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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Democracy Deputy Program Director, Grattan Institute

Around the world, democracy as a system of government is backsliding. After more than 50 years of liberal democracy in ascendancy, democratic progress plateaued around the turn of the century and is now going backwards.

In 2025, there were only 31 liberal democracies out of 179 countries assessed. And the United States – once the poster-child for democracy – was downgraded from “liberal democracy” to “electoral democracy” because of declining checks and balances on power, freedom of expression and civil rights and equality before the law.

Australia is one of the few remaining liberal democracies, and a leading one at that. But we are not immune to anti-democratic forces or the fraying international rules-based order.

A new Grattan Institute report, For the people: Future-proofing Australia’s democracy, identifies the main vulnerabilities for Australia’s democracy and opportunities to build a better, more resilient democratic system.

A bright light in a dark landscape

Australia comes from a place of strength. We are one of the world’s leading democracies, consistently ranking highly on international measures of democratic health, as well as on a suite of economic and social measures – including life expectancy, human development, employment, and GDP (gross domestic product) per capita.

This is no coincidence. Our democracy underpins our prosperity and safeguards our rights and freedoms. International evidence shows democracy supports peace and economic growth, while delivering longer lives and more education.

Social trust matters too. Countries with higher interpersonal trust – like Australia – tend to have higher economic growth and lower income inequality, which in turn support democratic resilience.

But the world order in which Australia has flourished is now being seriously tested. These are more turbulent times not just for our economy or standard of living, but for liberal democracies themselves.

Read more: New study shows global democracy hasn’t been this bad since 1978. Australia should be worried

Fuel for discontent is building

Our report takes stock of Australia’s greatest asset: the health of our democracy.

The good news is that Australians’ support for democracy has been consistently strong – even growing over time. Only a small share of the population is discontent or disengaged with the system, and the data do not suggest either have been spreading.

The bad news is that our social compact is under pressure. This is showing up in growing economic pessimism, worry for future generations, concern about unfairness, declining sense of belonging, and low trust in political actors.

While support for democracy remains high in Australia, satisfaction with how our democracy actually works is more fragile.

Satisfaction with democracy is typically lower among groups who are less well served by the status quo. Most obviously, our institutions have persistently failed First Nations Australians, and don’t fully support new migrants.

Read more: The Voice would have renewed Australian democracy. Its failure leaves us all worse off

Lower-income Australians and those with financial concerns tend to report lower trust and satisfaction with democracy.

Renters are less satisfied than homeowners, and people in regional areas tend to be less satisfied than people in cities.

Migrants are an interesting exception here. Migrants (except for those from the United Kingdom) are typically more satisfied than people born in Australia with the way democracy works here, despite the disadvantages they often face living here. This may, at least in part, be due to direct experience with other systems.

Everyone needs confidence that the system can work for them, even if it doesn’t always. Groups who persistently lack security, opportunity, or solidarity under the current system cannot reasonably be expected to trust or defend it.

3 big risks

Where there is fuel for discontent, there is increasing risk that global challenges could spark a blaze. Three inter-related global risks are particularly testing for democracies.

First, the decline in traditional news media and the rise of online and social news sources are fragmenting our fact base, and making misinformation and extreme views more salient in people’s daily lives.

Second, global political tensions and the rise of anti-democratic forces overseas are testing Australia’s social cohesion at home.

And third, the heightened probability of economic, social, and environmental shocks increases the challenges democratic governments face to deliver better outcomes for their people.

These are risks – not eventualities. The resilience of our democracy is in its capacity to recognise challenges and collectively respond.

And 5 ways forward

Our research and consultation identified five priorities for Australia to build a better and more resilient democracy:

1. Make the most of our parliament

Our elected federal parliament sits at the centre of Australia’s democracy. An independent review should consider how to make it more representative and better functioning – to rebuild trust in politics, improve administration of government and enable better long-term decision-making.

2. Nurture belonging and engagement

We need more ways to have a say and be heard and clearer pathways to citizenship. Our public sector leaders should also be actively stitching public engagement into the fabric of our existing institutions.

3. Protect our public sphere

A healthier public sphere requires ensuring the sustainability of our news media and investing in institutions that produce trusted information. We should also experiment with responses to misinformation, to work out which approaches are effective at scale.

4. Tackle the known policy challenges

In a democracy, process matters, but so do outcomes. Australians need confidence that our system of government can work for them and build something better than the status quo.

5. Prepare for the future

Crises are the moments that build trust, or lose it, and the future will almost certainly be more volatile. Governments can prepare by reducing our vulnerability to known risks, building fiscal buffers and calibrating expectations about what governments can reasonably do to cushion the blow.

Governments can and should lead on this. But we mustn’t forget that in a democracy, we govern ourselves. This is a task for all of us.

– ref. To stop Australian democracy going the way of the US, here’s what we need to do – https://theconversation.com/to-stop-australian-democracy-going-the-way-of-the-us-heres-what-we-need-to-do-280353

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/13/to-stop-australian-democracy-going-the-way-of-the-us-heres-what-we-need-to-do-280353/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeffrey Taliaferro, Professor of Political Science, Tufts University

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

Napoleon Bonaparte’s maxim may well have been in the minds of policymakers in Moscow and Beijing these past weeks, as the U.S. war in Iran dragged on. And now that a 14-day ceasefire between Tehran and Washington is in effect – with both sides claiming “victory” – Russian and Chinese leaders still have an opportunity to profit from what many see as America’s latest folly in the Middle East.

Throughout the weekslong conflict, China and Russia struck a delicate balance. Both declined to give Iran – seen to a varying degree as an ally of both nations – their full-throated support or sink any real costs into the conflict.

Instead, they opted for limited assistance in the form of small-scale intelligence and diplomatic support.

As a scholar of international security and great power politics I believe that is for good reason. Beijing and Moscow were fully aware that Iran could not “win” against the combined military might of the United States and Israel. Rather, Iran just needed to survive to serve the interests of Washington’s main geopolitical rivals.

Below are four ways in which the U.S. war in Iran has damaged Washington’s position in the great power rivalries of the 21st century.

1. Losing the influence war in the Middle East

As I explore in my book “Defending Frenemies,” the U.S. has long struggled to balance competing objectives in the Middle East. During the Cold War, this meant limiting the Soviet Union’s influence in the region, while contending with the development of nuclear weapons by two troublesome allies, Israel and Pakistan.

By the 2020s, the priorities in Washington were aimed at restricting the influence of the U.S.’s great power rivals – China and to a lesser degree Russia – in the Middle East.

Yet under Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, China and Russia have sought to increase their footprint in the region through a variety of formal alliances and informal measures.

For Russia, this took the form of aligning with Iran, while also partnering with Tehran to prop up the now-ousted regime of President Bashar Assad during the Syrian civil war. Meanwhile, China increased its diplomatic profile in the Middle East, notably by acting as a mediator as Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic ties in 2023.

The irony of the latest Iran war is that it follows a period in which circumstances were unfavorable to Russian and Chinese aims of increasing their influence in the Middle East.

The fall of Assad in December 2024 deprived Russia of its one reliable ally in the region. And Trump’s May 2025 tour of the Gulf states, in which he secured major technology and economic deals with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain, was aimed at countering China’s growing economic and diplomatic influence in those countries.

With Washington perceived as an increasingly unreliable protector, the Gulf states may seek greater security and economic cooperation elsewhere.

2. Taking US eyes off other strategic goals

In expanding military, diplomatic and economic ties in the Middle East, Russia and China over the past two decades were exploiting a desire by Washington to move its assets and attention away from the region following two costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump’s decision to wage war against Iran directly contradicts the national security strategy his administration released in November 2025. According to the strategy, the administration would prioritize the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific, while the Middle East’s importance “will recede.”

In co-launching a war in Tehran with Israel, without any prior consultation with Washington’s other allies, Trump has shown a complete disregard for their strategic and economic concerns. NATO, already riven by Trump’s repeated threats to the alliance and designs on Greenland, has now shown further signs of internal divisions.

That offers benefits for China and Russia, which have long sought to capitalize on cracks between America and its allies.

The irony, again, is that the war in Iran came as Trump’s vision of the U.S. as the hegemonic power in the Western Hemisphere was making advances. International law and legitimacy concerns aside, Washington had ousted a thorn in its side with Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and replaced him with a more compliant leader.

3. Disproportionate economic fallout

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, where some 20% of the world’s oil passes, was as predictable as it was destructive for U.S. interests.

But for Russia, this meant higher oil prices that boosted its war economy. It also led to the temporary but ongoing easing of U.S. sanctions, which has provided Moscow an indispensable lifeline after years of economic pressure over the war in Ukraine.

While a prolonged closure and extensive damage to oil and natural gas infrastructure in Iran and the Gulf states no doubt hurts China’s energy security and economy, these were risks Xi appears willing to accept, at least for a time.

And by building up a domestic oil reserve and diversifying energy sources to include solar, electric batteries and coal, China is far better positioned to weather a prolonged global energy crisis than the U.S. Indeed, Beijing has made strides in recent year to encourage domestic consumption as a source of economic growth, rather than be so reliant on global trade. That may have given China some protection during the global economic shock caused by the Iran war, as well as push the economy further down its own track.

The more the U.S. loses control over events in the strait, the more it loses influence in the region – especially as Iran appears to be placing restrictions on ships from unfriendly nations.

4. Loss of global leadership

Trump’s willingness to abandon talks to go to war, and the contradictory rhetoric he has employed throughout the Iran conflict, has weakened the perception of the U.S. as an honest broker.

That provides a massive soft power boost for Beijing. It was China that pressed Iran to accept the 14-day ceasefire proposal brokered by Pakistan. Indeed, China has slowly chipped away at America’s longtime status as global mediator of first resort.

Beijing has successfully mediated in the past between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and it attempted to do the same with Russia and Ukraine and Israel and the Palestinians.

In general, the Iran war adds weight to Beijing’s worldview that the U.S.-led liberal international order is over. Even if China benefited at some level from the war continuing, its decision to help broker the ceasefire shows that China is increasingly taking on the mantle of global leadership that the U.S. used to own.

And for Russia, the Iran war and the rupture between Trump and America’s NATO allies over their lack of support for it, shift world attention and U.S. involvement from the war in Ukraine.

– ref. 4 ways the war in Iran has weakened the United States in the great power game – https://theconversation.com/4-ways-the-war-in-iran-has-weakened-the-united-states-in-the-great-power-game-279069

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/13/4-ways-the-war-in-iran-has-weakened-the-united-states-in-the-great-power-game-279069/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne

While stopped in heavy Melbourne traffic recently, I noticed that what looked like a shadow under a row of spotted gums (Corymbia maculata) along a major road was actually a stain on the concrete kerb.

As a botanist, it caught my attention; biological stains always have an interesting story attached.

Stains like these – under many tree species, on your car after certain leaves have fallen on them, and on your timber deck after rain has washed leaves onto it – are from tannins leaching out of foliage.

Tannins are astringent and bitter-tasting chemicals found in many leaves; they’re what add flavour to red wines, chocolate and tea. Oak timber is high in tannins, and it’s the tannins in oak barrels that enrich the flavour of some wines.

So tannin stains on concrete, cars and decks may be unsightly, but that doesn’t mean tannins are unimportant.

Important to plants

When it rains, materials such as amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) and sugars can be washed or leached from leaves of trees. These contribute to the complex chemistry of soils. Many of the microflora and fauna in the ground, which contribute to healthy soils, depend on these chemicals for their growth and proliferation.

Among the many chemicals that are leached from leaves are tannins.

Tannins are important to plants as their bitter taste makes the leaves unpalatable; it’s the plant’s way of trying to dissuade animals from eating their leaves.

Some caterpillars and grasshoppers are turned off by tannins; koalas and possums cope with tannins by having specialised gut microbes that allow them to consume high-tannin diets.

If you spot a water-filled cavity or hollow in a tree trunk, or in between the trunks and a branch, it is often dark brown or even black due to the tannins that have leached into it.

These tannins can be efficient in preventing insects and other pests from growing in the water, although mosquito larvae can be quite resilient if the concentration of tannin is low.

Sometimes forests and felled timber leach so much tannin into streams and rivers they create a blackwater river, where the water may look and taste bad, but is often safe to drink.

The brown stains seen in Tidal River at Wilson’s Promontory, Victoria, and the Franklin River, Tasmania, are caused by tannins.

The dark colour of tannin streams does not mean they are unhealthy, and may indicate the tree canopy cover upstream is in good nick.

Tannins leached into soil can play an important role in the rate of litter decomposition, which is important to ecosystem function.

When tannin levels are high, they slow down litter decomposition. That means the leaf litter can be a food source for bugs for a long time. It also reduces soil drying and protects soil microbes.

Useful to humans, too

A number of tree species contain tannins that contribute to the durability and the distinctive colours of their timbers.

The name tannin comes from their use, particularly in days gone by, in the tanning of leather. However, they are also used in the dyeing of fabrics and as wood preservatives.

Tannins range in colour from pale yellows through orange to dark browns that are almost black. Their chemical structure means they bind well with fibres such as cotton and linen for long-lasting and environmentally-friendly colours.

We are just learning of their many environmental roles, and their impact on human health has yet to be fully explored (we do know they can be anti-oxidants and anti-carcinogenic).

As for that tannin stain I spotted while stuck in traffic, it’s likely it’ll still be there next time I drive past. Concrete is very porous and the tannins from the leaves above will be topped up each time it rains. So stains like this may be more or less permanent.

Tannin stains can generally be washed from vehicles and other non-porous surfaces quite easily, but a high pressure spray may be required to clean up tannin-embedded concrete, slate or stone paving surfaces. Warm or hot water may help.

For such a common stain on concrete, there is much we don’t know about tannins and so much to learn.

– ref. From river stain to your cup of tea: the secret world of tannins – https://theconversation.com/from-river-stain-to-your-cup-of-tea-the-secret-world-of-tannins-271730

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/13/from-river-stain-to-your-cup-of-tea-the-secret-world-of-tannins-271730/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giuseppe Carabetta, Associate Professor of Workplace and Business Law, UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney

ANZAC Day is commemorated on 25 April each year as a tribute to more than 2 million Australians who’ve served in war and peacekeeping operations.

That date is always the same. But how it’s marked as a public holiday varies between states and territories when it falls on a weekend, as it does this year.

Some Australians will get an extra day off as a result, while millions of others won’t.

That can be confusing for employees, and creates a rostering headache for employers operating across states and territories, such as in hospitality, retail, health, transport and other essential services.

Whether you’re an employee or an employer, here’s what you need to know about workers’ rights to paid time off.

Do you get a bonus day off?

People often assume public holidays such as Anzac Day are automatic “days off”. However, the rules under Australian employment law are a bit more complicated.

As Anzac Day falls on a Saturday in 2026, there are different rules across Australia about how it’s marked as a public holiday.

A bonus day: New South Wales, Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory all have a public holiday on April 25 2026. But they’ve also declared an additional public holiday on Monday April 27. If you’re rostered to work on that Saturday or Monday, both of those days count as public holidays in NSW, WA and the ACT.

Just one day: Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory will only observe Anzac Day on Saturday April 25. If you work in a Monday-Friday job, unfortunately this means you won’t get an Anzac Day holiday this year.

Those variations have direct implications for people’s entitlements to leave and penalty rates.

Public holiday pay rules

If a public holiday such as Anzac Day falls on a day a permanent employee would normally work, they are entitled to:

• be absent from work on a public holiday
• and be paid their base rate of pay for ordinary hours that would have been worked on that day.

But if you’re not rostered onto work on a public holiday (including if you’re a part-timer or casual, whose hours don’t fall on the public holiday), you won’t get paid for that day.

Can employees refuse to work on public holidays?

Let’s say you’re a nurse, rostered on for Saturday April 25, which is a public holiday right across Australia, or on Monday April 27 if you’re in NSW, WA or the ACT.

If your employer asks you to work then, do you have to agree? And, if you do agree, do you get extra pay?

Under the national Fair Work Act, employers cannot require an employee to work on a public holiday. Employers are allowed to ask, but it has to be a “reasonable request”.

Likewise, an employee may refuse a request to work on a public holiday if their refusal is “reasonable”.

Whether a request (or refusal) is reasonable depends on the circumstances. The Fair Work Act identifies various factors that can be taken into account, including:

• the employer’s operational requirements (such as if the business must operate that day)
• the employee’s role and seniority
• the employee’s personal circumstances, such as caring responsibilities, religious observance or cultural significance
• whether the employee will receive additional compensation, including penalty rates or time off in lieu
• and whether the employee was given adequate notice.

A failure to properly assess or document these factors can expose employers to disputes, underpayment claims and even legal action.

Extra rights to check

Beyond that national law, it’s important to know your rights if you (or your staff) are also covered by an award or enterprise bargaining agreement.

These can impose additional or stricter obligations, such as higher penalty rates on public holidays, or additional rostering and consultation requirements.

For employees, that can be good news, as it can mean more pay. But this can significantly increase an employer’s costs for public holiday work.

For employers with staff across Australia, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to this year’s Anzac Day public holidays.

That makes early planning and clear communication from both employers and employees even more important – well before April 25.

– ref. This Anzac Day falls on a Saturday – and these states will be getting an extra public holiday – https://theconversation.com/this-anzac-day-falls-on-a-saturday-and-these-states-will-be-getting-an-extra-public-holiday-279858

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/13/this-anzac-day-falls-on-a-saturday-and-these-states-will-be-getting-an-extra-public-holiday-279858/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Costello, Professor, School of Computer Science, Queensland University of Technology

Online data is generally pretty secure. Assuming everyone is careful with passwords and other protections, you can think of it as being locked in a vault so strong that even all the world’s supercomputers, working together for 10,000 years, could not crack it.

But last month, Google and others released results suggesting a new kind of computer – a quantum computer – might be able to open the vault with significantly less resources than previously thought.

The changes are coming on two fronts. On one, tech giants such as IBM and Google are racing to build ever-larger quantum computers: IBM hopes to achieve a genuine advantage over classical computers in some special cases this year, and an even more powerful “fault-tolerant” system by 2029.

On the other front, theorists are refining quantum algorithms: recent work shows the resources needed to break today’s cryptography may be far lower than earlier estimates.

The net result? The day quantum computers can break widely used cryptography – portentously dubbed “Q Day” – may be approaching faster than expected.

The quantum hardware race

Quantum computers are built from quantum bits, or qubits, which use the counterintuitive properties of very tiny objects to carry out computations in a different and sometimes far more efficient way from traditional computers.

So far the technology is in its infancy, with the major goal to increase the number of qubits that can be connected to work as a single computer. Bigger quantum computers should be much better at some things than their traditional counterparts – they will have a “quantum advantage”.

Late last year, IBM unveiled a 120-qubit chip which it hopes will demonstrate a quantum advantage for some tasks.

Google also recently announced it planned to speed up its move to adopt encryption techniques that should be safe against quantum computers, known as post-quantum cryptography.

Alongside these tech giants, newer approaches are also flourishing. PsiQuantum is using light-based qubits and traditional chip-manufacturing technology. Experimental platforms such as neutral-atom systems have demonstrated control over thousands of qubits in laboratory settings.

In response, standards bodies and national agencies are setting increasingly concrete timelines for moving away from common encryption systems that are vulnerable to quantum attack.

In the United States, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has proposed a transition away from quantum-vulnerable cryptography, with migration largely completed by 2035. In Australia, the Australian Signals Directorate has issued similar guidance, urging organisations to begin planning immediately and transition to post-quantum cryptography by 2030.

Algorithms make the lock-picking faster

Hardware is only half the story. Equally important are advances in quantum algorithms – ways to use quantum computers to attack encryption.

Much interest in quantum computer development was spurred by Peter Shor’s 1994 discovery of an algorithm that showed how quantum computers could efficiently find the prime factors of very large numbers. This mathematical trick is precisely what you need to break the common RSA encryption method.

For decades, it was believed a quantum computer would need millions of physical qubits to pose a threat to real-world encryption. This is far bigger than current systems, so the threat felt comfortably distant.

That picture is now changing.

In March 2026, Google’s Quantum AI team released a detailed study showing that far fewer resources may be needed to attack a different kind of encryption which uses mathematical objects called elliptic curves. This is what systems including Bitcoin and Ethereum use – and the study shows how a quantum computer with fewer than half a million physical qubits may be able to crack it in minutes.

That’s still a long way beyond current quantum computers, but around ten times less than earlier estimates.

At the same time, a March 2026 preprint from a Caltech–Berkeley–Oratomic collaboration explores what might be possible using neutral-atom quantum computers. The researchers estimate that Shor’s algorithm could be implemented with as few as 10,000–20,000 atomic qubits. In one design they propose, a system with around 26,000 qubits could crack Bitcoin’s encryption in a few days, while tougher problems like the RSA method with a 2048-bit key would need more time and resources.

In plain terms: the codebreakers are becoming more efficient. Advances in algorithms and design are steadily lowering the bar for quantum attacks, even before large-scale hardware exists.

What now?

So what does this mean in practice?

First, there is no immediate catastrophe – today’s cryptography won’t be broken overnight. But the direction of travel is clear. Each improvement in hardware or algorithms reduces the gap between current capabilities and useful quantum cracking machines.

Second, viable defences already exist. NIST has standardised several post-quantum cryptographic algorithms which are believed to be resistant to quantum attacks.

Technology companies have begun deploying these in hybrid modes: Google Chrome and Cloudflare, for example, already support post-quantum protections in some protocols and services.

Systems that rely heavily on elliptic-curve cryptography – including cryptocurrencies and many secure communication protocols – will need particular attention. Google’s recent work explicitly highlights the need to migrate blockchain systems to post-quantum schemes.

Finally, this is a two-front race. It is not enough to track progress in quantum hardware alone. Advances in algorithms and error correction can be just as important, and recent results show these improvements can significantly reduce the estimated cost of attacks.

Every new headline about reduced qubit counts or faster quantum algorithms should be understood for what it is: another step toward a future where today’s cryptographic assumptions no longer hold.

The only reliable defence is to move – deliberately but decisively – toward quantum-safe cryptography.

– ref. Quantum computers are coming to break our codes faster than anyone expected – https://theconversation.com/quantum-computers-are-coming-to-break-our-codes-faster-than-anyone-expected-280303

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/13/quantum-computers-are-coming-to-break-our-codes-faster-than-anyone-expected-280303/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melanie O’Brien, Professor of International Law, The University of Western Australia

Warzones are full of danger.

But that’s never stopped humanitarian workers from living and working in such places, with the aim of keeping civilians safe.

Humanitarian workers are deployed to locations ravaged by conflict or natural disasters. Most recently, they’ve helped distribute essential supplies including food, water and medicine to communities affected by the US-Iran conflict.

In the last three years, more than 1,000 humanitarian workers have been killed while serving in war-torn regions. Just last week, Australia joined six other nations in calling for more legal protections for humanitarian personnel.

So what do humanitarian workers do? And are we doing enough to keep them safe?

Who are humanitarian workers?

Humanitarian workers provide humanitarian assistance to vulnerable people. This includes any effort that helps save lives or alleviate suffering in times of crisis whether human-made, such as war, or natural disasters such as bushfires and floods.

There are different kinds of humanitarian personnel. Humanitarians may be paid or be volunteers, and are a mix of local and international staff. All are protected under international law.

Aid workers deliver essential supplies such as food, water and medicine to people in need. They may also help distribute other resources such as sanitation equipment and temporary shelters.

Health-care workers, such as doctors and nurses, provide specialised care to vulnerable people including emergency medical care, ambulance support, surgery, vaccinations and mental health support. They usually work in teams based in existing hospitals or mobile emergency medical units.

High-risk work

Humanitarian workers in conflict zones face greater risk of kidnapping, injury and death.

The international community recognises just how dangerous humanitarian work can be. This is particularly true for health-care workers. On average, there are more than 750 threats, kidnappings and other forms of direct violence against health-care workers each year.

This prompted the International Committee of the Red Cross to launch its Healthcare in Danger project in 2011. This project aims to curb violence against health services by providing governments and key stakeholders with training and resources to better protect health workers.

However, the risk posed to humanitarian workers is only increasing. The ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza have become hotspots for attacks on these vital personnel. Most recently, health-care workers and hospitals in Lebanon have become military targets. Since the start of the US-Iran conflict in March 2026, the World Health Organization has confirmed 106 attacks on Lebanon’s health-care system.

Military forces may attack health-care workers and facilities for several reasons. A country or armed group may claim a hospital or medical site is being used by the enemy for military purposes, making it a legitimate military target under international law. A nation or armed group might also attack its enemy’s health system to erode the morale of its civilians and soldiers. In recent decades military forces have also increasingly fought in towns and cities, known as urban warfare. This often involves indiscriminate bombing, which may damage medical facilities located near legitimate military targets.

How are we protecting health-care workers?

International humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war, regulates how conflicts should be fought. This includes who and what is protected in times of war. These rules are found in international treaties such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions. They make three main points regarding humanitarian workers.

1. They are civilians

International humanitarian law considers humanitarian and health-care workers as civilians. This means the law would treat any attack on them as a war crime.

2. They have extra protections

These same laws provide specific protections for people who provide humanitarian and medical assistance, as well as the equipment they use. Examples of protected equipment may include ambulances, hospitals, medical helicopters and mobile medical units.

3. They are not a military threat

International humanitarian law recognises humanitarian and health-care workers are in warzones to help vulnerable people. This, as well as the fact they’re not armed, means they don’t represent a military threat and shouldn’t be targeted. This is why humanitarian workers often wear the Red Cross, the Red Crescent or the Red Crystal, all well-known emblems meaning “don’t shoot”.

Where to next?

In 2025, Australia led a push to create a new Declaration for the Protection of Humanitarian Personnel. The declaration has 112 signatories to date. Nations who sign the declaration commit to:

• adhering to international humanitarian law
• allowing humanitarian workers into their countries
• working to better protect humanitarian personnel, for example by providing security training for health-care workers
• taking immediate action if there are violations of the law, including prosecuting anyone who breaches the laws of war.

The declaration is not legally binding, meaning there’s no law forcing any country to uphold it. However, it’s still a crucial step in protecting humanitarian workers around the world. They risk their lives to keep others safe. It’s time we make their safety a priority.

– ref. Health-care workers risk their lives in warzones. Are we protecting them enough? – https://theconversation.com/health-care-workers-risk-their-lives-in-warzones-are-we-protecting-them-enough-280256

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/13/health-care-workers-risk-their-lives-in-warzones-are-we-protecting-them-enough-280256/