Cordula Droege

In our collective response to COVID-19 in conflict zones, it is vital that key provisions of international humanitarian law are respected in order to respond adequately to the needs of communities, health professionals and authorities during these unprecedented times.

We are living through a shared, global crisis. COVID-19 does not heed borders or pay deference to people of power or wealth. However, while the virus does not discriminate in its reach, the effects of the pandemic are by no means equally distributed.

It is the men, women and children caught in the crossfire of armed conflict – displaced by violence, living in countries which have been structurally shattered by years of fighting, destruction, erosion of basic services – who are the most vulnerable to the current pandemic. Nearly 168 million people around the world now depend on humanitarian relief because of conflict, violence and disasters. As terrifying as the health, social, psychological and economic impacts have shown to be, the coronavirus is not one, but rather one more, calamity that befalls them.

Read the full blog post here.