer, PSI