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More aid workers have been killed in 2024 than in any other year, says UN.
More aid workers, health care staffers, delivery personnel and other humanitarians have been killed in 2024 than in any other single year, the United Nations (UN) reported on Friday.
Bloodshed in the Middle East has been the single-biggest cause of the 281 deaths among humanitarians globally this year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“Before the year is even over, 2024 has become the deadliest on record for humanitarian personnel worldwide,” OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said. He told reporters in Geneva the figure surpassed the previous record of 280 deaths for the whole of last year.
Humanitarians “are working courageously and selflessly in places like Gaza, Sudan, Lebanon, Ukraine and so on. They show the best humanity has to offer, and they are getting killed in return – in record numbers,” he said.
“These numbers will send shockwaves around the humanitarian community, especially on the front lines of the response,” he added.
“Humanitarian workers are being killed at an unprecedented rate, their courage and humanity being met with bullets and bombs,” said Tom Fletcher, the United Nations’ new under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.
With more than a month left to go of 2024, the “grim milestone was reached,” he said, after 280 humanitarians were killed across 33 countries during all of 2023. “This violence is unconscionable and devastating to aid operations,” Fletcher said.
“States and parties to conflict must protect humanitarians, uphold international law, prosecute those responsible, and call time on this era of impunity.”
Israel’s devastating war in Gaza was driving up the numbers, his office said, with 333 aid workers killed there — most from the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA — since Oct.7, 2023 attacks, which sparked the war.
OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva that 243 UNRWA staff had been killed in the war to date.
Beyond Gaza, aid workers were subject to kidnappings, injuries, harassment and arbitrary detention in a range of countries, the agency said, including Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Ukraine.
The majority of deaths involve local staff working with non-governmental organisations, UN agencies and the Red Cross Red Crescent movement, Fletcher’s office said.
The UN said the figures come from the Aid Worker Security Database, a US-funded project run by a Britain-based group called Humanitarian Outcomes.
A total of 268 of the humanitarians killed — including from non-UN organisations like the Red Cross and Red Crescent — were national staff, while 13 were international staff. Some 230 aid workers have been killed in occupied Palestinian areas, the database showed on Friday.
It did not break out whether that was Gaza or the West Bank. Laerke said the threats to aid workers “extend beyond Gaza, with high levels of violence, kidnappings injuries, harassment and arbitrary detention” reported in Afghanistan, Congo, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere. OCHA said a total of 333 humanitarians have been killed since the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas group erupted on Oct.7, 2023.
Agencies
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