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GENEVA: The United Nations on Monday condemned the “unacceptable” level of violence against humanitarian workers that has become commonplace, with 280 people killed worldwide in 2023, a record high.
And there have been warnings that the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip could potentially lead to an even higher number of such deaths this year.
“The normalisation of violence against aid workers and the lack of accountability are unacceptable, unconscionable and enormously damaging to aid operations everywhere,” said Joyce Msuya, acting director of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in a statement on World Humanitarian Day.
“With 280 aid workers killed in 33 countries last year, 2023 was the deadliest year for the global humanitarian community,” a 137 percent increase from 2022, when 118 aid workers died, the OCHA statement said.
The organization cited the Aid Worker Security Database, which records such figures dating back to 1997.
According to the UN, more than half of the deaths in 2023 (163) were aid workers killed, mainly in air strikes, during the first three months of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Civil war-torn South Sudan and Sudan, where a war between two rival generals has been raging since April 2023, are the next conflicts with the most deaths for humanitarian workers, with 34 and 25 deaths respectively.
Also in the top 10 are Israel and Syria with seven deaths each, Ethiopia and Ukraine with six deaths each, Somalia with five deaths and Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo with four deaths each.
In all these conflicts, most of the fatalities are among local employees.
Despite the “tremendous number” of aid worker deaths in 2023, OCHA said “even more deaths may be expected” in 2024.
As of August 9, 176 aid workers had been killed worldwide, according to the Aid Worker Security Database.
Since October, when Hamas-led militants launched a deadly raid on Israel, sparking the war, more than 280 aid workers have been killed in Gaza, according to OCHA. The majority of them were employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.
Against this background, the heads of several humanitarian organizations wanted to send a letter to UN member states on Monday calling on the international community to “end attacks on civilians, protect all aid workers and hold perpetrators to account.”
Every year, the United Nations observes World Humanitarian Day on August 19, the anniversary of the attack on its headquarters in Baghdad in 2003.
The bombing killed 22 people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN special envoy for Iraq. Around 150 local and foreign aid workers were injured.