A sustained pattern of strikes on Iranian hospitals, ambulances, and medical infrastructure has killed healthcare workers and forced the evacuation of six hospitals. The WHO has verified 18 attacks on health sites, documenting systematic damage to protected medical facilities including Gandhi Hospital and Iranian Red Crescent centers.
WHO has verified 18 attacks on healthcare facilities in Iran since the war began on February 28, 2026, with at least 8 medical workers killed and 55 wounded.
Six hospitals have been evacuated, 29 clinical facilities damaged, and 10 rendered inactive. Patients required evacuation from seven additional facilities.
An executive order stripped human rights safeguards from the US arms transfer framework, replacing decades of bipartisan policy with a commerce-first approach. The subsequent emergency bypass of congressional review for $23+ billion in Gulf arms sales demonstrated the immediate consequences of removing these guardrails.
Executive Order 14383, signed February 6, 2026, establishes the 'America First Arms Transfer Strategy,' which reorders US arms export priorities to prioritize commercial and economic objectives over strategic, human rights, and humanitarian considerations.
The EO makes no mention of human rights, international humanitarian law, or civilian protection — a stark departure from all previous administrations' arms transfer policies, including Trump's own 2018 policy.
The US contracted with an Israeli state-owned arms manufacturer for banned cluster munitions at industrial scale, reversing decades of declining reliance on these weapons and funding an Israeli weapons program while cluster munitions continue to kill and maim civilians worldwide.
On September 30, 2025, the Pentagon awarded an indefinite delivery/quantity contract with a ceiling value of $829.1 million to Tomer, an Israeli state-owned company, for the manufacture and production of the 155mm XM1208 cluster munition shell. The initial order was valued at $210 million.
The contract was awarded without public competition under a 'public interest' exception to federal contracting law, bypassing normal procurement safeguards.
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Updated March 26, 2026Foreign Policy & War
Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law ConcernOngoingReported record
The expiration of the last US-Russia nuclear arms control treaty ends over five decades of binding limits on the world's two largest nuclear arsenals. No replacement is under negotiation. The loss of verification mechanisms, data exchange, and warhead caps risks an unconstrained nuclear arms race at a time of peak geopolitical tension.
New START expired on February 5, 2026, ending the last legally binding limits on US and Russian nuclear arsenals — 1,550 deployed strategic warheads, 700 deployed delivery systems, and 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers per side.
This marks the first time since the early 1970s that there are no binding nuclear arms control agreements between the two nations that together possess approximately 90% of the world's nuclear weapons.
A large-scale US retaliatory bombing campaign in Syria following the deaths of three Americans near Palmyra. The scale of the operation — hundreds of munitions across dozens of targets in populated desert regions — raises serious questions about proportionality and civilian protection under international humanitarian law.
On December 19, 2025, the US launched Operation Hawkeye Strike with over 100 munitions on 70+ ISIS targets across Syria, using A-10s, F-16s, Apache helicopters, and HIMARS guided artillery, with support from Jordanian F-16s.
The operation was retaliatory — responding to the December 13 Palmyra attack that killed two US soldiers (Sgt. Edgar Torres-Tovar and Sgt. William Howard of the Iowa National Guard) and a civilian interpreter (Ayad Mansoor Sakat).
The Trump administration reversed decades of bipartisan progress toward eliminating antipersonnel landmines by authorizing their global use and simultaneously dismantling the US humanitarian demining program that had been the world's largest mine-clearing effort.
Defense Secretary Hegseth signed a memo on December 2, 2025, reversing the Biden-era policy that prohibited US use of antipersonnel landmines outside the Korean Peninsula, allowing combatant commanders to deploy landmines anywhere without geographic restriction.
The same memo rescinded the US Humanitarian Mine Program, a decades-long government initiative that had provided over $5 billion in assistance to more than 125 countries to find and destroy unexploded landmines since 1993.
Trump directed the Pentagon to match other nations' nuclear testing programs, breaking a moratorium that has held since 1992 and threatening to collapse the global norm against nuclear testing that has been maintained for over three decades.
On October 30, 2025, Trump publicly directed the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing, stating the US should match 'other countries' nuclear testing programs' — apparently referencing Russia's publicized test of a nuclear delivery system.
The US has not conducted a live nuclear weapons test since 1992, when President George H.W. Bush imposed a unilateral testing moratorium. No country besides North Korea has tested nuclear weapons since the 1990s.
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Updated March 26, 2026Foreign Policy & War
Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law ConcernOngoingReported record
The combined effect of freezing Afghanistan's sovereign assets and terminating all US humanitarian aid has created a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in which millions face starvation. UN officials have explicitly warned the policy will directly cause deaths, particularly among children.
The United States and European nations froze nearly $9.5 billion in Afghan central bank assets after the Taliban takeover in August 2021, depriving the Afghan economy of its reserves and cutting it off from the global financial system.
In 2025, the Trump administration terminated all remaining US humanitarian aid to Afghanistan — $561.8 million — ordering an immediate suspension of all assistance programs.
The reimposition of FTO status on the Houthis threatens to deepen what was already the world's worst humanitarian crisis by chilling aid delivery, disrupting commercial imports, and creating legal risks for humanitarian workers operating in areas where more than half of Yemen's population lives.
On March 4, 2025, the State Department redesignated Ansarallah (Houthis) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, carrying criminal penalties for providing 'material support' to the designated entity.
Biden had revoked the FTO designation in February 2021 specifically because of its humanitarian impact, stating it was 'due entirely to the humanitarian consequences' and would 'accelerate the world's worst humanitarian crisis.'
Using emergency waivers under the Arms Export Control Act, the administration has bypassed Congress to approve massive arms sales to Gulf states, including to the UAE despite documented evidence of UAE weapons flowing to the RSF in Sudan's genocide. The simultaneous rescission of NSM-20 removed all human rights conditions from US arms transfers.
The Trump administration invoked wartime emergency powers to force through more than $23 billion in arms sales to the UAE, Kuwait, and Jordan, bypassing the mandatory congressional review process under the Arms Export Control Act.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued an emergency waiver to bypass the standard 30-day congressional review period, citing the Iran war as justification.
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Updated March 25, 2026Foreign Policy & War
War Crime / Crime Against HumanityOngoingReported record
The US Defense Secretary's public declaration that no quarter would be given to Iran constitutes a textbook war crime under Rome Statute Article 8(2)(b)(xii), which criminalizes 'declaring that no quarter will be given.' This prohibition is among the oldest in the laws of war.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly declared there would be 'no quarter, no mercy' for Iran during the 2026 Iran war.
Declaring that no quarter will be given is explicitly listed as a war crime under Rome Statute Article 8(2)(b)(xii). It is a per se violation — the declaration itself is the crime, regardless of whether it is carried out.
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Updated March 25, 2026Foreign Policy & War
War Crime / Crime Against HumanityOngoingReported record
US and Israeli strikes have damaged UNESCO World Heritage Sites and over 100 cultural heritage sites across Iran, including Golestan Palace, Isfahan's Naqsh-e Jahan Square complex, the 8th-century Jameh Mosque, and prehistoric sites dating to 63,000 BC. The destruction of cultural heritage during armed conflict is prohibited under the 1954 Hague Convention and constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute.
UNESCO documented at least four historic sites damaged by shockwaves from a March 10 strike alone. Iran's Ministry of Cultural Heritage reported at least 56 cultural sites, museums, and historical buildings damaged, with over 100 heritage sites impacted as bombing continued.
Golestan Palace in Tehran, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, suffered shattered glass from mirrored ceilings, broken archways, blown-out windows, and damaged glass-mosaic walls.
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Updated March 25, 2026Foreign Policy & War
War Crime / Crime Against HumanityOngoingReported record
A US submarine torpedoed an Iranian frigate returning from a peaceful international naval event, killing 87 sailors. The failure to rescue shipwrecked sailors violates the Second Geneva Convention's obligation to search for and collect the shipwrecked after an engagement.
The USS Charlotte torpedoed the IRIS Dena approximately 19 nautical miles off Sri Lanka on March 4, 2026. The Iranian frigate was returning from India's International Fleet Review — a peaceful, internationally attended naval event.
Eighty-seven sailors were killed. The Sri Lanka Navy rescued 32 survivors.
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Updated March 25, 2026Foreign Policy & War
War Crime / Crime Against HumanityOngoingReported record
The Iran war triggered closure of the world's most critical energy chokepoint, causing the largest supply disruption since the 1970s. Oil above $120/barrel, 70% food import disruption across Gulf states, and mass civilian evacuation — consequences of a war launched without congressional authorization.
The Strait of Hormuz — through which approximately 20 million barrels of oil pass daily, representing 20% of global seaborne oil trade — was effectively closed starting March 4, 2026.
Tanker traffic dropped by approximately 70%, with over 150 ships anchoring outside the strait to avoid risks.
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Updated March 25, 2026Foreign Policy & War
War Crime / Crime Against HumanityOngoingReported record
Trump's explicit threat to destroy Iran's civilian power infrastructure constitutes a per se violation of international humanitarian law. Combined with the broader war's toll of 5,900+ killed including 595 civilians, this represents a confirmed war crime classification for threatening attacks on civilian objects.
Trump explicitly threatened to 'obliterate' Iran's power plants, which Amnesty International assessed as a 'threat to commit war crimes' -- intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure is a per se violation of IHL.
As of March 21, 2026, the Iran war has killed at least 5,900 people including 595 documented civilians, according to the Hengaw Documentation Center.
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Updated March 25, 2026Foreign Policy & War
War Crime / Crime Against HumanityOngoingReported record
A Tomahawk cruise missile struck a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, killing up to 180 schoolchildren in one of the deadliest single incidents of civilian harm in the 2026 Iran war. Investigations by the New York Times, CBC, NPR, and BBC Verify confirmed US responsibility.
A US Tomahawk cruise missile struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Minab, Hormozgan province, Iran, on February 28, 2026, killing between 175 and 180 people — mostly schoolgirls aged 7 to 12.
The school was 'triple-tapped' — struck three distinct times. Analysis showed missiles hit a nearby military base and the school but bypassed a medical clinic between them, indicating deliberate coordinate selection.
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Updated March 25, 2026Foreign Policy & War
Serious Rights ViolationOngoingOfficial executive action
The US was the sole dissenter blocking Gaza ceasefire resolutions supported by all other Security Council members, while famine and allegations of genocide continued in Gaza. The pattern of vetoes enabled continued military operations with devastating humanitarian consequences.
In June 2025, the US cast its sole veto against a resolution demanding 'an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza' — the resolution received 14 votes in favor from all other council members.
In September 2025, the US vetoed another ceasefire resolution, the sixth such veto, being the only member to not support it. The vote took place at the council's 10,000th meeting, where famine and possible genocide were discussed.
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Updated March 25, 2026Foreign Policy & War
Serious Rights ViolationOngoingOfficial executive action
The Pentagon's civilian casualty prevention infrastructure was gutted in early 2025, removing safeguards that existed specifically to prevent the kinds of civilian harm documented in the administration's subsequent military operations.
The CHMR program and its Civilian Protection Center of Excellence were tagged for elimination by February 2025.
Approximately 200 personnel assigned to civilian harm mitigation were affected.
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Updated March 25, 2026Foreign Policy & War
Serious Rights ViolationOngoingOfficial executive action
The systematically intensified US sanctions regime against Cuba has caused 20-hour blackouts, hospital closures, medication shortages for 5 million chronically ill people, and collapse of essential services. UN experts condemned the measures as collective punishment of civilians.
US sanctions have cut Cuba's fuel imports by approximately 90 percent as of February 2026, causing electrical grid collapse with blackouts lasting up to 20 hours in Havana and longer in provinces.
Cuba's Health Minister reports 5 million people with chronic illnesses face medication or treatment disruption, including 16,000 cancer patients needing radiotherapy and 12,400 undergoing chemotherapy.
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Updated August 8, 2025Foreign Policy & War
Serious Rights ViolationOngoingOfficial executive action
The United States sanctioned a UN human rights investigator for performing the duties of her mandate, in what UN experts described as an unprecedented threat to the international human rights system.
Francesca Albanese was sanctioned under EO 14203 for engaging with the ICC in its investigation of Israel.
Sanctions include asset freezes, prohibition on donations and transfers, and suspension of U.S. entry.