By Associated Press’s EDITH M. LEDERER
United Nations (AP) The U.N. humanitarian office said Tuesday, on the annual day that honors the thousands of people who enter crises to help others, that a record 383 aid workers were killed in worldwide hotspots in 2024, with nearly half of them in Gaza during the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The record number of deaths must serve as a warning to protect civilians trapped in violence and everyone attempting to assist them, according to U.N. humanitarian head Tom Fletcher.
In a statement on World Humanitarian Day, Fletcher said that attacks of this magnitude with no accountability are a disgraceful indictment of global passivity and apathy. As the humanitarian community, we once more call on individuals in positions of authority to act in the best interests of humanity, safeguard citizens and aid workers, and bring those responsible for crimes accountable.
According to the Aid Worker Security Database, which has been compiling information since 1997, there were 383 fatalities in 2024, including more than 180 in Gaza, up from 293 in 2023.
According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, the majority of the assistance workers slain were national personnel working in their communities who were assaulted at home or on the job.
According to OCHA, there is no indication that the increasing trend will reverse this year.
According to data from the database, there were 599 significant attacks that affected aid workers last year, a significant rise from the 420 that occurred in 2023. In addition, 308 humanitarian workers were injured in the 2024 attacks, 125 were abducted, and 45 were arrested.
According to the database, 265 relief workers have been slain in 245 significant attacks during the last seven plus months.
Israeli military opened fire before dawn on March 23 in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, killing 15 emergency responders and medics in clearly marked trucks in one of the deadliest and most horrific strikes of the year. The dead and their wrecked vehicles were crushed by troops and buried in a mass grave. It took a week for rescue and U.N. personnel to arrive at the scene.
According to Fletcher of the United Nations, “even one attack against a humanitarian colleague is an attack on all of us and on the people we serve.” Aid workers are not always the targets of violence. It has to stop.
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The database shows that, in 2024, violence against aid workers rose in 21 nations compared to the year before, with government forces and affiliates being the most frequent offenders.
According to the statistics, the Palestinian territories had the most major attacks last year (194), followed by Sudan (64), South Sudan (47), Nigeria (31), and Congo (27).
With 60 relief workers killed in 2024, Sudan, where a civil war is still continuing, came in second to Gaza and the West Bank in terms of deaths. That was more than twice as many as the 25 deaths of relief workers in 2023.
Twenty humanitarian workers were killed in Lebanon, where Israel and Hezbollah militants fought a conflict last year, compared to none in 2023. The database shows that 13 relief workers were slain in Ukraine in 2024, up from six in 2023, and that 14 people were killed in Ethiopia and Syria, roughly twice as many as in 2023.
