NEWS
Independent: Protests after Syria appointed to WHO’s executive board
Protesters accused the Assad regime of years of attacks on hospitals
(AP)
Medical workers in Syria have protested furiously after the country’s government was elevated to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) executive board.
They took to the streets in rebel-held Idlib after learning the regime of Bashar al-Assad had been appointed to the body after a vote that faced no debate or opposition.
The WHO’s executive board members hold three-year terms. They set the agenda for its health assembly – the decision-making body – and implement its policies.
Protesters noted the grim irony of the Assad regime’s appointment, following its years of bombing raids on hospitals and clinics during Syria’s bloody, 10-year civil war.
“We reject the idea that our killer and he who destroyed our hospitals be represented on the executive board,” read a banner carried by some of the protesters on Monday. Some two dozen medical staff members protested outside the main health department.
Rifaat Farhat, a senior health official in Idlib, said Saturday’s vote “contradicts all international and humanitarian laws”.
Salwa Abdul-Rahman, a citizen journalist based in Idlib province – the last rebel stronghold in the country – said he feared a representative of the government could try to cut medical aid to the region, which is home to millions of people.
Hundreds of medical centres have been bombed, mostly in government airstrikes. Half the remaining hospitals and health facilities are functioning only partially or not at all, while 70 per cent of Syria’s medical personnel have fled.
UN watch: Syria Elected to WHO Executive Board, Activists Outraged
GENEVA, May 29, 2021 — Syria was elected to the World Health Organization’s executive board on Friday, sparking outrage among human rights activists worldwide.
“Syria’s election is a travesty,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, an independent non-governmental human rights group based in Switzerland. “It’s like appointing a pyromaniac to be the town fire chief.”
“Syria’s Assad regime, with the help of its allies Russia and Iran, systematically bombs hospitals and clinics, killing doctors, nurses, and others as they care for the sick and injured. Health professionals have also been arrested, disappeared, imprisoned, tortured and executed. Electing this murderous regime to govern the world’s top health body is an insult to Assad’s millions of victims, and sends a terrible message,” said Neuer.
White Helmets, the Syrian civil defense group of emergency medical workers, also condemned the election. “We are appalled by the WHO’s decision to reward the Assad regime for destroying hospitals and killing doctors and refusing to provide medical assistance to Syrians by electing it as a member of its executive board,” tweeted the group.
Neuer called on UN chief Antonio Guterres and WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to denounce Syria’s election.
Over the past 10 years in Syria, there were 598 attacks on health care facilities and personnel, 350 health care facilities were targeted, and 930 medical professionals were killed, according to Physicians For Human Rights.