End humanitarian catastrophe in conflict settings

Given our remit, our concern is especially for women, newborns, children, and adolescents who bear the physical and mental health burdens from the hostilities, as direct casualties and indirectly via reduced access to health care and other essential services.1 For children and adolescents, these conflicts occur at sensitive periods of neurodevelopment, with substantial lifelong and intergenerational repercussions.2 The military actions causing civilian injury and death in Sudan, Ukraine, and, most recently, Gaza, over the past months are deeply shocking. In war zones, civilians often seek shelter in hospitals, only to realise that these are not safe havens, in contradiction to international law.3 Residential housing (eg, in refugee camps and schools) serving as shelters are also not safe, and the number of displaced individuals exceeds 1·6 million.4 Displacement places young people—especially young women—at risk of violence and abuse. Armed conflict is associated with substantial and persistent excess maternal and child deaths globally5 due to direct (eg, violence) and indirect health effects.6 Adverse childhood experiences negatively impact physical, mental, and emotional health across the life course, with their impact being multiplicative during crucial periods of developmental plasticity, such as early childhood and adolescence.7 Many of the surviving children and adolescents have become orphaned, and some newborns are unidentifiable as their families have been killed.