GENEVA: A record 383 aid workers were killed in 2024, the United Nations said Tuesday, branding the figures and lack of accountability a “shameful indictment” of international apathy – and warned this year’s toll was equally disturbing.
The 2024 figure was up 31 percent on the year before, the UN said on World Humanitarian Day, “driven by the relentless conflicts in Gaza, where 181 humanitarian workers were killed, and in Sudan, where 60 lost their lives”.
It said state actors were the most common perpetrators of the killings in 2024.
The UN said most of those killed were local staff, and were either attacked in the line of duty or in their homes.
Besides those killed, 308 aid workers were wounded, 125 kidnapped and 45 detained last year.
“Even one attack against a humanitarian colleague is an attack on all of us and on the people we serve,” said UN aid chief Tom Fletcher.
“Attacks on this scale, with zero accountability, are a shameful indictment of international inaction and apathy.
“As the humanitarian community, we demand – again – that those with power and influence act for humanity, protect civilians and aid workers and hold perpetrators to account.”
Provisional figures from the Aid Worker Security Database show that 265 aid workers have been killed this year, as of August 14.
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The UN reiterated that attacks on aid workers and operations violate international humanitarian law and damage the lifelines sustaining millions of people trapped in war and disaster zones.
“Violence against aid workers is not inevitable. It must end,” said Fletcher, the UN emergency relief coordinator and under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs.
Meanwhile the UN’s World Health Organization said it had verified more than 800 attacks on health care in 16 territories so far this year, with more than 1,110 health workers and patients killed and hundreds injured.
“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.
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