A/HRC/39/25 or other illnesses, and lack of access to food or health-care facilities. The response necessary was therefore not only medical. As seen recently in the Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen, health-care facilities, hospitals and humanitarian convoys were increasingly targeted to destabilize areas, and children faced the long-term consequences of trauma, including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, even after the conflict had ended. 34. Jérôme Pfaffmann, a child health specialist at UNICEF, delivered a presentation on community health in emergencies. He explained that emergencies, conflict and humanitarian crises were among the greatest threats to realizing children’s right to health. There was a need for a detailed understanding of the challenges in each emergency to ensure an appropriate response. He stressed the importance of community health workers embedded in the local population, and of integrated primary health-care systems. He referred to UNICEF case studies from experience in Guinea, Liberia and South Sudan, highlighting how community health workers had been able to continue their work even when formal health system services had been disrupted. Community health workers needed ongoing support in order to operate effectively throughout crises and emergency situations. Greater investment was needed in predicting crises and in planning effective responses, including tools for applying a human rights-based approach. 35. David Southall of Maternal Child Health Advocacy International (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) delivered a presentation on the topic of protecting children from the health consequences of armed conflict. He stated that the nexus of security, insecurity and health must take precedence in crisis settings; international law was, however, ignored in conflict, and the situation was worsening globally. Attacks against health facilities and health workers were endemic (as in for example Somalia); the Security Council, in its resolution 2286 (2016), urged States to address such attacks and to take action to ensure accountability for perpetrators. He noted that, in May 2017, the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition published a report documenting the current situation and showing that such attacks were continuing globally, not only in the Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen, but also in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The proliferation of arms — including those manufactured by States Members of the Security Council — was a primary contributing factor to conflict, and proposed the development of a targeted global health protection system, funded and managed by the United Nations. 36. Nour Alnirabia of the Syrian American Medical Society Foundation in Aleppo made a presentation on her experience of addressing newborn and child mortality in the Syrian Arab Republic. She stated that children in conflict zones had heightened needs owing to displacement, injuries and lack of health care due to the destruction of medical centres and the lack of adequate personnel, facilities and equipment to cover the population. In the Syrian Arab Republic, for each physician there were 6,000 children needing care. Newborns, particularly premature babies, were at greatest risk of mortality; nonetheless, 300 babies were delivered daily in areas where hospitals did not have the means to provide care. Patients had no access to facilities being targeted by bombings and from which children were removed for safety reasons, even though they needed treatment. Chemical attacks were committed in areas where children could not be treated, and a lack of vaccination coverage in Syrian conflict areas had recently led to a polio epidemic. Children needed support through education, orphanages and centres to recover from the psychological trauma and stress of living through conflict, and also safe schools, which could help to build the next generation. 37. During the discussion, participants pointed out that attacks on health facilities in conflict were one of the six grave violations of children’s rights that the Human Rights Council had been mandated to address. While minimum standards existed for humanitarian responses, they did not exist for children in emergency situations. There was a need to address how children’s health was prioritized in humanitarian response planning; an interagency subcluster could be considered. More detailed understanding was needed in order to respond to non-medical factors, including underlying determinants, such as malnutrition. Participants noted the large number of abortions and premature births due to the exposure of pregnant women to conflict situations, and that conflicts of interests of States were an obstacle to bringing about effective responses to conflict. 11