Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping military and humanitarian healthcare, from battlefield triage and evacuation to crisis mapping, logistics and predictive analytics. These tools promise greater efficiency and improved clinical outcomes but also raise acute ethical and legal risks, including opaque life-and-death decision-making, algorithmic bias, dehumanisation through autonomous systems, and the facilitation or concealment of war crimes. The chapter maps the emerging AI law and ethics landscape relevant to these settings, showing how data protection, medical device law, product liability, Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law only partially address AI’s systemic and autonomous features. It then examines new global and European initiatives, in particular the EU Artificial Intelligence Act and the Council of Europe AI Convention, and highlights persisting gaps around defence, dual-use systems, accountability and liability. Finally, it sketches a multi-level reform agenda—combining international law, national legislation, institutional governance and professional education—to safeguard human rights, accountability and trust in military and humanitarian healthcare.