UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A record number of aid workers were killed in conflicts worldwide last year — more than half after the war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 7 — and this year could be even deadlier, the United Nations said Monday.
The 280 aid workers from 33 countries killed in 2023 was more than double the previous year’s 118, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, said in a report on World Humanitarian Day.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted that it is not enough to honour the humanitarian workers who died in the deadliest year on record.
“In Sudan and many other places, aid workers are being attacked, killed, injured and abducted. We demand an end to impunity so that the perpetrators are brought to justice,” the UN chief said.
OCHA said the outcome this year “could be even deadlier”, with 172 aid workers killed as of August 7, according to a preliminary report from the Aid Worker Security Database.
More than 280 aid workers have been killed in the 11-month war in Gaza, mostly by airstrikes. Most of them are Palestinians working for the UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, OCHA said. It said “extreme levels of violence in Sudan And South Sudan “have also contributed to the death toll, both this year and last year.
Joyce Msuya, the UN’s acting humanitarian chief, said in a statement that “the normalization of violence against aid workers and the lack of accountability are unacceptable, unconscionable and deeply damaging to aid operations everywhere.”
In a letter to the 193 UN member states, 413 humanitarian organizations around the world wrote: “The brutal hostilities we are seeing in multiple conflicts around the world have exposed a terrible truth: we are living in an era of impunity.”
The aid agencies called on all countries, the international community and all parties to conflict to protect civilians and aid workers and hold perpetrators to account.
World Humanitarian Day commemorates the terrorist bombing of the UN Canal Hotel office in Baghdad on August 19, 2003, which killed 22 UN workers, including the top UN envoy to Iraq, Sergio Viera de Mello, a Brazilian diplomat.
At a ceremony at UN headquarters on Monday, before the torn UN flag was removed from the hotel that day, dozens of current UN staff and families of some of the victims stood in silence to honor their memory. Many others around the world also watched.
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