Killings of aid workers rose nearly a third to almost 400 last year, the deadliest year since records began in 1997, with the war in Gaza continuing to drive high death rates, UN data showed on Tuesday.
Last year, 383 aid workers were killed, nearly half of them in the occupied Palestinian territories, according to the UN’s Aid Worker Security Database, a US-funded platform that tracks major security incidents affecting humanitarian staff.
Of those killed in the Palestinian territories, 173 were killed in Gaza amid Israeli army operations, the data showed.
“This is more than a statistical spike. It is a stain – the normalisation of violence against this community. Each attack on a colleague is an attack on all of us, and we do not accept it,” said Tom Fletcher, UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs.
“As a humanitarian movement, we demand the protection of civilians and aid workers and we demand that perpetrators are held to account. Humanitarians will not retreat, despite these dangers.”
The first eight months of this year showed no sign of a reversal of the disturbing trend: 265 aid workers have been killed as of mid-August, according to the Database.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres noted that humanitarian workers are the lifeline for more than 300 million people caught in conflict or disaster. But he said that funding is drying up and those who provide humanitarian aid are increasingly under attack.
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement said 18 of its staff and volunteers have been killed so far this year “while carrying out their life-saving work”.
“The rules of war are clear: humanitarian personnel must be respected and protected. Every attack is a grave betrayal of humanity, and the rules designed to protect them and the communities they serve. Each killing sends a dangerous message that their lives were expendable. They were not,” said Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Meanwhile the UN's World Health Organisation said 1,121 health workers and patients have been killed and hundreds injured in attacks across 16 territories, with the most deaths were in Sudan.
“Each attack inflicts lasting harm, deprives entire communities of life-saving care when they need it the most, endangers health care providers, and weakens already strained health systems,” the WHO said.
World Humanitarian Day marks the day in 2003 when UN rights chief Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other humanitarians were killed in the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad.
