News

It is with deep despair and outrage that we announced yesterday the killing of Dr Thabat Salim. Dr Salim was a 30 year old woman who had only recently begun her career with the Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association (PFPPA), a Member Association of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), but who had become a much loved and respected member of our team. Her death is more than a tragedy; it is a devastating indictment of the conditions under which women health care providers live and work. She was Palestinian. She was living in Gaza. She was a woman of reproductive age. She was a doctor. She worked in a hospital. She cared for Palestine’s next generation; newborn babies. These factors should have made her a symbol of hope and healing. Instead, they culminated in her murder. No woman should be afraid to go to work. Yet, this is the daily reality for many of our healthcare workers — most of them women — in Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and beyond. Since October 8, 2023, when our health site in Gaza was destroyed, and our staff forced to flee, we have spoken out. We have joined others in echoing #HealthcareWorkersAreNotATarget. But we must also confront a truth that is far more uncomfortable for me to say, and you to read: The Israeli Government is not acting alone in its targeting and killing of women and healthcare workers. The US government - of which we are a recipient of their aid - supplied more than $18 billion in military aid last year. Under the current Administration, they pledged $8 billion more. These funds, meant for military support, translate into more murdered doctors, and many more murdered women and children. They translate to more men killed, injured or incarcerated, and more families shattered. I can of course speak to other Western powers, but as I write this, the U.S. remains one of the biggest suppliers of weapons used in this genocide. Perversely, they are also the biggest funder of global health, including reproductive health programs - programs that will increasingly be designed to “mop up” what remains of our colleagues, patients, clinics and communities.  Civilians – and particularly health workers – are being denied their rightful legal protections. For reasons too improbable to untangle here, the United States, and others continuing to supply weapons to the Israeli army, are colluding in the massacre of civilians, colluding in the massacre of Palestinian women of reproductive age, colluding in the massacre of health workers. And in this last act of violence, destroying our humanity.   We are urging an end to this violence. An end to the supply of weapons that kill our colleagues and patients. An end to impunity on sexual violence. An end to this genocide. If you stand for women. For peace. For the right to sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice, then stand with us. Stand for Dr Thabat Salim. Stand for the 17 year old who was killed in our Sudanese Family Planning Association clinic in Darfur last week because he dared buy condoms. Stand for our colleagues in Palestine, in Lebanon, in Syria, Sudan and Yemen who have been killed and injured in this last year. Stand for our surviving colleagues on the frontlines of sexual and reproductive healthcare who no longer have a place to go to work, or a place to call home, because in this era of an undeclared war on women’s bodies, on young people’s bodies, a few powerful men felt emboldened enough to consider them collateral damage.   It is time to come together, to stand for sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice for ALL. You can stand for IPPF by donating here. All donations will go to where our healthcare workers are providing front line services under conflict.