More than 1,000 humanitarian workers have been killed across the globe in the past three years, nearly triple the death count in the previous three years, the UN said on Wednesday.
“This is not an accidental escalation — it is the collapse of protection,” UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher told the UN Security Council.
Of the more than 1,010 humanitarian workers killed from 2023 to last year, more than 560 were in Gaza and the West Bank, 130 in Sudan, 60 in South Sudan, 25 in Ukraine and 25 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, compared with 377 killed from 2020 to 2022, he said.
Photo: AFP
The surge in deaths occurred during the war between Israel and Hamas, which began in October 2023. A ceasefire has been in effect since October last year, although shootings and airstrikes have persisted.
Last year alone, at least 326 aid workers were recorded as killed in 21 countries, while in 2024, a record 383 were killed in global hot spots while distributing food, water, shelter and medicine, Fletcher said.
“They died in clearly marked convoys and on missions coordinated directly with authorities,” he said.
The Security Council was meeting on a resolution it adopted in May 2024 that condemned attacks on humanitarian workers and UN personnel and demanded that all combatants protect them in accordance with international law.
Fletcher asked the 15 members of the UN’s most powerful body if the killings were because international law “is no longer convenient” or because “it is more important to protect those designing, selling, supplying and firing lethal weapons?”
“Or is it because member states see these numbers as collateral damage, part of the fog of war? Or worse, are we now seen as legitimate targets?” he asked. “Perhaps the most chilling question: If these deaths were ‘preventable,’ why then were they not prevented?”
Humanitarian staff are not only being killed, but “restricted, penalized and delegitimized” — and told where they cannot go and whom they cannot help, Fletcher said.
In Yemen, 73 UN staff and dozens of others working for non-governmental organizations are being arbitrarily detained by Houthi rebels, he said.
In Afghanistan, female humanitarian staff are banned from doing their jobs, he said.
In Gaza, Israel restricts the UN and other international organizations, and in Ukraine drone attacks have forced aid workers back from the front line, he added.
“These trends, alongside the collapse in funding for our lifesaving work, are a symptom of a lawless, bellicose, selfish and violent world,” Fletcher said.
He challenged the UN’s 193 member nations to uphold the 2024 resolution’s demands to protect humanitarian workers and ensure accountability for crimes against them.
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