Civilians & Humanitarian Workers are Dying in Record Numbers. It’s Time to End Impunity and Protect Them.
From Gaza to Sudan to Ukraine, civilians and those who risk life and limb every day to help them are dying in record numbers. This World Humanitarian Day let’s show them the solidarity they deserve — and demand an end to impunity for those responsible.
One August afternoon, 21 years ago, a suicide bomber drove up to the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and detonated a truck packed with a tonne of explosives.
I remember the shock and disbelief on hearing the news: Twenty-two people had been killed, among them the UN Special Representative for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, whom I once met personally and admired greatly.
Many other colleagues were injured in the attack, and the lives of countless more were changed forever by surviving it. Nada Al-Nashif, the UN’s Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, later told me she had struggled with survivors’ guilt ever since.
“It’s hard to accept, but you need to because you cannot keep asking, ‘Why was I there? Why me? Why not me?’” she told the UN podcast Awake at Night.
That day, August 19, 2003, has gone down as one of the darkest in the UN’s history. In 2008, the UN designated the anniversary of the bombing as World Humanitarian Day (WHD), to honor the courage, determination, and service of all those working to alleviate hardship and pain.
Fast forward to 2024, and the world is still failing them: Last year was the deadliest on record for humanitarian workers — this year is already on track to be worse. Conflicts are raging around the world, with civilians and their humanitarian supporters paying the highest price.
Hospitals, schools, markets and other civilian infrastructure are being targeted on a previously unimaginable scale, resulting in the deaths of countless civilians, including humanitarians, who are being attacked, killed, injured, and abducted, alongside the civilians they support.
In Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories alone, more than 270 humanitarian workers have been killed since the beginning of the war last October, among them more than 200 UN staff members.
These are flagrant violations of international humanitarian law — the law that protects civilians during wartime.
“We have a situation of impunity, where any country or any armed group thinks that it can do whatever it wants, because there’s no accountability,” as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently put it.
Last year humanitarian operations coordinated by the United Nations provided life-saving aid to more than 140 million people. Aid workers, many of them national staff serving their own communities, persevered despite brutal violence and severe funding shortages.
Now, in this time of mounting global needs, humanitarian workers are needed more than ever. They are on the frontlines of all emergencies, conflicts and disasters, saving lives with humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence.
That’s why, this World Humanitarian Day, the UN is calling on humanitarians and their supporters across the globe to pressure world leaders to live up to their responsibility to protect all civilians, including aid workers, and hold violators accountable.
Today, 413 humanitarian organizations issued an open letter to UN member states calling for the protection of civilians, including their staff.
They lamented that,
“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. Attacks that kill or injure civilians, including humanitarian and health-care personnel, are devastatingly common. Yet despite widespread condemnation, serious violations of the rules of war too often go unpunished.”
They issued this appeal to all States, parties to armed conflict, and the wider international community:
- End attacks on civilians and take active steps to protect them — and the critical civilian infrastructure they rely on.
- Protect all aid workers, including local and national actors, and their premises and assets and facilitate their work, as called for in UN Security Council Resolution 2730 adopted this May.
- Hold perpetrators to account. Those who commit violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) cannot go unpunished.
Leaders must fulfill their responsibility to protect. For too long, too many have turned a blind eye to the security, survival, and dignity of all civilians in crisis. International norms exist for a reason, they must be upheld.
Today, on August 19, United Nations and humanitarian staff around the world will ‘stand in solidarity’ to spotlight the horrifying toll of armed conflicts on civilians and their colleagues. Join our digital campaign calling on world leaders to #ActForHumanity. Civil society groups sign our letter demanding Member States end all attacks on civilians and hold perpetrators to account.
